Just days after President Donald Trump's second inauguration, Ruby Robinson went to Detroit's immigration court to post a notice that a help desk his organization ran for people facing deportation was no longer available.
The desk staffed by the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center shut down after a Trump executive order prompted the Justice Department to instruct nonprofit organizations “to stop work immediately” on four federally funded programs that provided information to people in immigration proceedings.
“There were individuals in the waiting room who we otherwise would have been able to assist, but we're not able to do so at this time,” said Robinson, managing attorney for the center, which he said has helped about 10,000 people since it began operating the help desk in December 2021.
Without the programs that educate people in immigration courts and detention centers about their rights and the complicated legal process, many will end up navigating the system on their own. Advocates worry that due process and the backlogged immigration courts will suffer as Trump tries to make good on his campaign promise to crack down on illegal immigration.
A coalition of nonprofit groups that provide the services filed a lawsuit Friday challenging the stop-work order and seeking to immediately restore access to the programs.
Despite the loss of federal funding, staff from the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights went to a Virginia detention center to provide services the day after the Jan. 22 stop-work order. They had spoken to about two dozen people when detention center staff escorted them out, telling them they could no longer provide those services, Amica executive director Michael Lukens said, describing the stoppage as “devastating.”
“We often hear that people don’t know what’s happening. Why are they detained? What’s going to happen next? And we are being stopped from even giving that basic level of orientation,” Lukens said.
Lawyers running a help desk inside Chicago’s busy immigration court provided services to more than 2,000 people in 2024. The National Immigrant Justice Center started the effort in 2013 with private funding and expanded it three years later with federal funds.
Since the stop-work order, the organization has provided scaled-down services, but they are unsure how long they will be able to continue that with the gap left by federal funding cuts, spokesperson Tara Tidwell Cullen said.
Several organizations said they’ve been told that posters informing people of their services and information about legal help hotlines have been removed from detention centers.
Congress allocates $29 million a year for the four programs — the Legal Orientation Program, the Immigration Court Helpdesk, the Family Group Legal Orientation and the Counsel for Children Initiative — funding that's spread among various groups across the country providing the services, Lukens said, adding that the programs have broad bipartisan support. The amount is the same regardless of the number of people they're helping, and the organizations often do additional fundraising to cover their costs, he said.
Trump previously targeted these programs during his first term, but this time things are different.
In 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the funding would be pulled from the programs, but the threat of legal action by a coalition of organizations that provide the services, as well as bipartisan support from members of Congress, caused the Justice Department to reverse course.
This time, the action was more abrupt, with the stop-work order issued just hours before it took effect and program staff being barred from detention centers.
Immigration law is incredibly complicated and, unlike in criminal courts, people do not have a right to have an attorney appointed if they cannot afford one, and many end up going through the system without legal representation.
Immigration courts throughout the country are clogged by a backlog of about 3.7 million cases, which can leave people in limbo for years. When people know what to expect and have their affairs in order, hearings move more quickly because judges don't have to explain the basics to each person who appears before them, advocates assert. It can also reduce lines at filing windows in immigration courts because people know what forms they have to fill out and can get help completing them correctly.
People can make informed choices to either move forward with a case knowing their chances and the risks involved or, if they don't want to go through a court battle or don't see any available relief that fits their situation, they may decide not to fight and to just go home, said Edna Yang, co-executive director of American Gateways, which operates in three detention centers and the immigration court in San Antonio, Texas.
“Stopping programs that actually help people get the information they need isn’t going to fix the system,” Yang said. “It’s just going to make it worse.”
The organizations also make sure due process rights are respected, alert people to imminent filing deadlines, ensure that translators are available and help avoid deportation orders that could unlawfully return asylum seekers to a harmful situation, advocates said.
Milagro, a 69-year-old woman from Venezuela, arrived in the U.S. in May 2024 when she got an appointment through a U.S. government app after spending four years in Mexico. The Associated Press agreed not to use her last name because she fears that speaking out could affect her pending case.
She filed an asylum application, citing a fear for her life in Venezuela as part of the political opposition. She didn’t have a job when she arrived and used the help desk operated by Estrella del Paso at the immigration court in El Paso, Texas, for help with her asylum application. The last time she went, she discovered it was closed because of the stop-work order.
“You feel a kind of frustration because the window that you had open to ask, to get advice, is closed,” she said in Spanish. “It is a feeling of helplessness and loneliness.”
Without their help, she said, “I would have had to pay money that I do not have.”
But with a court appearance coming up in February, she fears she will have to use much of the salary she earns as a caretaker for a 100-year-old woman to pay someone to help her.
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Associated Press writers Gisela Salomon in Miami and Sophia Tareen in Chicago contributed reporting.
