Women’s Refugee Commission Statement on the Termination of Legal Access Services for Separated Families

The Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) participated in a Press Conference on the Trump administration’s announcement earlier this month that it would terminate the Legal Access Services for Reunified Families (LASRF) program, effective April 30th. The LASRF program provides legal services to families who were separated by the first Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy, which led to the separation of more than 5,000 children from their parents. To read more about how the termination of legal services will impact separated families, please see our most recent report Family Separation In Their Own Words: How Ending Legal Services is Another Step Towards Separating Families Again. 

The LASRF program was created as part of part of the settlement agreement in Ms. L. et al. v. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a lawsuit brought on behalf of separated parents that helped end zero-tolerance. As part of that agreement, the government agreed to provide separated parents and children with the services they needed to recover and reunite, including legal services. By terminating funding for this legally required program, the administration is exposing thousands of families to renewed, possibly permanent, separation and harm. Parents whose parole (or legal permission to remain in the United States) may soon expire or be revoked by the administration face additional risk; if they are deported, they will no longer be able to continue the process of reunifying with their children in the United States. 

WRC closely monitored separated families during and after zero-tolerance and spoke with numerous parents and children who were forced apart under the policy. WRC also served on the court-created steering committee in the Ms. L case. In 2020, WRC and Barnard College launched an oral history project called Separated: Stories of Injustice and Solidarity, where we interviewed 27 children, parents, and other migrants impacted by zero tolerance to capture the human cost of the policy on families and children. As one 15-year-old boy who was separated from his mother for almost a year recounted, “Those nine months were torture for me. Really, I didn’t want to know anything anymore. I just felt like I wanted to kill myself, that’s what was going on inside of me. To kill myself and not know anything anymore.” 

“We are gravely concerned by the real risk of additional harm to the thousands of separated families that rely on this program,” said Zain Lakhani, director of WRC’s Migrant Rights and Justice program. “The government is violating its own legal obligation to provide these families with the basic legal support necessary to effectively navigate their immigration cases.  We urge the administration to reverse this decision and comply with the Ms. L settlement agreement immediately. Zero Tolerance family separation profoundly and irreparably harmed thousands of vulnerable women and children seeking safety in the United States. This administration cannot go back on its legal and moral obligation to help those families reunify.”  

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