‘Doomed’: Many kids pulled into immigration court fend for themselves

The children sat on wooden benches bouncing their legs, clasping their hands and anxiously looking around the brightly lit courtroom.

“We are on the record,” Immigration Judge Audra R. Behne said softly into the microphone on Tuesday. Their eyes peered up.

A teenage girl in a sparkly shirt smiled at her boyfriend. A 14-year-old boy in a denim jacket sat next to his aunt, whose teenage daughter was texting beside her. Another teenage girl with a heart emblazoned on her sweatshirt leaned against her mom as they sat in the gallery.

They are among the dozens of children whose deportation cases come before Behne at the West Los Angeles Immigration Court every month. Many are facing a new reality as the Trump administration stripped away legal funding for those who crossed the border without a parent or legal custodian.

As they confront a complex legal system and a government that seeks to deport them, the children will find fewer pro bono lawyers available and face a growing probability of deportation.

“These kids often have no idea what’s going on, and without a lawyer, they’re doomed,” said Holly S. Cooper, who was part of the first federal pilot program to represent children in immigration court more than two decades ago.

Children in deportation proceedings — some still infants — do not have the right to a court-appointed attorney, though the U.S. recognizes the right to a lawyer. Securing one can mean the difference between staying and removal to a country where they were persecuted, abused or abandoned by their parents.

Most children who arrive in the courtroom don’t speak English, don’t know how to fill out forms or present a case as they go up against government lawyers.

“I have been representing unaccompanied children for 27 years,” said Cooper. “And people are always shocked to see what it looks like for children to navigate a labyrinthine legal system by themselves.”

A 16-year-old girl named Itzel, with a long ponytail and bright eyes, sat outside the courtroom doors last week watching her toddler cousin as she waited for the judge to call her case. She wore a Bell High School sweatshirt.

She is part of a wave of unaccompanied children who reached an apex in fiscal year 2022.

Itzel’s mom is a drug addict. Her father left when she was young. The cartel infiltrated her school in northern Mexico. She fled with relatives at 14 years old, after cousins were gruesomely killed at a party. The death was a chilling warning from the cartel, said Johnnie, an uncle who didn’t want to be identified because he feared for his life.

When Itzel crossed the border, she was held in detention and placed in a shelter for two weeks before being released to her aunt and uncle.

“It wasn’t that bad,” she said. “They give you $10 a week to buy things.”

Although advocates say Itzel may have legal remedies, she doesn’t have a lawyer to help her and can’t afford one. She finds the system confusing and thinks nobody in it wants to help her.

Her aunt Laura appeared before Judge Behne on her behalf as Itzel waited outside the court. Laura was one of more than a dozen family members who sat with the children behind a counsel table with no attorneys.

A Department of Homeland Security lawyer was beamed in via audio web conference, as a Spanish-language interpreter translated. One after another the children or their relatives told Behne they didn’t have a lawyer. Many had been trying to find one for months.

Behne continued Itzel’s case, giving the family months to find counsel. But the chances they will are slim, advocates say. Behne told Laura and others who filled the court that day that if they did not get a lawyer, they might have to proceed with the case themselves — a bewildering reality for many.

“Do you understand?” Behne asked them, one by one, as she set new hearing dates for the children in her court that day. “Do you have any questions?”

Most demurred. But a few children took the question as an invitation.

One pimply teenage boy named Oscar explained he didn’t have the resources to pay for a lawyer. He wanted to get a job. His great aunt, who sat next to him, piped up that his parents had abandoned him and there was nobody to care for him.

The judge, who smiled often at the children and sometimes asked them how they were doing, explained to the two she does not give out work permits.

“I strongly encourage you to go to the immigration help desk,” she said. “They open in 15 minutes and you can ask all these questions.”

The family wandered out, looking for the help desk. But advocates fear that, too, may be eliminated under the administration.

U.S. Immigration Court in Los Angeles, as seen last week.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

As of last year, there are about 33,000 pending cases of unaccompanied minors in U.S. immigration courts. Nonprofit legal services that charge little or no money have been overwhelmed, and with federal funding cuts looming, some lawyers are preparing to scale back or end services altogether.

“The need is so large. There is not enough pro bono attorneys to go around,” said Jenny Viegas, community education manager for Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project Los Angeles, which provides free legal services for children at the West Los Angeles Immigration Court near LAX.

Viegas sat behind a small portable desk at a hallway near the court lobby, where the group holds consultations for minors on Tuesdays and offers an orientation ahead of court for those appearing for the first time. The boy and his aunt waited for someone to help them.

She said that, for many of those who seek help, the process is “really scary.”

“It’s difficult for us that speak English to understand the court system,” she said. “But imagine what that feels like for a 14-year-old or 12-year-old.”

Last month, the program served more than 300 children, working with immigration judges at courts in Los Angeles and Orange County to move cases through the backlogged system.

Advocates worry the orientation program, funded by another federal grant, could be in danger after the administration abruptly halted it and three other federally funded programs, including lawyers for children in detention and an information help desk. The programs were allowed to resume shortly after a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order over the administration’s freezing of federal grants.

U.S. Immigration Court in Los Angeles.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

The program provides basic information, including the visas children often qualify for and a packet with a list of lawyers who take cases for free or at no cost.

Itzel’s uncle went through the list of lawyers in the packet, but all declined to take the case, saying that, with a full roster, they didn’t have the time to take it on. Hiring a private attorney is too expensive, he said. He tried to save up for one for his wife, but the man just took his money and disappeared. In retrospect, Johnnie said he wasn’t even a lawyer.

Johnnie is barely scraping by. He works as a truck driver and pays the cartel $2,200 a month so they don’t kill his relatives still in Mexico. The family lives in a garage and struggles to pay for food.

“All my money I have is going to them,” he said.

Despite the uncertainty, Itzel feels good about her new life.

“I am learning English,” she said, smiling. And when asked how she felt about the hearing, she said, “Siento tranquilo,” unworried.

She saw another boy she knew from Bell High School walking into the courtroom. He didn’t have a lawyer either.

Statistics show that, without representation, relief rates plummet. But their situation isn’t unusual.

About 56% of children with pending cases have legal representation, a figure that had dropped from previous years and advocates fear will nosedive if the funding does not come through.

Earlier this month, the administration ended a contract that funded lawyers representing roughly 26,000 children — about 4,700 in California — as well as basic legal services. The contract provided funding for minors who crossed the border alone or with no legal custodian.

“If this decision stands and these legal services are defunded, the future is bleak,” said Marion Donovan-Kaloust, director of legal services at Immigrant Defenders Law Center, whose organization represents about 2,000 children — including one 7 months old — as part of the contract. “Without an attorney at their side, we will see many children who fled desperate circumstances, who qualify for legal ways to remain in the United States, needlessly deported.”

The center and other legal service providers sued the administration in the Northern District of California, arguing the program was ended without reason, violating federal laws put in place to protect children from trafficking.

Lawyers said in a suit that “the actions will also cause chaos throughout the immigration legal system and are particularly harmful because they come at a time when the government is reinstating expedited docketing for removal cases for unaccompanied children.”

The immigration courts are notoriously bottlenecked, with more than 3 million pending cases.

In the meantime, lawyers and the kids they represent wait in limbo as they try to figure out their next move. And families like Itzel’s are imagining what the world would look like if they were deported.

“I joked with her that she’s going back to Mexico,” Johnnie said. “She starts crying. ‘I don’t want to go back there.’ She loves going to school now.”