KSHB 41 reporter Fe Silva covers education stories involving K-12. Share your story idea with Fe.
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Thousands of children are at risk of losing access to immigration legal services across the United States, with hundreds of them in the Kansas City area and other parts of Kansas and Missouri.
The federal government has cut funding to a legal program that provides representation for unaccompanied immigrant children. This means the children might face immigration courts alone.
In Kansas City, Asylum Clinic KC has been providing that service to children since 2017. Over 3,000 people have been helped.
Now, more than 100 will be directly affected by the changes.
“He fled violence and poverty in his home country in Africa,” said Clare Murphy Shaw, sharing the story of one of her clients. “He flew to South America, and then he walked from Ecuador to the U.S. border over a period of about seven months.”
Murphy Shaw helped him file for asylum and special immigrant juvenile status, and he received his green card last year.
With recent federal funding cuts, she is afraid Asylum Clinic KC won't be able to help as many children as they would like.
“We're not going to just drop our clients. We can't turn our backs,” Murphy Shaw said.
According to her, if the kids don’t have legal representation, they are most likely to end up being deported. However, she says many of the kids qualify for an opportunity to stay in the United States legally, mostly through humanitarian forms of immigration relief.
She notes that part of the contract was maintained. They will still be able to help with the “Know Your Rights” presentation and conduct a legal screening.
But the “heart” of their work is legal representation, which will be impacted.
“Children do not come here, and they definitely don't come here alone if there is any other option,” Aly Englander, who also supports the children with legal representation, said. “Imagine how desperate you must be to have to make that dangerous journey by yourself as a child.”
Now, the goal is to pivot and find alternative sources of funding. Their options include relying on volunteer work from lawyers and financial support from the community.
“We're going to keep doing the work as long as we can. Eventually, unless we get additional funding from grantors or generous individuals, we will have to lay off employees or, eventually, not be able to continue our work. So we are desperate right now for community support,” said Englander.
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