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Bipartisan senators rebuke White House move to end legal aid for unaccompanied minors
Asylum seekers from Honduras walk towards a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint after crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico in 2021 near Mission, Texas.
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Two senators are mounting a rare bipartisan attack against the Trump administration’s approach to due process for migrants.
Sen. Lisa Murkowsi, R-Alaska, joined Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., in a letter criticizing the end of a federal contract that provides legal representation to 26,000 children who are in the U.S. without a parent or guardian.
The decision to end the contract in late March “puts children directly at risk of trafficking and exploitation, and harms any hope of a fair legal process for thousands of vulnerable children,” they wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday.
The letter, which was obtained by NPR, marks rare bipartisan condemnation from Capitol Hill of the administration’s immigration policy; so far, Democrats have sent most of the letters raising questions or concerns.
The administration last month ended a contract with the Acacia Center for Justice, which provided legal services to unaccompanied migrant children under the age of 18, including in-court representation and clinics.
“Terminating legal representation for these children means that toddlers will now face a courtroom and judge with no adult to advocate on their behalf,” Ossoff and Murkowski wrote. “Children will be asked to make decisions about their legal rights well beyond their comprehension, with life-altering consequences.”
The Office of Refugee Resettlement is part of HHS and manages programs related to unaccompanied migrant children. HHS did not respond to a request for comment. In court filings, it has argued that federal agencies have discretion on whether to keep funding such legal services.
Dispute over 2008 trafficking law
Ossoff and Murkowski raised concerns that ending the legal funding under the contract would violate the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008.
The act requires “HHS to ensure, to the greatest extent practicable, that all unaccompanied children have counsel to represent them in legal proceedings,” Ossoff and Murkowski wrote.
Their letter follows a similar appeal from House members last month.
Several subcontractor groups that received funding from Acacia sued over the contract termination, also arguing the stop in funding violated the 2008 law.
But lawyers representing HHS have argued that the 2008 law leaves much in the hands of the agency; it “does not create an enforceable right to government-funded representation, let alone compel the agency to maintain any particular scope of services or contractual relationship.”
A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order in the groups’ favor in early April, and ordered HHS to restore funding at least until the end of the month.
In response, the administration agreed to extend the contract for six more months to wind down programmatic work and find new representation for the children.
But it’s unclear what happens after that.
“After the six-month extension, there are a lot of open questions about what protections these vulnerable kids will have,” Shaina Aber, executive director of the Acacia Center for Justice, said in an interview.
“It is incredibly important that children are provided with an understanding of their rights to be safe and free from harm and to report rights violations to independent legal services providers who can advocate on behalf of children.”
The Justice Department separately issued an order to stop funding work across several other Acacia programs in immigration court, including assistance for the guardians of unaccompanied children.
Candidates in California’s volatile race for governor will meet Wednesday night for the first televised debate since Eric Swalwell dropped out, each looking to seize momentum in the tight contest.
The debate, being held at the television studio of KRON4 in San Francisco, will include four Democrats and two Republicans who are tightly bunched in recent polls, with many voters still undecided less than six weeks before the June 2 primary.
Mr. Swalwell, a Democrat, had just begun to emerge as a Democratic front-runner when his campaign swiftly collapsed after he was accused of sexual assault in news reports on April 10.
Candidates have taken relatively few risks so far in debates around the state, but every candidate is now eyeing a chance to jump to the front of the pack.
“Even though we have seen some movement in the last couple of weeks, it continues to be a fairly crowded, fractured field,” said Sara Sadhwani, an assistant professor of politics at Pomona College. “So candidates need to be able to grab attention in a debate like this.”
The debate comes as Xavier Becerra, a Democrat and former California attorney general, has enjoyed a surge of support in polls since Mr. Swalwell dropped out of the race.
Mr. Becerra and Matt Mahan, the mayor of San Jose, did not originally meet the threshold to participate in Wednesday’s debate when Mr. Swalwell was running. But they both qualified after receiving enough support in a follow-up poll that debate organizers commissioned once Mr. Swalwell had dropped out.
The other Democrats scheduled to participate are Tom Steyer, a former hedge fund manager, and Katie Porter, a former congresswoman, each of whom have been polling near the top of the Democratic field for several weeks. The Republicans in the debate are Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host who has been endorsed by President Trump, and Chad Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County.
All candidates run on the same ballot in California’s nonpartisan primary, with the two who receive the most votes advancing to the general election, regardless of their party affiliation. The large number of Democratic candidates has created fear among state party leaders that their voters could splinter, potentially allowing two Republicans to sweep the primary in this heavily Democratic state.
The odds of that happening have decreased since Mr. Swalwell dropped out and another Democrat, Betty Yee, withdrew on Monday. But Rusty Hicks, the chairman of the California Democratic Party, still believes there are too many Democrats in the race and has urged those lagging in polls to end their campaigns. (The actual ballot will include 61 candidates for governor, most of whom are completely unknown to voters.)
The messy race to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom, who cannot run for re-election because of term limits, has played out as the most unpredictable contest California has seen in a generation. It has attracted a sprawling field but no one with the star power of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger or the political might of Mr. Newsom or former Gov. Jerry Brown.
Much of California’s Democratic establishment is still figuring out whom to back in the turbulent race.
Mr. Newsom has not endorsed anyone, saying he trusts voters to elect someone “who reflects the values and direction Californians believe in.” Representative Nancy Pelosi, the influential former House speaker from San Francisco, and Senator Alex Padilla also have not announced their favorites. Senator Adam Schiff endorsed Mr. Swalwell earlier this year but quickly withdrew his support after the accusations against him were published.
On Tuesday, Ms. Yee endorsed Mr. Steyer, praising his work to fight climate change and engage young voters. Mr. Steyer has swamped his competitors with a raft of advertising by pouring $134 million from his personal fortune into his campaign.
Also on Tuesday, Mr. Becerra, whose campaign had appeared to be flailing until Mr. Swalwell dropped out, received the endorsement of Robert Rivas, the Democratic speaker of the California State Assembly. Mr. Rivas said he had encouraged Mr. Becerra to run for governor because he was impressed by his work as California’s attorney general during President Trump’s first term.
“He understands both the policy and the politics,” Mr. Rivas said in an interview. “And he has a track record, in my opinion, of delivering results under pressure.”
The 90-minute debate on Wednesday begins at 7 p.m. PT and will be broadcast and streamed by KRON and other California stations.
Virginians approved a new congressional map on Tuesday that would aggressively gerrymander the state in the Democrats’ favor, giving the party as many as four more U.S. House seats.
The new map draws eight safely Democratic districts and two competitive districts that lean Democratic, according to a New York Times analysis of 2024 presidential results. It leaves just one safe Republican seat, compared with the five seats the G.O.P. holds on the current map.
The proposed map was drawn by Democratic state legislators and approved by Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat. It eliminates three Republican-held seats in part by slicing the densely populated suburbs in Arlington and Fairfax Counties and reallocating their overwhelmingly Democratic voters into five congressional districts, some stretching more than a hundred miles into Republican areas.
Perhaps the most extreme new district is the Seventh, which begins at the Potomac River and stretches to the west and south in a manner that resembles a pair of lobster claws. Several well-known Virginia Democrats have already announced their candidacies and begun campaigning in the district.
Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks as FBI Director Kash Patel listens during a news conference at the Justice Department on Tuesday in Washington.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
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Jacquelyn Martin/AP
WASHINGTON — The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted Tuesday on federal fraud charges alleging it improperly raised millions of dollars to pay informants to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist groups, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said.
The Justice Department alleges the civil rights group defrauded donors by using their money to fund the very extremism it claimed to be fighting, with payments of at least $3 million between 2014 and 2023 to people affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, the United Klans of America, the National Socialist Party of America and other extremist groups.
“The SPLC was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred,” Blanche said.
The civil rights group faces charges including wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in the case brought by the Justice Department in Alabama, where the organization is based.
The indictment came shortly after SPLC revealed the existence of a criminal investigation into its program to pay informants to infiltrate extremist groups and gather information on their activities. The group said the program was used to monitor threats of violence and the information was often shared with local and federal law enforcement.
SPLC CEO Bryan Fair said the organization “will vigorously defend ourselves, our staff, and our work.”
Blanche said the money was passed from the center through two different bank accounts before being loaded onto prepaid cards to give to the members of the extremist groups, which also included the National Socialist Movement and the Aryan Nations-affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club. The group never disclosed to donors details of the informant program, he said.
“They’re required to under the laws associated with a nonprofit to have certain transparency and honesty in what they’re telling donors they’re going to spend money on and what their mission statement is and what they’re raising money doing,” he said.
The indictment includes details on at least nine unnamed informants were paid by the SPLC through a secret program that prosecutors say began in the 1980s. Within the SPLC, they were known as field sources or “the Fs,” according to the indictment. One informant was paid more than $1 million between 2014 and 2023 while affiliated with the neo-Nazi National Alliance, the indictment said. Another was the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America.
The SPLC said the program was kept quiet to protect the safety of informants.
“When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system,” Fair said. “There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.”
The center has been targeted by Republicans
The SPLC, which is based in Montgomery, Alabama, was founded in 1971 and used civil litigation to fight white supremacist groups. The nonprofit has become a popular target among Republicans who see it as overly leftist and partisan.
The investigation could add to concerns that Trump’s Republican administration is using the Justice Department to go after conservative opponents and his critics. It follows a number of other investigations into Trump foes that have raised questions about whether the law enforcement agency has been turned into a political weapon.
The SPLC has faced intense criticism from conservatives, who have accused it of unfairly maligning right-wing organizations as extremist groups because of their viewpoints. The center regularly condemns Trump’s rhetoric and policies around voting rights, immigration and other issues.
The center came under fresh scrutiny after the assassination last year of conservative activist Charlie Kirk brought renewed attention to its characterization of the group that Kirk founded and led. The center included a section on that group, Turning Point USA, in a report titled “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2024” that described the group as “A Case Study of the Hard Right in 2024.”
FBI Director Kash Patel said last year that the agency was severing its relationship with the center, which had long provided law enforcement with research on hate crime and domestic extremism. Patel said the center had been turned into a “partisan smear machine,” and he accused it of defaming “mainstream Americans” with its “hate map” that documents alleged anti-government and hate groups inside the United States.
House Republicans hosted a hearing centered on the SPLC in December, saying it coordinated efforts with President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration “to target Christian and conservative Americans and deprive them of their constitutional rights to free speech and free association.”
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