A leader of a small Texas state commission — tasked with aiding criminal defense for low-income Texans received a call from the Trump administration to assist the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in providing legal services to immigrant children facing deportation.
According to Scott Ehlers, the executive director of the state’s Indigent Defense Commission, the first call came from highranking officials with the Texas Attorney General’s Office, followed by a call from James McHenry, the DOJ’s chief administrative hearing officer.
The request by the Trump administration was well outside of the commission’s experience and scope, and Ehlers told officials he did not believe that immigration defense for children was legal under his organization’s mandate, which the state legislature created explicitly for criminal defense more than a decade ago. The DOJ was asked to investigate the legality of contracting with the Texas commission, where federal would be funneled to Texas from the ORR.
The request comes as the Trump administration seeks to end protections for immigrant children on multiple fronts, the existing federally mandated contract with Acacia Center for Justice for legal assistance to minors facing deportation is set to expire on July 31 and the government has closed at least 50 federal shelters, while Texas advertises hundreds of shelter jobs.
Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees ORR, said the administration continues to pursue “every available avenue” to help kids obtain legal representation for their immigration proceedings.
Congress in 2000 passed a bipartisan bill that, among its stipulations, required the government to pay for some legal services for children who cross the border alone.
The demand for funding became more urgent starting in 2012 when hundreds of thousands of immigrant children, mostly from Central America, began crossing the Texas border.
Trump officials have been chipping away at these protections and often making it more difficult for relatives to take the children, arresting them and suing to end a federal settlement agreement, with Jonathan K. Ross, a Justice Department attorney, telling the court that not only is there not a right to direct legal representation at the expense of the government,” but pro bono lawyers could serve immigrant children at their own expense.
Lawyers for the advocates in the ongoing lawsuit this month plan to argue that the government is in contempt of federal court, partly because of the lack of payment. Kids In Need of Defense ended its subcontract with the Acacia Center, saying the government owed it more than $20 million for legal services and has drastically reduced its staff. Repatriation organizations in Central America have been told to prepare for a large number of children returned by the same day that contract ends. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden wrote that he had received “credible information” that the administration was using an “unprecedented legal framework” to quickly deport more than 500 immigrant children in its custody and that the Texas calls further add to his alarm about the plans for immigrant kids Immigration rights advocates say consolidating immigrant children in Texas would make it easier to deport them.
Texas cases are argued to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that has frequently ruled in favor on cases seeking to restrict the rights of immigrants. That court, agreed that the government can refuse to release most immigrants from detention. Immigration judges in the state deny asylum at a higher rate than elsewhere, according to federal statistics.
It remains unclear whether the Texas Indigent Defense Commission can legally take on the work representing immigrant children.
The organization oversees nearly three dozen state public defender offices serving more than 80 counties and operates as an entity funneling state money and highlighting best practices. Abbott’s office asked the commission to help represent the mostly misdemeanor defendants state troopers arrested during the multi-billion-dollar border security program, known as Operation Lone Star.
Although the Legislature in 2023 expanded the commission’s mandate to help with state family protective services cases, that has never been fully funded and doesn’t provide federal civil defense and possibly could not do so without changing the government code.
It is possible that Abbott could issue an executive order to circumvent that, although the commission’s board remained unclear on the legality.