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A local nonprofit is suing the federal government over funding it says it is owed to provide legal representation to unaccompanied immigrant children.
The Community Legal Services of East Palo Alto filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last year after HHS froze funds for legal services to unaccompanied children. The suit aims to provide legal aid for undocumented minors from another country without a parent or guardian. The case is winding its way through the legal system and could impact the ability for unaccompanied children to obtain legal representation in immigration cases nationwide.
The funding freeze on March 21, 2025, raised concerns that even very young children might appear in immigration court without legal representation, increasing their risk of deportation. But lawyers quickly filed a motion on behalf of legal providers like the one in East Palo Alto, and a federal district court ordered the funding to be temporarily reinstated while the case proceeds. That funding has been distributed month to month, leaving the program’s future uncertain.
Community Legal Services of East Palo Alto, called CLSEPA for short, provides legal services, housing and economic support services to immigrants and residents of the area. As of last year, the organization represented 23 unaccompanied children in legal proceedings that HHS had funded, according to the complaint it filed against HHS. The organization filed a lawsuit on March 26, 2025, alongside a dozen other legal services providers challenging the funding freeze.
Federal funding is a relatively small part of CLSEPA’s budget, said Katrina Logan, executive director of the organization. Still, the funding freeze creates a hardship, she said.
“Our initial reaction was (that) we’ve got to reach out to our clients,” Logan said. “Because this would likely impact our ability to continue representation.”
HHS did not respond to requests for comment on the ongoing lawsuit.
Though undocumented immigrants have no Constitutional right to legal representation, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, a federal law passed in 2008, specifies that unaccompanied children should receive legal counsel “to the greatest extent practicable.”
For years, Congress has allocated funding for legal representation of minors. Attorneys around the country represent around 26,000 children — some very young — who arrived in the U.S. without parents or caregivers, according to the Plaintiffs’ complaint. Many of these children are fleeing persecution in their home countries, including from gang violence, sexual violence, extreme poverty or political instability, the complaint says.
In this case, HHS froze money already appropriated by Congress in fiscal year 2024 that was intended to fund legal representation to unaccompanied children through Sept. 30, 2027.
Alvaro Huerta, a lawyer representing CLSEPA in the case, said the move to freeze funding for children’s legal representation was misguided and cruel. Huerta is the director of immigration and advocacy at the Los Angeles-based Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
“I think it’s part of a larger systemic attack on the immigration system,” Huerta said. “The administration says they’re going after the worst of the worst undocumented folks. But what they’re really saying is that they’re trying to dismantle any kind of legal pathways for immigrants at all.”
Last year, 32 U.S. senators wrote a letter expressing their strong opposition to the discontinuation of funding for the program. California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla were among those that signed the letter.
“Access to legal services often provides unaccompanied children their only hope for a fair legal process,” the senators wrote. “The government-funded legal services provided under this contract are, in many cases, the only thing preventing a 2- or 3-year-old unaccompanied child from facing court proceedings alone against a government attorney seeking their deportation.”
Many unaccompanied children come from Mexico or Central America, Huerta said. In some cases, children faced death threats or abuse in their home countries. Children that receive legal representation in their immigration cases are far more likely to succeed in their cases and receive asylum or get on the path to citizenship, Huerta said. Those who lose their cases are sent back to their home country where they could face persecution or could be killed by the people they tried to escape, Huerta said.
In February, HHS proposed an amended contract to the program that funds legal services for unaccompanied children. But the proposed contract is inadequate, Huerta said, because it doesn’t provide the same level of services and would rely heavily on pro bono representation. The details of the new contract are currently being finalized.
For CLSEPA, the HHS decision came amid increased uncertainty over local funding and the status of federal support from H.R. 1, the sweeping spending bill passed last summer.
The county has stepped in to provide financial support for some of the services CLSEPA provides. In April, the San Mateo Board of Supervisors issued CLSEPA a one-time grant of $40,000 from Measure K funds, generated from a half-cent county-wide sales tax used to meet critical service needs. The county funds were sponsored by Supervisor Lisa Gauthier.
According to county documents, a total of $35,000 will support CLSEPA’s Rescue Housing Fund to provide emergency rental assistance for families experiencing temporary hardship. Another $5,000 will support immigration filing fees – payments made to the government to process applications for things like visas, work permits, green cards or citizenship.
“This is one way that we argue the administration is going after the most vulnerable,” Huerta said.
