With Federal Funding Gone, New York Will Pay for Lawyers for 1,400 Immigrant Children
Gov. Hochul commits $7.25 million after Washington let a legal-services contract lapse, leaving children as young as five to face deportation proceedings alone.
By Aspen Yang · August 12, 2026 · 3 min read
NEW YORK, Aug. 12, 2026 — New York State will spend $7.25 million to pay for lawyers for roughly 1,400 unaccompanied immigrant children, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday, moving to fill a gap left when the federal government allowed a national legal-services contract to expire.
Hochul was joined by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Attorney General Letitia James at a news conference in Manhattan. "It's cruel. It's illegal," Hochul said of the federal decision, which she said would leave children to argue their own cases in immigration court.
The contract, between the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement and the Acacia Center for Justice, lapsed July 31. It had underwritten a network of nearly 100 legal-services providers representing more than 20,000 children nationwide who entered the country without a parent or guardian.
Acacia says the government has withheld payment since December 2025 for work already performed, an amount the organization puts at more than $65 million, and has accused the administration of using the money as leverage to obtain confidential information about child clients. ORR has said it offered Acacia a second bridge contract subject to new requirements, which the organization did not accept. An HHS spokesperson said this month that the agency agrees the children need legal representation and is working to resolve the matter.
In New York City alone, more than a thousand children are in active removal proceedings, 251 of them in detention, Mamdani said. He cited research finding that fewer than 1 percent of immigrant children win relief without a lawyer.
"The refusal to renew this contract with providers who specialize in this work is nothing less than a deportation order for children as young as five years old," the mayor said.
James, who represented an unaccompanied minor in family court in 2015 as public advocate, described children whose feet did not reach the floor when they sat in the courtroom, most of them without lawyers. She said roughly $150 million Congress appropriated for the program remains in question after a Texas law firm slated to take over the work declined.
The state money adds to city spending. New York's enacted budget includes $16.9 million for legal services for unaccompanied children and raises overall immigrant legal-services funding by more than $30 million, bringing the city's total investment above $150 million, Mamdani said.
Asked about the argument that free counsel encourages families in Central America and Mexico to send children north, Hochul rejected it, noting that the requirement has stood for nearly two decades under a bipartisan law signed by President George W. Bush, and that the current administration says the border is closed.
The 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act directed the federal government to ensure, to the greatest extent practicable, that unaccompanied children have counsel in immigration proceedings.
Advocates who appeared with the officials said the collapse has already reached courtrooms. Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition, described a child who appeared before an immigration judge last week and was told to find his own attorney.