Department of Justice cuts off federally funded legal aid to detained immigrants

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The U.S. Department of Justice told immigration attorneys who aid detained immigrants through a federal program to stop providing legal services as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing changes to the immigration system, according to legal aid groups.

“To be told that we can't go in and help people is devastating. More so to the people we're trying to help who are being cut off from the outside world,” said Michael Luken, executive director for Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, the contractor that provides legal services. “We often hear people don't know what's happening or why they are detained: ‘What is going to happen next?’ And we were being stopped from reaching that basic level of orientation.”

The Jan. 22 DOJ memo told legal providers to “stop work immediately” in the four programs that provide legal services to detained immigrants, including the Legal Orientation Program, which Congress has funded since 2003. The other programs include Immigration Court Helpdesk, Counsel for Children Initiative and Family Group Legal Orientation Program.

"This email is to send you notification to stop work immediately pursuant to the Executive Order on the following task orders," the DOJ memo said, according to ABC News, which reported getting access to the memo.

The programs provide legal services to immigrants facing deportation. There are 3.5 million cases in immigration courts nationwide, up from about half a million in 2014. Many of them are asylum claims, which can take up to five years to resolve.

Unlike defendants in the criminal justice system, detained migrants don’t have a right to an attorney but can seek one on their own. The DOJ directive doesn’t prohibit immigrants from hiring their own lawyers.

About 25% of immigrants have a lawyer to represent them during immigration court proceedings, according to an analysis of immigration data by the Vera Institute for Justice, a criminal justice reform advocacy group based in New York. According to the National Immigrant Justice Center, immigrants with a lawyer are likelier to win their cases.

American Gateways, a subcontractor for the federal program and an immigrant rights advocacy group based in Austin, served 7,000 detained migrants in 2024 across three immigration detention centers in Texas. Edna Yang, co-executive director of American Gateways, said blocking detained immigrants from access to legal information will hurt the people and the system itself.

“If you want an immigration system that works, you need to have one where individuals can move through that system and know the next steps,” Yang said. “Otherwise, if you put these barriers where they can't get information, what's going to happen is you're going to get increased backlogs, and you're going to get an even slower … system.”

According to a DOJ analysis, immigration courts completed cases 12 days sooner for people who used the government’s Legal Orientation Program. The analysis also found that immigrants are detained for six fewer days than those who didn’t use the legal program. The services saved the federal government more than $17.8 million, according to DOJ’s analysis.

Immigration judges and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have previously praised what they called an effective program that provides information to help migrants make informed decisions.

In 2018, the Trump administration attempted to do something similar when U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the DOJ had cut off funding for immigration legal services. He later reversed his decision after a congressional committee told him it supported the legal services.