The chair of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, Terra Lawson-Remer, is concerned that a loss of federal funding will leave unaccompanied children in…
The chair of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, Terra Lawson-Remer, is concerned that a loss of federal funding will leave unaccompanied children in court without representation.Carmen Chavez, executive director of Casa Cornelia Law Center, has spent two decades working with unaccompanied minors, often standing alongside them in court.
WATCH HERE The chair of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, Terra Lawson-Remer, is worried some 300 kids in San Diego will be left to navigate that process without legal representation at the end of this month. The Trump administration cut federal funding for legal representation for unaccompanied minors earlier this year, but a court order continued it until the end of September. "It's pretty heartbreaking —and, more than heartbreaking, it's immoral,” said Lawson-Remer. “Imagine that there's a kid — there's 4-year-olds, 6-years-olds, 8-year-olds — who have to stand in front of a judge, and how are they supposed to articulate their rights?” Lawson-Remer is seeking to expand a county program. which is known as the Immigrant Legal Defense Program and provides legal aid for detained immigrants, so that it includes unaccompanied minors. The board allocated $5 million for the ILDP in its latest budget. Lawson-Remer said adding kids to the program would draw from that pot of money, not requiring additional funds. She was resolute that the county would not dig into the controversial reserve account for that purpose. Jim Desmond, the most outspoken Republican on the board, had reservations about that funding for immigrant support, is not sure how he will vote on the proposal to expand it to include children.“You know, I feel sorry for these children, but why do we have unaccompanied children in our country in the first place?" Desmond asked. “I'd rather spend that money on the children than on people that, you know, commit crimes.” Chavez said many of the children with whom she works faced abuse or persecution before coming to the United States.Per Lawson-Remer's office, the results of the publicly funded IDLP"are stark." People who do not have an attorney only prevail in immigration court 5% percent of the time. That soars to 66% with legal representation. “For us, it's at least to have the opportunity to be heard, to at least be able to tell their story, to at least be able to explain why they're there and why they feel that they can't go back to their home country,” Chavez said.
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