Federal government announces $9M in funding for unaccompanied minors' counsel
The federal government will provide funds for immigration lawyers for unaccompanied minors who appear to be undocumented and are stopped at U.S. borders, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Tuesday.
According to the Dallas Morning News, the program started Sept. 30 and will receive $9 million over the next two years. The nine cities where the money will be made available are Los Angeles, Houston, Memphis, Dallas, Baltimore, Phoenix, New Orleans, Miami and the Washington, D.C., area. It’s estimated that the funds will cover legal representation for more than 2,600 children.
Most of the children stopped are in the country without legal permission, according to the article. But some can argue that they are eligible to stay in the United States, for reasons such as fleeing violence in a home country. Such arguments tend to be more successful with legal counsel.
For the 2014 fiscal year, the New York Times reports, the Department of Health and Human Services took custody of approximately 58,100 unaccompanied minors found at U.S. borders.
In June, President Obama ordered federal emergency authorities to take charge of a Texas relief effort for unaccompanied minors. The New York Times reported that between October and June, 47,017 children traveling without their parents were detained at the southwest border between Mexico and Texas.
Most of the children are from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, the article states, and there’s been a significant increase in unaccompanied minors under the age of 13, including toddlers.
When a juvenile from a foreign country other than Mexico or Canada is picked up by border patrol, federal law requires that custody be transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours, the Dallas Morning News reports. The children spend four to five weeks at a shelter, then often stay with local sponsors until their court dates, which can take months.
The federal funding will be added to existing grants from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. Immigration groups involved in the work include Catholic Charities, the Legal Immigration Network and the Immigrant Child Network. In September, San Francisco officials voted to allocate $2.1 million towards funding such legal services.
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