San Diego County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer Tuesday unveiled a proposal that would continue legal aid for unaccompanied migrant children in San Diego that the Trump administration is cutting.
The federal funding officially runs out at the end of September. The cuts are anticipated to impact approximately 300 children in San Diego County and 26,000 nationwide — including victims of human trafficking and torture.
“Unless we act, here in San Diego even toddlers will be forced to face a judge and a federal prosecutor completely alone,” said Lawson-Remer, a Democrat, during a news conference Tuesday at the County Administration Building.
Lawson-Remer’s plan centers on expanding the county’s existing Immigrant Legal Defense Program to include unaccompanied children.
Unlike the criminal court system, people fighting deportation in immigration court do not have the right to free legal representation.
The county’s program was established in 2021 and offers pro bono representation to adults facing deportation who are detained at the Otay Mesa Detention Center or under supervised release. Since 2022, the county has allocated $5 million each fiscal year to operate the program.
Lawson-Remer is not asking for additional funding to cover the cost of representing children. The Board of Supervisors are scheduled to vote on the proposal at their Sept. 9 regular meeting.
Representation matters
To date, more than 3,000 people have received free legal representation through the county’s Immigrant Legal Defense Program.
Data show that in San Diego, immigrants with legal representation have a 66% chance of winning their cases. But immigrants without lawyers have only a 5% chance.
Local immigration lawyers say watching unaccompanied children try to represent themselves in court is one of the most heartbreaking parts of the United States immigration system.
Nadia Galash, a San Diego immigration lawyer who participated in the press conference, talked about a particularly vulnerable unaccompanied child she represented in 2018. The girl only spoke indigenous languages.
“She sat in court, clutching her hands together, terrified, shaking, unable to understand a word that the judge was saying,” Galash said. “Without a lawyer, she would have no way to explain to a judge the abuse she had survived.”
Even for educated adults who speak English, immigration law is one of the most complex areas of law, Galash said.
“Expecting a child to represent themselves in immigration court, it’s not just unrealistic, it’s unjust,” she added.
California’s open meetings law prevents Lawson-Remer from discussing the proposal with other supervisors prior to it being introduced at a public meeting. But she anticipates broad support among her colleagues.
“The notion that you would have children in court who could then get sent thousands and thousands of miles away and have no one speak for them, I can’t imagine how anyone can think that that is OK,” she said.
KPBS reached out to each of the other four supervisors for comment. Republican Supervisor Joel Anderson declined to comment. The other three did not immediately respond.
The County’s original Immigrant Legal Defense Program passed on a 3-2 vote in 2021, with Democrats supporting and Republicans in opposition.
Republican Supervisor Jim Desmond has been a vocal critic of the existing Immigrant Legal Defense Program — specifically because it provides free legal services to people with criminal records.
According to the latest annual report, about 5% of legal aid recipients in San Diego had criminal records.
Defenders of the program said that’s by design. The legal aid program mirrors the universal representation model offered to people in criminal court — they do not exclude anyone because of prior criminal history.
