UN experts condemn US move to strip migrant children of legal aid

UN human rights experts on Tuesday denounced the Trump administration's decision last year to cut legal aid for unaccompanied children in U.S. immigration proceedings.

AI Brief

UN experts condemn US policies that deny migrant children legal representation and push voluntary deportations, calling them violations of international law.
The White House dismisses the criticism, defending its approach and saying it is protecting children while reversing past issues.
Funding cuts for legal services and efforts to deport unaccompanied minors raise concerns as over 600,000 children have crossed the border since 2019.

The condemnation came days after U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk urged the Trump administration to ensure that its migration policies respect individual rights and international law.

"Denying children their rights to legal representation and forcing them to navigate complex immigration proceedings without legal counsel is a serious violation of the rights of children," said the independent experts, who are appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The White House dismissed the experts and said it had made attempts to locate children it says were smuggled into the United States under the previous administration, without elaborating with specific examples.

"No one takes the U.N. seriously because of their extreme bias and selective outrage – they should be praising the Administration for protecting children, not lying about our policies," Abigail Jackson, a spokeswoman for the White House, said.

In February, the U.S. Department of the Interior ordered legal service providers working with the children to stop work and cut their funding. The providers sued over the move and a federal judge later temporarily restored the funding for the program.

The cuts came amid President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, including an effort to deport hundreds of thousands of migrant children who entered the U.S. without their parents.

The U.N. experts called the deportations unlawful and said they breached international human rights law prohibiting the removal of vulnerable groups, including children at risk of human trafficking.

They also condemned the administration's US$2,500 offer to get the unaccompanied children to voluntarily leave the U.S.

"Child-sensitive justice procedures should be guaranteed in all immigration and asylum proceedings affecting children," said the experts, who have been in contact with the U.S. government on the issue.

More than 600,000 migrant children have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without a parent or legal guardian since 2019, according to government data.