New York state is kicking in $7.25 million to help provide immigration lawyers to some 1,400 unaccompanied migrant children across the state, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Wednesday.
The money will help fill a gap created when the Trump administration allowed a $200 million federal contract that provided lawyers for over 24,000 unaccompanied minors across the country to lapse. That agreement, which briefly expired at the end of July, provided representation to some 1,400 children in New York state.
The governor’s announcement follows a Gothamist report last week on immigrant children who appeared virtually and without lawyers in immigration court proceedings in Manhattan. The children, some aided by an interpreter, received instructions from judges who told them to complete asylum applications by certain deadlines, assigned them new court dates, and warned some that they could be deported if they failed to complete the tasks.
"These cruel, depraved decisions can be a death warrant to our kids — whose only sin is being born in poverty or in a country consumed with political violence, and their parents decide they're better off living,” Hochul said at a press conference in Manhattan.
The representation issues come amid the Trump administration’s ongoing crackdown on immigration, which has strained immigration lawyer providers across the country.
Federal officials announced last week that a new, $150 million contract had been reached with a new legal services provider, but that agreement would not start until Aug. 15, leaving untold numbers of children faced with the prospect of going it alone against government lawyers and before immigration judges.
Unaccompanied children are those who are younger than 18 when they enter the United States and do so without parents or legal guardians. Instead, they typically made their journeys with another relative. In immigration court, unlike in criminal court, low-income respondents — including children — aren’t guaranteed lawyers.
Hochul added, “When we lose sight of our shared responsibility to protect God's children here on earth, as human beings, as parents, we lose part of who we are."
