Justice Department can cut funding for legal guidance for people facing deportation, US judge says

A federal judge on Tuesday allowed the Justice Department to temporarily stop funding legal education programs for people facing deportation or immigration court while a lawsuit brought by the organizations that provide the service moves forward in court.

The decision from U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss in Washington, D.C., means a coalition of nonprofit groups that offer the education programs will lose their federal funding Wednesday — and possibly some access to potential clients inside detention centers.

Unlike criminal cases, people in immigration courts and detention centers don't have a right to an attorney if they can't afford one themselves. Proponents of the legal education programs say they ease the burden on immigration judges and help immigrants navigate the complicated court system more efficiently.

Congress allocates $29 million a year for four programs — the Legal Orientation Program, the Immigration Court Helpdesk, the Family Group Legal Orientation and the Counsel for Children Initiative — and those groups spread the funding to subcontractors nationwide.

The Justice Department first instructed the nonprofit groups to ''stop work immediately'' on the programs on Jan. 22, citing an executive order from President Donald Trump targeting illegal immigration.

The nonprofit groups sued about a week later, and the Justice Department then rescinded the stop-work order. But on April 11, the agency said it was terminating its contracts with the groups nationwide, effective 12:01 a.m. April 16.

During a hearing Tuesday afternoon, Moss told attorneys on both sides that he didn't see enough immediate justification to order the Justice Department to keep the funding in place for now.

When the Justice Department first ordered the work stopped in January, the nonprofit groups were also cut off from even reaching out to immigration detainees, said Laura Sturges, an attorney representing the nonprofit groups.

That access was cut off so completely that they were even ordered to remove informational posters and other educational materials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers, Sturges said. That damaged the First Amendment rights of the organizations to disseminate information, she said, and left noncitizens without any legal aid, placing a greater burden on immigration judges and immigration courts.

Sturges said the funding cuts wrongly usurped Congress' spending power, because the money had already been allotted and the Justice Department had not yet identified any replacement programs to use the funds. And she argued the cuts were arbitrary and capricious because the Justice Department didn't provide any justification for ending the contracts other than ''convenience.''

But Justice Department attorney Zachary Sherwood told the judge that the case was essentially a contract dispute, and shouldn't be handled in U.S. District Court at all. Instead, Sherwood said, the dispute should be moved to the Court of Federal Claims, which handles most contract-related claims against the federal government.

''I think there are a number of substantial and important issues that this case presents,'' Moss said.

A few blocks away from the federal immigration courts in New York City, a leader of one affected program testified at a city council hearing on immigration fraud.

''We're often the first attorneys people are able to speak to about their immigration cases,'' said Hannah Strauss, an immigration lawyer who supervises a team triaging cases for the Immigration Court Helpdesk run by Catholic Charities.

New York state is one of only six states in the U.S. where more than half of immigrants are represented by an attorney in pending immigration cases, according to government data compiled by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. That's thanks in part to state and city grants, as well as a large pool of lawyers who volunteer. But federal funding forms an important part of the system.

Strauss said the $1.2 million federal grant covering New York covered the Helpdesk, a skeleton crew relied upon by other nongovernmental organizations to screen immigration referrals and by immigration judges to explain the basics on laws regarding asylum and other forms of legal immigration.

''Unfortunately today marks the final day of both ICH and FGLOP, as the federal government has chosen to terminate our contracts as of midnight tonight,'' said Strauss, referring to her organization and the Family Group Legal Orientation Program, run by the Acacia Center for Justice.

In the hearing, the city council discussed ways to crack down on immigration service providers advertising exaggerated or outright fraudulent services.