Katya Schwenk, The Lever
The Trump administration has escalated its pressure campaign against lawyers representing unaccompanied migrant children.
After freezing payments and demanding sensitive client data.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents attempted to raid the offices of attorneys for unaccompanied migrant children this week, lawyers tell The Lever, the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s attempt to collect sensitive data on children in the U.S. immigration system.
As The Lever first reported last week, the legal services providers for unaccompanied migrant children — who represent the youth in deportation proceedings — have been locked in a standoff with the Trump administration over requests for sensitive case data on their clients.
Now, ICE agents are arriving at their doors.
Dozens of nonprofits and law firms around the country provide critical legal representation to migrant children under the Unaccompanied Children Program, which is funded by the Department of Health and Human Services. The program has become a central focus in the Trump administration’s ongoing targeting of immigrants.
As a result of the dispute between the primary program contractor, the Acacia Center for Justice, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, many nonprofit organizations around the country that provide legal representation to these children have not been paid for their work in months, The Lever revealed.
Providing sensitive client data to the federal government could represent a serious violation of attorney-client privilege and put vulnerable children at risk, attorneys say. Already, the immigration courts are expediting children’s cases in an apparent attempt to deport children as fast as possible.
On Thursday, two agents with Homeland Security Investigations, the primary investigative arm of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, arrived at the Washington, D.C., offices of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, which represents unaccompanied minors.
According to the organization’s executive director, Michael Lukens, security guards turned the agents away when they did not present a valid warrant.
The agents asked for “financial records relating to the Unaccompanied Children Program,” Lukens said.
“We are not intimidated,” he said. “We continue to do the work.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to The Lever’s request for comment.
The incident was one of at least three attempted raids within 48 hours, all in the D.C. area. Ayuda and Kids in Need of Defense, two other organizations that work under the Unaccompanied Children Program, both issued statements on Friday confirming that they, too, had received visits from federal agents on Wednesday and Thursday.
The operation “is consistent with ongoing administration efforts targeting nonprofit organizations operating in the immigration space and undermining legal services for unaccompanied children seeking safety in the United States,” wrote Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense.
Lukens noted that the federal government could easily request the information through standard channels. The Amica Center and other nonprofits are all subcontractors of the federal government. “There are audit provisions in our subcontracts, you know,” he said. “Send us an email.”
Instead, ICE took a more confrontational approach.
The attempted raids came as President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice staged a news conference on Thursday announcing new efforts to “safeguard unaccompanied alien children.” At the press conference, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the indictments of three Guatemalan immigrants for smuggling children.
The event was timed with a simultaneous event held by the right-wing dark money nonprofit the Heritage Foundation on unaccompanied minors supposedly “lost” under the Biden administration — another sign of the right’s increased focus on children in the U.S. immigration system.
At the press conference, Blanche claimed that the White House was “committed to protect the children who suffered the consequences of open borders” under former President Joe Biden. But under Trump, the White House has been seizing resources of programs meant to safeguard unaccompanied children — including the legal services program — and holding children in Health and Human Services custody for far longer than in the past.
“This idea that [the Unaccompanied Children Program] is rife with fraud and trafficking is just fallacious,” Lukens said, adding that he believed it was an excuse for the Trump administration to ramp up its targeting of legal services organizations.
The Department of Homeland Security has also been encouraging unaccompanied children to self-deport amid its accelerated deportation proceedings, as The Lever reported last week. These developments have alarmed advocates, who say that such measures could force children to return to unsafe conditions in their home countries.
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