Given the temperament of the left in this country these days, even in the middle of an illegal immigration crisis, it’s perhaps unsurprising that there are non-profit groups collecting federal funds, or more correctly, taxpayer dollars, to help provide legal advice to illegal aliens wishing to stay here. President Trump has cut off federal funding for these groups, and ordered them out of the immigration courts. It was among the executive orders the president signed on Day One in his second term in office.
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Now, several of those pro-illegal alien, legal aid groups are suing the Trump administration, seeking the return of their unearned gravy train.
Several nonprofits providing basic legal information to detained immigrants sued the Trump administration on Friday for halting their programs and locking them out of detention facilities.
Led by the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, a Washington, D.C.-based group that represents children and provides those basic services, the groups filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia asking a judge to reverse the administration’s stoppage. The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.
The effort is part of President Trump’s broader push to reduce resources available to detained immigrants and comes as he seeks to expand detention capacity. This week, Trump, who has made “mass deportation” a centerpiece of his campaign, announced plans to open up 30,000 beds in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the “worst criminal aliens.”
President Trump has, yes, been cleaning up the horrendous mess the Biden administration left on our borders and in immigration policy. People in the United States illegally, yes, can seek legal advice. But most of them aren’t in criminal court, where they are entitled to legal representation from a public defender. They are in immigration court, and therefore there’s no real reason for the American taxpayers to pay for their efforts to remain in the United States.
And these “legal service” programs aren’t handing out copies of the Constitution and teaching immigrants the three co-equal branches of the federal government. They are helping people, any people, who entered the country illegally how to stay here, through one form of legal folderol or another–and they earn $28 million for doing so:
The $28-million legal service programs provide a help desk in busy immigration courtrooms including in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego, basic legal information for individuals and families in detention facilities in 12 states called a “legal orientation program” and lawyers for minors, some who may be separated from their families.
Lawyers for the group argue Congress has already appropriated the funds and abruptly pausing the program is a “hasty and pretextual attack on the immigration system” that deprives detainees of information needed to secure constitutionally guaranteed due process.
They can still do all of these things. They just have to raise their own funds and find their own office space.
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It’s hard to predict how this lawsuit will proceed, but it’s a safe bet these nonprofits did some careful venue selection to make sure that the Trump administration’s rules are put on hold. But the president has played this game before, and it’s a certainty he’ll be willing to take it to the Supreme Court. In the meantime, border crossings are down, and illegal alien gang members and known criminals are being repatriated in carload lots. One way or another, this is happening, and the rest of the world may as well take notice of it.
