Sponsors (29)
Official title: Provide counsel for unaccompanied children, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 3, 2025 by Mazie Hirono · Last progress April 3, 2025
The bill expands legal protections, representation, and procedural safeguards—particularly for unaccompanied children and detained noncitizens—improving fairness and transparency but at the cost of higher federal spending, new administrative burdens, privacy risks, and likely slower immigration processing during implementation.
Noncitizen respondents (including unaccompanied children) gain government-funded legal representation across proceedings, with continuous representation after reunification/turning 18 and ORR-directed training/guidelines to raise quality, including in ICE/CBP and DHS-contracted facilities.
Noncitizens (or their counsel) must receive the DHS A-file within 7 days and removal proceedings cannot go forward until required documents are received and a 10-day review period (unless waived) has passed, improving case preparation and reducing wrongful removals.
Unaccompanied children who lacked HHS-appointed counsel can file motions to reopen without time or numerical limits and such filings automatically stay removal, preserving opportunities for merits review and preventing immediate deportation.
Significantly higher federal costs and potential fiscal pressure — funding government-provided counsel, expanded counsel access in detention/contractor settings, longer stays of removal, and uncapped ORR appropriations could increase spending borne by taxpayers and agencies.
Substantial administrative and operational burdens on federal, state, and local agencies — updating terminology/guidance, disclosing A-files quickly, guaranteeing counsel at short-term CBP sites, and meeting reporting deadlines will require staff, systems changes, and new processes.
Procedural changes (10-day review, in-person counsel requirements, expanded motions to reopen and automatic stays) risk lengthening case timelines and increasing immigration-court backlogs and delays.
Based on analysis of 8 sections of legislative text.
Expands access to appointed counsel, mandates A-file disclosure and counsel access in detention, and strengthens protections for unaccompanied children in removal proceedings.
Requires federal agencies to expand access to legal representation and procedural protections for noncitizens in immigration proceedings, with special provisions for unaccompanied children. It creates a statutory definition of “noncitizen,” allows the Secretary of HHS to issue regulations for unaccompanied children, authorizes government-paid counsel in certain cases, mandates timely delivery of DHS case files to respondents or counsel, requires DHS to permit access to counsel in detention settings, exempts certain children from filing-time limits for motions to reopen (and stays removal when counsel was not provided), directs annual reporting on representation of unaccompanied children, and authorizes appropriations to the Office of Refugee Resettlement to implement these changes. The Act changes procedural rules in removal proceedings (including A-file disclosure deadlines and a minimum review period), creates explicit authority to provide appointed counsel at government expense for noncitizens (with HHS authority for unaccompanied children), imposes access-to-counsel requirements for DHS detention facilities (including contractor-run facilities), and requires annual reporting on legal representation of children.