Critical Program for Unaccompanied Children Scrapped Due to Trump Cuts

After weeks of raising the alarm about how the Trump administration’s federal funding cuts might affect their work, the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy (CCLA) now has to scrap a local program that helps unaccompanied children seeking legal immigration status in America.

The center — which offers low-cost and pro-bono legal services related to consumer protection, home preservation, health care access, public benefits, immigration, tax assistance and more — was allocated $900,000 in annual funding from Acacia Center for Legal Justice in a contract that was set to renew on April 1. 

That was until the US Department of Health and Human Services terminated nearly all of the legal work carried out by Acacia, effective immediately, on March 21. 

While CCLA can continue to fund its legal orientations, often referred to as know your rights clinics, which help migrant children who cross the border alone to legally seek asylum, the organization will no longer be able to provide representation for those children in immigration court. 

CCLA currently has about 300 children in its casebook, ranging in age from a few months to 17 years old. The children, most of whom are living in federal government shelters, will now lose legal representation. 

“[Immigrant] children will be forced to navigate the legal system alone, due to the US Department of Health and Human Services terminating nearly all of the legal work by the Acacia Center for Legal Justice,” read a press release from CCLA. 

CCLA’s Unaccompanied Children Program serves children who have entered the United States alone or have been brought in by family members, friends or coyotes after fleeing “abusive and terrible conditions” in their home countries.

“Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy currently has more than 300 active cases affected by this funding cut, impacting children who have suffered abuse, neglect, abandonment or other forms of harm,” wrote Kara Moskowitz, CCLA’s interim Chief Executive Officer. “Without legal representation, these vulnerable children face insurmountable barriers to securing safety and stability. 

“Terminating the Unaccompanied Children Program will leave hundreds of children defenseless in a complex legal system that was never designed for them to navigate alone,” Moskowitz continued. “This decision is not just a bureaucratic shift — it is a direct attack on children’s rights and well-being.”

CCLA’s Chief Philanthropy Officer Kelly Lynn added that the program also provides some oversight into the lives of children who may otherwise go ignored. 

“[Currently] we help the children with their custody needs and make sure that somebody is taking care of them,” Lynn told Queen City Nerve. “We work with them through the immigration court [system] — all the right channels to either get asylum or special immigrant juvenile status that allows them to be here legally in the US.

“Court is a scary thing even for an adult, let alone a child, who does not have the correct guidance on how to handle it,” she continued. “We’re concerned for the children because there’s a [lower] probability that they’re going to win and be granted asylum without having the civil legal defense that we offer them.”

Lynn also noted that, unlike criminal courts in the US, immigration courts do not provide court-appointed attorneys.

“Our agency steps up to offer [the children] legal representation because they don’t automatically get it,” Lynn said. “If they can’t get the free services from us, it’s highly unlikely that they can afford an immigration attorney.”

According to a 2021 Congressional Research Service report, immigration judges were almost 100 times more likely to grant legal relief to unaccompanied children with legal counsel than to those without an attorney.

“We would love to be able to continue the [Unaccompanied Children] Program,” Lynn said. “We’re always fundraising, but as you can imagine, almost a million dollars is a big hole to fill.”

Read more: Carolina Refugee Resettlement Agency in Limbo Amid Trump Orders

Lynn urges those who want to help unaccompanied children seeking asylum and citizenship to talk to local government officials.

“Let them know how important this is,” Lynn says, “[Tell them] we want to help children and not leave them on their own in a scary situation.”