September 25, 2026
An Open Letter to Philanthropy: Don’t Let the Legal Safety Net for Immigrant Children Disappear
For two decades, a national network of nonprofit legal organizations, reaching from major metropolitan areas to rural communities where access to attorneys is scarce, has helped ensure that children who arrive in the United States without a parent or guardian do not have to navigate one of the most complicated legal systems in the country entirely on their own.
Today, that network is at risk of unraveling – and children are already feeling the consequences.
Federal funding for the national legal services network serving unaccompanied children for decades has ended. Their cases have not. Providers remain committed to representing their young clients, but they are now doing so without the resources that sustained this work.
This is happening as courts and immigration agencies accelerate cases and children face increasingly aggressive enforcement.
Independent representation matters enormously in this environment. A child’s attorney has an ethical obligation to the child – not to the government, a detention facility, or an immigration agency. That attorney can defend a child abused during apprehension or in custody, challenge unlawful removal, and advocate for safe family reunification.
Importantly, federal funding should not determine who a child’s lawyer is – or whether that lawyer can continue to access their client in custody. Providers with specialized expertise in immigration law and child trauma can and should continue representing the children who are already their clients. Funding these attorneys preserves continuity of counsel and ensures that children retain an independent advocate whose ethical obligation is to them, rather than relying on legal services selected by the government.
In just the last fifteen days, a provider learned that a child newly separated from his family and placed in federal custody was scheduled for deportation the next day. Attorneys mobilized immediately, filed to reopen the child’s case in immigration court, and went to the facility to advocate directly with government officials attempting to remove the child, ensuring the child received the individualized legal process to which he was entitled.
This is what is at stake.
Funders are understandably asking: What comes next? What are we building toward?
The answer has two parts: stabilize the legal capacity children need today while building a more resilient legal-access system for tomorrow. The urgency of funding both cannot be overstated.
We do not know exactly what that future system will look like. It will likely combine strong local representation with regional and national coordination, training and technical assistance, pro bono engagement, litigation, technology, and more diversified public and private funding.
But we cannot build it if we allow the current field to collapse first.
Innovation cannot substitute for stabilization. Stabilization is what makes innovation possible.
Philanthropy can act now. Flexible funding can keep experienced attorneys representing children, support attorneys who already have access to their clients in shelters and detention, and give providers capacity to respond when new children are apprehended, rights are violated, or rapid intervention is necessary to prevent removal or protect family reunification.
And this is not only the responsibility of immigration philanthropy. It is a child-welfare, anti-trafficking, civil rights, and access to justice issue.
The United States made a commitment to protect the due process rights of unaccompanied children. States including New York and California have demonstrated that public partners can step forward. Philanthropy can help preserve independent, child-centered legal representation now while a more diversified and sustainable funding base is built.
The children cannot wait for the perfect funding strategy or next innovation. They need their lawyers now.
Signatories
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