A California project that provides legal advocacy for unaccompanied child immigrants will end in September unless backers can convince lawmakers to renew funding by next month.
The Children’s Holistic Immigration Representation Project was funded through a one-time allocation in 2022 and not renewed when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed California’s $298 billion budget last month.
There were 64,173 unaccompanied children released in California between January 2015 and May 2023, according to a CalMatters analysis of federal data obtained by the New York Times.
The project’s clients include A.L., who lives with his aunt in Northern California. When A.L. was in the first or second grade, a motorcycle chase ended in the courtyard of his elementary school. He said that he and other young children from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, watched in horror as a group of men surrounded another man, kicked him, beat him, and dragged him all around the school. He never knew why.
“I froze,” said A.L., a 17-year-old who came to the United States as an unaccompanied minor when he was 14. “That’s an example of the violence we live with in my country.”
Honduras has a homicide rate five times higher than the United States, according to the Migration and Asylum Lab, which provides expertise about conditions in Latin American countries for use in asylum applications. San Pedro Sula, the capital where A.L. lived, is called “the world’s murder capital.”
CalMatters is only identifying A.L. by his initials because he fears for his safety and his family’s well-being back in Honduras. We interviewed him with the permission of his sponsor, his aunt, and other advocates.
Without CHIRP, the free legal representation and the social services program A.L. says saved his life, “I’d probably be back in my country,” he told CalMatters.
Rather than providing kids just with legal services, social workers under the project also help children find mental health services, enroll in school, get vaccines, and get work authorization, an approach known as “trauma-informed intervention.”
Unaccompanied children are a particularly vulnerable group. They can be exploited in full-time, dangerous jobs that violate labor laws, advocates and government officials say.
CHIRP was funded as a pilot program with $15.3 million in fiscal year 2022—enough to carry it through this coming September.
Newsom has not met with anyone to discuss the termination of the project, advocates say. His budget sought to close a huge deficit with $16 billion in cuts and delays.
Newsom’s office declined an interview request about overall cuts to immigration services, but a spokesperson said the governor’s budget maintains nearly $60 million for immigration-related legal services provided to Californians, including students, workers, and unaccompanied minors.
“We don’t find any joy in this – but we’ve got to do it, we have to be responsible. We have to be accountable. We have to balance the budget,” Newsom said previously about general budget reductions amid the funding shortfall.
Time is running out, but not all hope is lost.
“The legislature remains active on CHIRP and [is] exploring possible solutions to ensure its survival,” said Hamid Yazdan Panah, advocacy director of Immigrant Defense Advocates. “We are cautiously optimistic that there will be a path to continue the program, especially given there is no clear alternative for the vulnerable population that it serves.”
The legal advocacy project is in jeopardy just as new federal shifts in immigration policy might prompt an increase in the number of unaccompanied minors being released into California.
In June, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that limits asylum processing after encounters with migrants between ports of entry reach 2,500 per day. The new policy exempts unaccompanied minors, in the same way that such children were eventually exempted from a 2020 order that turned away migrants in the name of stopping the spread of COVID-19. Advocates worry the exemption may prompt parents from dangerous countries to make the hard decision to send their children across the border alone.
“We don’t think that will happen,” said Tom Perez, a senior advisor to the president and director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, during a press call in June.
But several years ago, that is the decision A.L.’s parents had to make.
By the time A.L. was 14, gangs in Honduras waited outside his school nearly every single day, threatening him, harassing him, and trying to recruit him, he said. He and his family decided he should flee for the United States.
During the 23-day journey by himself on foot and bus to the U.S.-Mexico border, A.L. said he was robbed by Mexican police. He crossed near the Rio Grande, and U.S. border authorities sent him to live in a center for unaccompanied children in San Antonio, Texas. There, he said, he often didn’t have enough food to eat, and he was not allowed to make phone calls to his family or to find an attorney.
When he was finally released to his family in California at age 15, he was given a long list of attorneys’ names that he was expected to call on his own to secure legal representation for his pending immigration case.
“I tried to call and call and call many lawyers. Some of them never answered me, and others said they were already too busy. In the end, no one was able to help me. From that long list of attorneys, none of them could help me,” A.L. told CalMatters. Soon, he received a deportation order.
Kristina McKibben, the executive director of Community Justice Alliance, the nonprofit that administers the legal advocacy project, said unaccompanied minors are often expected to navigate the complicated immigration court system without any representation.
“And so, they’re expected to just figure it out,” said McKibben, who said clients as young as third graders can be left to navigate the court system on their own. “I think we all know that it’s ridiculous.”
In 2023, only 56% of unaccompanied migrant children defending their cases in U.S immigration court had attorneys representing them, according to data from the Justice Department. The immigration court system does not guarantee a right to counsel, even for parentless children.
The stakes are high. Between October 2017 and March 31, 2021, 90% of minors without legal representation were ordered removed from the country by federal authorities, according to data provided in a 2021 Congressional Research Service report.
A.L.’s pending deportation order weighed so heavily on him that he couldn’t concentrate or make friends at school.
“I was so lonely because all my classmates were talking about what their daily life was like, or you know, ‘I remember when this happened to me,’ and they were sharing their experiences. And I was always just quiet, listening, … because I was afraid to share my story,” said A.L.
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Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, a Democrat from Baldwin Park, said most unaccompanied children who arrive in California are forced to flee their home countries because of violence and abandonment. She is advocating to keep the program because she says it goes beyond just legal representation for minors.
“The program is centered on an understanding that these children have faced trauma, both before coming to the U.S. and within the immigration system itself,” she said in a written statement. “These unaccompanied children are a symbol of resilience and a testament that a better life and future are possible. California should stand with them and invest in a shared future.”
One of A.L.’s teachers frantically started making calls and finally connected him to the advocacy project, which helped him get his deportation order lifted. He’s now living in a legal limbo called deferred action, which means the Department of Homeland Security has agreed not to deport him, but he does not have any official or permanent legal status. One of his advocates said it will be an approximate five-year wait before he can apply to become a lawful permanent resident, or to receive what is commonly referred to as a green card.
A.L. said he’s not afraid to share his story anymore. He recently traveled to the state Capitol to try to convince lawmakers to maintain funding for other children like him.
“Now I feel more confident because I know that I have support,” he said.
Data journalist Erica Yee contributed to this report.
This story was reported through a fellowship on U.S. immigration policy in El Paso organized by Poynter with funding from the Catena Foundation.
