AAP Voices Blog

Children Should Never Go to Court Alone

For over a decade, I took medical students and residents to a federal immigration court for children in Harlingen, Texas, to better understand the convoluted legal system unaccompanied children must navigate when they arrive in our country alone. These are children who arrive in the United States fleeing violence or persecution without a legal parent or guardian. Often, they’re seeking to reunite with a family member here.

Children should never go to court alone. But right now, the federal government is attempting to end support for legal representation for unaccompanied children, including canceling contracts for this support that have already been awarded. A federal court has issued a preliminary injunction that has halted the near-total shutdown of legal services to children under the Unaccompanied Children Program. This injunction – or pause – lasts only as long as the litigation is pending, and the federal government has already filed an appeal. I think of the children who are caught in the middle and what’s at stake without these services.

Looking back on our visits to court, I remember the images vividly. Sitting outside the courtroom on plastic chairs in a designated waiting area, the children were in matching polo shirts and escorted by government staff. They listened to last-minute instructions by an attorney or paralegal explaining to them what would happen in the courtroom.  Then the children would line up, file into the courtroom, and sit shoulder to shoulder on hard wooden benches, waiting for their names and numbers to be called.  They would walk in from youngest to oldest, some as young as six or seven. Some had fresh haircuts.  Or freshly done braids.  All showed signs of nervousness, their legs shaking, eyes cast down, hands gripping the edge of the bench. Others would look straight ahead, furtively scanning the room.

They had every reason to be nervous.  They had come to the U.S. seeking safety, often after treacherous journeys by themselves. Immigration court is adversarial - there is no presumption of innocence.  The child must prove their innocence and provide a valid reason for seeking asylum or face deportation to a place they had fled. 
When their name was called, they walked through the swinging gate and took a seat alone at the desk.  An attorney sat at another desk on the government’s side, ready to tell the judge why this child did not belong in this country. The judge loomed above, positioned high behind a tall bench and flanked by court staff. The child sat alone or sometimes with a "friend of the court” nearby, ready to help if needed. They listened through headphones to a translator trying to explain in their native language the legal jargon of the U.S. system. There I sat along with the medical students and residents, watching.

We stayed until every child had been called and the judge meted out the government’s decisions.  We then filed out behind the children.  Outside, the legal advocate tried to explain to the physicians-in-training what had happened, but they truly could not believe what they had witnessed.

No matter how often I went into that courtroom, I always went home, dropped on my bed, and wept.

When a child has an attorney, they are often the only adult with whom the child has a stable relationship, free of any conflicts of interest.  The rapport built between them creates a safe space for children to feel comfortable divulging their fears and the painful details of their lives, such as sexual exploitation or abusive living conditions.

As a pediatrician, I worked for years with ProBAR, (American Bar Association South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project) just one of a hundred organizations across the country funded by the federal government to provide legal services considered essential not only to the unaccompanied children, but also to the smooth and fair operation of the immigration court system. I helped advise ProBAR attorneys when children were being given potentially dangerous psychotropic medications to “help the child adjust to their new environment” under the custody of the United States.  Many of these children were medicated and held for prolonged times in government custody because of “adjustment issues,” which outside of these environments would have been considered normal adolescent reactions to external threats.  Most of these children had already lived through trauma in their home countries and on their journey here.  They deserve our protection. They deserve to feel safe here.

ProBAR, which has served these children for over three decades, has now been forced to reorganize and can no longer act as “friend of court” for unaccompanied children due to the termination of the legal services previously funded by the federal government.

Legal services for unaccompanied children protect children and their health – and they support the overall operation of the courts.

As a cadre of former immigration judges and adjudicators from the Board of Immigration Appeals wrote in a recent amicus brief submitted in federal court on March 31, 2025, “Legal representation for unaccompanied children is not a luxury; it is essential to the efficient operation of the immigration courts.” In 2024 alone, the Acacia Center for Justice’s network – which is the coordinating body of legal organizations that has advocated alongside youth who would otherwise face the deportation courts alone   – provided nearly 118,000 unaccompanied children with some form of legal support or service.  

Stopping this work will irreparably harm children. Bipartisan members of Congress have supported funding for legal services for decades. They must now step up and uphold the rights of these children attempting to navigate our complex immigration court system and ensure that independent legal counsel for children is preserved. The time for lawmakers to act is now to stop these harmful policies and protect these vulnerable children, and it’s up to us as pediatricians to defend their well-being in our clinics and in the courts.  

If children no longer have these rights, no longer even understand their legal options in a child-friendly way, there will be no justice; it would certainly not feel like mercy.

*The views expressed in this article are those of the author, and not necessarily those of the American Academy of Pediatrics.