Event banner. Live conversation: 100 Days Ago, Children Were Left to Fend for Themselves in Immigration Court. Here’s What Happened Next. Join me Monday, November 9 at 1pm ET for a live conversation with Dr. Marsha Griffin, Katie Fleming of Acacia Center for Justice and Neha Desai of the National Center for Youth Law. Free registration at austinkocher.substack.com. Right: 69 of every 100 unaccompanied children’s cases completed in 2026 ended in a removal order, shown as a grid of 100 circles with 69 filled. The average from 2021 through 2024 was 28 percent; in 2025 it was 48 percent.
November 9 marks a tragic milestone: 100 days since the Trump administration cut off competent legal support for tens of thousands of children who are going through the immigration courts alone, abandoning them to the whims of ‘deportation judges hired to carry out Stephen Miller’s mass deportation agenda.’
The immigration court data already show the effects of these policies. Acacia’s October 15 fact sheet, The Data Behind a Due Process Crisis, found that 69 percent of unaccompanied children’s cases completed in the first eight months of 2026 ended in a removal order, up from an average of 28 percent from 2021 through 2024. Voluntary departures for children also climbed, reaching 1,831 in those eight months, compared to 527 in all of 2024. The immigration courts haven’t just become a deportation machine for adults in the system, they’re a deportation machine for kids, too.
To ensure that these children are not forgotten and to push for practical solutions that protect them, I am hosting a virtual conversation this Monday, November 9 at 1:00 PM Eastern, with three of the most recognized subject matter experts: Dr. Marsha Griffin, President and CEO of Community for Children; Katie Fleming, Director of Public Education and Engagement at Acacia Center for Justice; and Neha Desai, Managing Director of Children’s Human Rights and Dignity at the National Center for Youth Law.
Together, they will help us understand what has gone wrong for children in court in the past 100 days. While more Americans are aware of the shocking fact that kids are going to court alone, few people truly understand what that means and just how consequential this is for these children.
Dr. Marsha Griffin, Katie Fleming, and Neha Desai will share new findings and firsthand stories from courtroom observation that reveal how dangerous courts have become for children. The government is offering unrepresented children $3,000 to accept voluntary departure, even when it is not in their best interest and before they have a chance to have their case heard. Hearings are being shuffled around and added to virtual videoconferencing dockets that make it even harder for children to know what’s going on. So far, the multi-million dollar contract has gone to a firm with ties to the Trump administration, then to an organization called Our Rescue founded by a former ICE agent. And HHS is now attempting to send its own attorneys to represent children, a move that six senators called a “clear conflict of interest.”
We will also discuss real solutions, especially putting pressure on states to do their part to ensure that children have basic access to legal counsel. California is one example. Its 2026-27 state budget renewed the Children’s Holistic Immigration Representation Project, which pairs unaccompanied children with legal and social service teams, for more than 1,000 children, and created a new Immigration Counsel Access Pilot Program. In August, New York committed $7.25 million in new state funding for legal services for about 1,400 unaccompanied children in removal proceedings.
Moreover, with the stunning results of the midterms now in, this 100-day retrospective on the loss of competent legal services for children in court is also a forward-looking appeal to the incoming representatives of the 120th Congress to prioritize real fixes to the Trump administration’s sabotage of due process for children.
Join us at 1:00 PM Eastern on November 9, 2026. Registration is open to the public, including reporters, Hill staffers, researchers, NGOs, and concerned members of the public. Registration is free but required. Register at the link below.
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