Image: Children wait outside of an immigration court at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building on July 31, 2026, in New York City. Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images

Sonali Kolhatkar of Truthout reports: “As part of its relentless project of mass deportation, the Trump administration has taken particularly brutal aim at the most vulnerable population of immigrants: children. If the federal government has its way, about 20,000 unaccompanied minors will soon face immigration court hearings without legal representation.

For decades, Congress has allocated funding for unaccompanied immigrant minors via the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), as the result of the Flores Settlement, struck after a 1993 Supreme Court decision. That agreement — established in 1997 and still in effect — made it the federal government’s responsibility to ensure that unaccompanied children arriving in the U.S. are treated with a certain baseline of care.

The agreement was cemented under Republican President George W. Bush, who signed a 2008 bipartisan anti-trafficking bill into law and directed the federal government to ensure the care and safety of unaccompanied migrant children, including funding their legal representation…”

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