HHS funding cuts prompt lawsuits from legal groups working with immigrant child sex abuse survivors
Immigrant children who survived sex abuse are being stripped of legal aid to help them stay in the U.S. due to HHS federal funding cuts, according to legal groups.
A pregnant 16-year-old girl who had been a victim of sex trafficking since she was 6 crossed the border from Mexico seeking to prevent the same kind of abuse from happening to her child.
A Los Angeles-based group gave legal help to the immigrant teen and her 1-year-old toddler so they could stay safely in the U.S. The group is part of a string of organizations that on Wednesday sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for “shutting down critical legal representation programs for unaccompanied immigrant children.”
“What kind of system do we have when our government is more willing to pay an attorney to deport a child than it is to provide the same child with an attorney whose job is to protect their rights?” Alvaro Huerta, director of litigation and advocacy for Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said in a statement. The lawsuit was filed in a California federal district court.
President Donald Trump touted during his campaign last year that he protected children and women from human trafficking in his first term. But attorneys say his current administration has put thousands of children in danger by ending funding for lawyers that help them through immigration court processes.
For many immigrant children, the lost legal help could mean being separated from families, guardians or sponsors who are or could care for them in the U.S. and preventing them from ending up back in abusive, and possibly deadly situations, attorneys argue.
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