The Brief

A California project that provides legal advocacy for unaccompanied child immigrants will end in September unless backers can convince lawmakers to renew funding by next month.

The Children’s Holistic Immigration Representation Project was funded through a one-time allocation in 2022 and not renewed when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed California’s $298 billion budget last month.

There were 64,173 unaccompanied children released in California between January 2015 and May 2023, according to a CalMatters analysis of federal data obtained by the New York Times.

The project’s clients include A.L., who lives with his aunt in Northern California. When A.L. was in the first or second grade, a motorcycle chase ended in the courtyard of his elementary school. He said that he and other young children from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, watched in horror as a group of men surrounded another man, kicked him, beat him, and dragged him all around the school. He never knew why.

“I froze,” said A.L., a 17-year-old who came to the United States as an unaccompanied minor when he was 14. “That’s an example of the violence we live with in my country.”

Honduras has a homicide rate five times higher than the United States, according to the Migration and Asylum Lab, which provides expertise about conditions in Latin American countries for use in asylum applications. San Pedro Sula, the capital where A.L. lived, is called “the world’s murder capital.”

CalMatters is only identifying A.L. by his initials because he fears for his safety and his family’s well-being back in Honduras. We interviewed him with the permission of his sponsor, his aunt, and other advocates.

Without CHIRP, the free legal representation and the social services program A.L. says saved his life, “I’d probably be back in my country,” he told CalMatters.

Rather than providing kids just with legal services, social workers under the project also help children find mental health services, enroll in school, get vaccines, and get work authorization, an approach known as “trauma-informed intervention.”

Unaccompanied children are a particularly vulnerable group. They can be exploited in full-time, dangerous jobs that violate labor laws, advocates and government officials say.

CHIRP was funded as a pilot program with $15.3 million in fiscal year 2022—enough to carry it through this coming September.

Newsom has not met with anyone to discuss the termination of the project, advocates say. His budget sought to close a huge deficit with $16 billion in cuts and delays.

Newsom’s office declined an interview request about overall cuts to immigration services, but a spokesperson said the governor’s budget maintains nearly $60 million for immigration-related legal services provided to Californians, including students, workers, and unaccompanied minors.

“We don’t find any joy in this – but we’ve got to do it, we have to be responsible. We have to be accountable. We have to balance the budget,” Newsom said previously about general budget reductions amid the funding shortfall.

Time is running out, but not all hope is lost.

“The legislature remains active on CHIRP and [is] exploring possible solutions to ensure its survival,” said Hamid Yazdan Panah, advocacy director of Immigrant Defense Advocates. “We are cautiously optimistic that there will be a path to continue the program, especially given there is no clear alternative for the vulnerable population that it serves.”

The legal advocacy project is in jeopardy just as new federal shifts in immigration policy might prompt an increase in the number of unaccompanied minors being released into California.

In June, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that limits asylum processing after encounters with migrants between ports of entry reach 2,500 per day. The new policy exempts unaccompanied minors, in the same way that such children were eventually exempted from a 2020 order that turned away migrants in the name of stopping the spread of COVID-19. Advocates worry the exemption may prompt parents from dangerous countries to make the hard decision to send their children across the border alone.

“We don’t think that will happen,” said Tom Perez, a senior advisor to the president and director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, during a press call in June.

But several years ago, that is the decision A.L.’s parents had to make.

By the time A.L. was 14, gangs in Honduras waited outside his school nearly every single day, threatening him, harassing him, and trying to recruit him, he said. He and his family decided he should flee for the United States.

During the 23-day journey by himself on foot and bus to the U.S.-Mexico border, A.L. said he was robbed by Mexican police. He crossed near the Rio Grande, and U.S. border authorities sent him to live in a center for unaccompanied children in San Antonio, Texas. There, he said, he often didn’t have enough food to eat, and he was not allowed to make phone calls to his family or to find an attorney.

When he was finally released to his family in California at age 15, he was given a long list of attorneys’ names that he was expected to call on his own to secure legal representation for his pending immigration case.

“A.L.,” (far left) an unaccompanied minor from Honduras visits the state Capitol in March of 2024 to advocate for funding for the CHIRP program, which helps protect migrant children alone in the U.S. from deportation.

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Community Justice Alliance

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“I tried to call and call and call many lawyers. Some of them never answered me, and others said they were already too busy. In the end, no one was able to help me. From that long list of attorneys, none of them could help me,” A.L. told CalMatters. Soon, he received a deportation order.

Kristina McKibben, the executive director of Community Justice Alliance, the nonprofit that administers the legal advocacy project, said unaccompanied minors are often expected to navigate the complicated immigration court system without any representation.

“And so, they’re expected to just figure it out,” said McKibben, who said clients as young as third graders can be left to navigate the court system on their own. “I think we all know that it’s ridiculous.”

In 2023, only 56% of unaccompanied migrant children defending their cases in U.S immigration court had attorneys representing them, according to data from the Justice Department. The immigration court system does not guarantee a right to counsel, even for parentless children.

The stakes are high. Between October 2017 and March 31, 2021, 90% of minors without legal representation were ordered removed from the country by federal authorities, according to data provided in a 2021 Congressional Research Service report.

A.L.’s pending deportation order weighed so heavily on him that he couldn’t concentrate or make friends at school.

“I was so lonely because all my classmates were talking about what their daily life was like, or you know, ‘I remember when this happened to me,’ and they were sharing their experiences. And I was always just quiet, listening, … because I was afraid to share my story,” said A.L.

Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, a Democrat from Baldwin Park, said most unaccompanied children who arrive in California are forced to flee their home countries because of violence and abandonment. She is advocating to keep the program because she says it goes beyond just legal representation for minors.

“The program is centered on an understanding that these children have faced trauma, both before coming to the U.S. and within the immigration system itself,” she said in a written statement. “These unaccompanied children are a symbol of resilience and a testament that a better life and future are possible. California should stand with them and invest in a shared future.”

One of A.L.’s teachers frantically started making calls and finally connected him to the advocacy project, which helped him get his deportation order lifted. He’s now living in a legal limbo called deferred action, which means the Department of Homeland Security has agreed not to deport him, but he does not have any official or permanent legal status. One of his advocates said it will be an approximate five-year wait before he can apply to become a lawful permanent resident, or to receive what is commonly referred to as a green card.

A.L. said he’s not afraid to share his story anymore. He recently traveled to the state Capitol to try to convince lawmakers to maintain funding for other children like him.

“Now I feel more confident because I know that I have support,” he said.

Data journalist Erica Yee contributed to this report. 

This story was reported through a fellowship on U.S. immigration policy in El Paso organized by Poynter with funding from the Catena Foundation.

We're in for another mild day with partly to mostly cloudy skies. The National Weather Service forecasts that come Thursday, temperatures will rise more and the Santa Ana winds will return.

Coastal communities in the L.A. area will see highs mostly around 70 degrees today. Meanwhile, the Orange County coast will stay cooler with high temperatures around 62 degrees.

More inland, the valleys and the Inland Empire will see highs from 69 to 75 degrees, up to 76 degrees in Coachella Valley. In the Antelope Valley, highs will be mostly in the low 60s.

A bill that would make it easier for Californians to sue immigration agents and other federal officials for civil rights violations sailed through the state Senate on Tuesday.

Senate Bill 747, dubbed the No Kings Act, would create a first-in-the-nation legal pathway for residents to seek financial damages in state court for excessive force, false arrest and other violations of constitutional rights committed by federal officers.

The bill was written by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco. If state or local law enforcement officers had shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two people recently killed by federal agents in Minneapolis, they could be held financially liable, he said.

“But under current law, it’s almost impossible to file that same lawsuit against a federal agent who does the same thing,” Wiener said. “If the federal government won’t hold these agents accountable for violating the Constitution, we will.”

The measure passed the state Senate on a 30-10 party-line vote, with Republicans arguing the bill could expose local police to more lawsuits.

Tuesday’s vote is the latest move by Democrats in the state Legislature to create a bulwark against the Trump administration’s deportation crackdown.

Last year, lawmakers set aside $25 million for legal nonprofits to defend residents facing detention or deportation. They also approved a bill, written by Wiener, to prohibit local and federal law enforcement officers from wearing masks on duty — which is currently facing a legal challenge from the Trump administration.

SB 747’s supporters said it would give Californians a chance to hold federal officials accountable in a way that can be difficult under current law.

Border patrol agents march to the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building on Aug. 14, 2025, in Los Angeles, California. California prosecutors are pushing back on claims from the federal government that ICE agents have immunity from prosecution, vowing to investigate federal agents who break the law.

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Carlin Stiehl

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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“Today we are deliberating an issue to try to solve and also remedy the fear that folks are living with,” said Senate President pro Tem Monique Limón, D-Santa Barbara. “In combination with the fact that we have not seen due process.”

Wiener argued that existing law makes it difficult for victims to receive damages in federal court. For example, the Federal Tort Claims Act protects the government from liability arising from decisions made by individual officers and requires plaintiffs to first file an administrative claim.

Supporters of SB 747 include the Prosecutors Alliance, a coalition of progressive district attorneys, and Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, which advocates for immigrants in California’s Inland Empire.

The bill is opposed by organizations representing California police officers, sheriffs and Highway Patrol officers.

They argued the change will undercut an existing state law, known as the Bane Act, which requires Californians who sue law enforcement officials to show that a civil rights violation was accomplished through “threats, intimidation, or coercion.”

“The question before you is not whether accountability should exist, but what creating a second, overlapping state system actually adds — other than more litigation and more risk for those on the front lines,” said Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares, R-Santa Clarita.

During debate on the Senate floor, Wiener said local police officers and sheriffs can already be sued under federal law for violating constitutional rights.

“The liability that local and state police officers face will be the same after this is signed into law as before,” Wiener said. “It doesn’t change that.”

Senate Bill 747 now heads to the state Assembly.

In an analysis of SB 747, staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote, “the bill is very likely to be challenged by the federal government if signed into law.”