Unaccompanied minors, organizations in Washington face challenges after Trump cuts legal aid

When Yolanda was 14 years old, her parents urged her to leave their town of Valle, Honduras.

Their urgency came in the wake of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s historic crackdown to debilitate that country’s three main gangs – Mara Salvatrucha (MS13), the Barrio Revolucionarios (18R) and the Barrio Sureños (18S).

While the effort was widely praised for combating the high gang activity in El Salvador, it had unintended consequences. Many people associated with the gangs – or those with prior criminal records – fled the country to surrounding regions, including Yolanda’s town in neighboring Honduras.

Though afraid, Yolanda said she heard the desperation in her parents’ voices and agreed to leave.

She set out on an 11-day journey to the U.S. border, with a small backpack slung over her shoulders.

Her final destination would be Spokane, where her uncle and his family waited.

“I was carrying a small backpack with three changes of clothes, undergarments and medicine,” Yolanda, now 16, recalled in Spanish.

After turning herself in at the U.S. border, Yolanda was taken into custody by Customs and Border Protection and placed in a holding cell in Texas. These cells are often called hieleras – “freezers” in Spanish – by those who have been confined in them because of how cold they feel inside. Migrants typically sleep on the floor with only a Mylar blanket, designed to trap body heat. Customs officials deny the facilities are kept cold, but the nickname has persisted for years.

Yolanda spent two nights there before being transferred to a longer-term detention facility, where she remained for 34 days. When customs officials released her to her relatives, she faced immigration court proceedings without legal representation – an experience far from rare for unaccompanied minors.

According to data from the Department of Justice, 56% of unaccompanied minors in immigration courts had legal representation in 2023. And with the Trump administration’s March 21 order cutting legal aid for approximately 26,000 minors, that percentage is poised to drop further.

The issue has caught the attention and concern of local organizations that want to help unaccompanied children in the immigration court system.

Sam Smith, an attorney at Manzanita House, a nonprofit organization that serves immigrant and refugee communities, said a federal judge in California ordered the Trump Administration to temporarily restore legal aid on April 1. However, as of right now, this order only runs through April 16.

Smith said Trump’s order cutting legal aid funding could cost the nonprofit an estimated $100,000 over the next few fiscal years. The money would have helped fund immigration legal services and in turn helped the children have representation in important state court proceedings required for Special Immigrant Juvenile status, which is often the only path to lawful permanent residence for children who’ve been abused, abandoned, neglected, or faced similar hardships.

“This multistep process is often the best opportunity a youth has to obtain permanent status in the United States but it involved interacting with multiple courts, with confusing rules. Without legal assistance, it is incredibly difficult for someone to navigate this process on their own,” Smith said.

But Trump’s approach was not unexpected.

“We have the worst immigration laws of any country, anywhere in the world,” Trump said at a roundtable about immigration in 2018. “They exploited the loopholes in our laws to enter the country as unaccompanied alien minors.

“They look so innocent. They’re not innocent.”

Before reaching out to Manzanita House, Yolanda struggled to understand the legal terminology and faced a significant language barrier – challenges that hurt her case and pushed her to seek help.

“She had missed a hearing due to conflicting information from immigration. She thought her case was moved to New York so she missed her Seattle hearing,” Smith said.

As a result, Yolanda was ordered to be removed around October . Not long after that, she reached out to Manzanita House, and they filed a motion to reopen her case. It was approved in March, Smith said.

The reopening of her case removed the removal order she had and helped her start anew.

In between school and navigating her case, Yolanda said she prefers to keep to herself and go to church when she can, a space where she feels she’s able to hold on to a sense of hope.

Smith said that they will continue to support Yolanda, offering pro bono services, and are committed to maintaining this assistance for all children they are helping.

“This just continues to add to the general culture and just atmosphere of anxiety and fear that exists in the United States right now,” Smith said.

Vera, an advocacy group working to end mass incarceration and reform the nation’s immigration system, reported in 2022 that 90% of unrepresented unaccompanied children from 2005 to 2017 were issued removal orders or voluntary departures.

This is just one part of the complicated multistep process that children such as Yolanda face with the cut of legal aid.

Some unaccompanied minors flee to the United States knowing they don’t have family to take them in, leaving foster care as their only option. In Spokane and in Washington, the organizations that help guide these youth through foster care are also facing the loss of crucial partnerships.

Shelly Hahn, district director for Lutheran Community Services in the Inland Northwest, said that for the past eight years the organization ran an unaccompanied refugee minor foster care program in Spokane.

This program places children from across the globe into foster homes after being separated from their families and left without anyone else to care for them. Through a partnership with Kids in Need of Defense, the children in the program receive legal representation, ensuring they are supported throughout their immigration proceedings. KIND is an international nongovernmental organization that helps and protects unaccompanied minors and separated children.

When the federal government cut all legal funding, the contract between Lutheran Community Services and KIND was terminated. A federal judge had issued a temporary restraining order on the Trump administration’s order, KIND said in a Facebook post that services for unaccompanied children remain halted until the litigation is resolved.

“Its defunding has made it nearly impossible for many children to attend hearings or stay in contact with immigration agencies, cutting off crucial protection for those in danger,” said Wendy Young, president of KIND, to Baptist News Global.

Hahn worries that losing this partnership will place an overwhelming burden on their social workers, who would be responsible for mastering the complexities of the immigration system and preparing the youth for their hearings.

Hahn said without proper legal representation for these unaccompanied minors, there is a “real risk” that crucial details could be missed, putting a young person’s immigration status in jeopardy.

“We have 20 kids in care that come from 11 different countries, and there are five different legal statuses of those 20 kids. So the immigration system is already complex, and then you add in these additional things. It’s going to be hard to ensure that the youth are getting what they need in regards to legal services for their immigration status,” Hahn said.

While Hahn’s organization won’t lose direct funding, she said that KIND plays a crucial role in the support they provide to unaccompanied minors. She said they likely will seek community resources to support the youth, such as finding pro bono help or applying for grants to cover legal costs.

“Worst -case scenario, our social workers will work with the youth to kind of track their status, ensure we’re helping them get to hearings and pushing through the process,” Hahn said.

Sarah Peterson, Washington state refugee coordinator and chief of refugee and immigrant assistance, said so far from October 2024 to March 2025, 411 unaccompanied children have been released to sponsors in Washington.

Between 2016 and 2025, fewer than 50 unaccompanied children have been released to sponsors in Spokane, she said.

“In the 2024 fiscal year, most unaccompanied children were released to sponsors in King, Snohomish, Pierce, Yakima, Grant, Clark and Franklin counties,” Peterson said.

She added they do not have specific demographic data on unaccompanied children in Washington state, but assumes it follows similar national demographic data.

She said national data shows that in 2024, 24% of the unaccompanied children in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement were younger than 12 years old, 44% were 13-16 years old, and 33% were 17 years old or older. Unaccompanied children arriving to the United States were primarily from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico.

The rest – about 19% – came from “other” countries, marking a jump from 7-8% in years 2020-2022.

Peterson said this shows a shift in demographics, with many other unaccompanied children arriving from Venezuela, Haiti, China and other countries.

Both Hahn and Smith emphasized that unaccompanied minors often make the journey for a range of reasons – many involving life or death situations beyond their control.

“It’s a combination of push and pull factors. It’s just instability, economic, political instability at home,” Smith said.

He said oftentimes unaccompanied minors are targeted for gang recruitment and fleeing is the only way they can avoid joining and stay alive.

For a period of time, Hahn said their organization was placing kids directly out of Afghanistan because of the violence happening in their home country.

“The kids don’t choose where they’re going, so either their family members have been killed, sometimes they’re held hostage and the kids have escaped, or sometimes they’ve been separated,” Hahn said.

For Yolanda’s situation, her parents’ decision was driven by hope of safety and survival – a choice made by both risk and the possibility of a better future.

“I feel for those kids who have come by themselves and won’t be getting help,” Yolanda said.