More than half of children in ICE immigration courts are representing themselves, DOJ data shows
More than half of the children with deportation orders are representing themselves in immigration courts, according to data from the Department of Justice.
President Donald Trump’s massive immigration crackdown has made headlines for what many view as Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s aggressive tactics and alleged inhumane conditions at detention centers.
But what is less talked about are the hundreds of thousands of children navigating the immigration court system as they face deportation.
Of the 751,861 children with pending removal cases, 57 percent, or 425,093 of them, do not have lawyers, Drop Site News reported Friday.
The independent investigative news site’s figures were sourced from an analysis of data from the DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review conducted by the Vera Institute of Justice.
“The scale is alarming,” Neil Agarwal, the principal data scientist who led the analysis at the Vera Institute of Justice, told the outlet.
The Department of Homeland Security said it could not verify the accuracy of the data reported by Drop Site News.
“All illegal aliens receive full due process. ICE gives all illegal aliens arrested a court-approved list of free or low-cost attorneys. Illegal aliens in detention have access to phones they can use to contact their lawyers,” an agency spokesperson told The Independent.
“What’s truly alarming is the 450,000 unaccompanied children that came in through the border under the Biden administration.
“Sadly, during those four years, many of these children who came across the border unaccompanied were placed with unvetted sponsors who were actually smugglers and sex traffickers. Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, DHS has located 146,000 of these children,” the spokesperson said.
The Independent has reached out to the DOJ and ICE for comment.
A spokesperson for the Acacia Center for Justice, a nonprofit which supports the legal defense of immigrants at risk of detention or deportation, noted that the 751,861 children with pending removal cases include both accompanied and unaccompanied children.
“The 751,861 figure in the Vera analysis includes hundreds of thousands of children who are not classified as unaccompanied — children who arrived with family members, children who aged into the system, and others who fall outside the specific legal and funding framework that governs unaccompanied children.
“Unaccompanied children — children who arrived in the U.S. without a parent or legal guardian — are a specific population with specific federal protections,” the spokesperson told The Independent after initial publication.
