2026 Grantees Submit First Quarter Case Reports
In accordance with the Center’s requirements for grant reporting, the four 2026 grantees submitted their first quarter case updates and timesheets. Their case updates appear below.
All grantees are meeting the requirements of their grant. The average amount of hours of attorney time spent by each grantee on their respective case was 46.9 hours with an average dollar value of $19,692.94.
Amica Center for Immigrant Rights
The Children’s Legal Services Case CLSEPA v. HHS has seen significant legal victories. The federal district court issued a Temporary Restraining Order and then granted a Preliminary Injunction requiring the government to fully restore funding for legal services for unaccompanied immigrant children. The court also denied the government’s motion to dismiss, allowing the case to proceed on the merits. The government has made multiple attempts to overturn the injunction, including emergency motions and appeals, all of which have been rejected by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. As a result, critical legal services for tens of thousands of children nationwide have remained in place while the litigation continues.
This case arose after the government abruptly cut funding for unaccompanied children’s legal services on March 21, 2025. We filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on March 26 and sought emergency relief through a motion for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) the following day. The district court granted a TRO on April 1 after a hearing. On April 4, we filed a motion for a Preliminary Injunction, which the district court granted on April 29. The government appealed both rulings and sought to block them at every stage, but on May 14 the Ninth Circuit denied the government’s motion to stay the injunction, and on October 10 the Ninth Circuit rejected the government’s motion for rehearing en banc, declining to overturn the district court’s orders. The government did not appeal to the Supreme Court at this stage. We are now awaiting oral argument at the Ninth Circuit on the merits of the government’s appeal of the preliminary injunction. As we have won each step of the way, funding for children’s legal services has continued to flow in full.
The case is co-counseled by the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, Immigrant Defenders Law Center, Justice Action Center, and Gibson Dunn, and brought by 11 nonprofit legal services organizations across the country (CLSEPA, Social Justice Collaborative, Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, Estrella del Paso, Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, Immigrant Defenders Law Center, National Immigrant Justice Center, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, and Vermont Asylum Assistance Project).
At the same time, a new and serious threat has emerged. Even as the courts have blocked outright termination of these programs, the government is pursuing efforts to privatize unaccompanied children’s legal services by shifting them away from long-standing nonprofit providers and toward a for-profit ICE contractor. This raises profound concerns about the quality, independence, and child-centered nature of legal services, as well as significant risks to the number of children who have access to counsel. We are continuing to litigate aggressively to ensure the government complies with its statutory obligations under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) so that unaccompanied children are not forced to face immigration court alone. We still have lots of work ahead of us with this risk of privatization and funding cuts to legal services for unaccompanied children. We’ve been actively prepping to file a motion to enforce if/when this happens.
Amica Center for Immigrant Rights has represented unaccompanied children since 2010 and currently represents approximately 800 children in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia region. Nationally, the Unaccompanied Children Program — administered by Acacia Center for Justice and more than 100 nonprofit subcontractor organizations — provides legal representation to more than 24,000 children each year. While we have prevailed at every stage of this litigation so far, there is still significant work ahead. We are actively preparing to return to court to enforce the injunction if the government attempts to undermine or evade the court’s orders through privatization or further funding cuts.
We were honored to recently share more about our case on the Barbara McDowell Social Justice Center’s blog. Click here to read Adina Appelbaum’s, Unaccompanied Children Have a Legal Right to Counsel. The Government Cannot Ignore the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), The Barbara McDowell Social Justice Center (Feb. 4, 2026).
Follow the case at https://treatkidslikekids.org.
Plaintiffs submitted to the Court a Rule 56(d) motion for limited discovery in order to adequately respond to municipal Defendants’ motion for summary judgment. On January 13th, the Court denied Plaintiffs’ Rule 56(d) motion, taking the unusual route of converting Defendants’ motion into a motion to dismiss. Plaintiffs then drafted and submitted their response to municipal Defendants’ motion for summary judgment on January 28th. Defendants must now submit their reply to Plaintiffs' summary judgment response. Defendants recently asked Plaintiffs for an extension of time to respond, which Plaintiffs did not oppose.
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
On May 14, 2025, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, in conjunction with Campaign Legal Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed suit challenging Louisiana’s S.B. 436, which requires documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. We alleged that the 2024 law addresses an infinitesimal concern, noncitizen voting, and disenfranchises United States citizens by requiring documentation of citizenship that is not readily available to millions of eligible voters. We sued on behalf of the Voice of the Experienced, the NAACP Louisiana State Conference, the League of Women Voters of Louisiana, and the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, bringing constitutional claims, as well as statutory claims under the National Voter Registration Act. On July 24, 2025, the defendants moved to stay the proceeding for 60 days while it sought changes to the Louisiana instructions on the federal voter registration form from the Election Assistance Commission. While the Court considered the briefing on the motion, Plaintiffs received a response from an open records request that they had sent in early 2025 related to the law Via this response we learned that at least one parish in Louisiana (Lafayette Parish) may be requiring documentary proof of citizenship (“DPOC”) to register to vote.
On December 8, 2025, the Court denied the Defendants’ motion to stay the proceedings. The same day, we served initial discovery requests on the Secretary of State. Subsequently, on December 10, 2025, we filed an amended complaint adding Lafayette Parish as a named defendant. Defendants have not yet responded to our discovery request and filed a motion to dismiss on December 23, 2025. Our opposition is due January 20, 2026. On December 29, 2025, the parties filed a status report with the Court including a proposed case schedule which contemplates trial in 2027.
The state has not acted to enforce the law and is not requiring DPOC in order to register to vote. Lafayette Parish is an exception. That jurisdiction is requiring registrants to provide proof of citizenship. We have amended the complaint to sue Lafayette Parish directly.
Even though the State has not yet enforced the statute, which had an effective date of January 1, 2025, it has not conceded that requiring DPOC would be unconstitutional. Thus, at any time, Louisiana could begin insisting that registrants provide DPOC.
Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, UC Hastings College of Law
In Al Otro Lado et al. v. Trump et al., CGRS and our co-counsel are challenging the Trump administration’s unlawful denial of access to asylum for individuals seeking safety at ports of entry along the U.S. southern border. In addition to suspending asylum access, the administration abruptly cancelled all scheduled appointments on CBP One—a government-administered mobile app that was notoriously difficult to access—leaving approximately 30,000 asylum seekers with no alternative recourse.
We filed the legal challenge, a motion to certify a class of individual plaintiffs harmed by the policy, and a motion to use pseudonyms to protect the individual plaintiffs’ confidentiality in June 2025. The government has opposed both class certification and pseudonymity. Both motions were fully briefed in August 2025. Since then, the government has filed a motion to dismiss the case. On behalf of the plaintiffs, we have opposed that motion. We are awaiting the court’s decision on class certification, pseudonymity, and the government’s motion to dismiss. In the meantime, people desperately in need of protection are unable to access the U.S. asylum process at ports of entry.