President Donald Trump listens during a briefing with the media, Friday, June 27, 2025, at the White House in Washington (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin).
A federal judge in California gave the Trump administration a tongue-lashing on Thursday in a case about how the government must provide legal services for children facing deportation.
The victory for immigrant children in the case known as Community Legal Services v. Health and Human Services has been, in one sense, a long time coming.
In a terse but withering four-page order granting a motion to enforce a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin, a Joe Biden appointee, takes the Trump administration to task for repeatedly trying to evade decades-old legal responsibilities.
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“[I]t appears to the Court that no mechanism presently exists by which Defendants are complying with the preliminary injunction,” the order reads.
The present iteration of the controversy began in March 2025, after an “abrupt” February 2025 decision by the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to stop funding the Acacia Center for Justice “without explanation,” according to the 40-page complaint. The plaintiffs here were originally Acacia subcontractors who later moved on and sued to advance their clients’ interests.
But the case actually dates back much further.
The heart of the matter involves three separate but related developments, beginning with the 1997 Flores settlement, a mainstay of U.S. immigration law related to children.
Under the terms of the 1997 Flores settlement agreement, immigrant children must be held at “state-licensed” facilities — treated properly and humanely — before being released into the custody of family members or guardians “as expeditiously as possible.”
Fast-forward to 2008 and the passage of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), which mandates the government to “ensure, to the greatest extent practicable,” that all unaccompanied children receive legal counsel.
Then, in 2024, HHS itself sought to formalize and carry out its obligations under both Flores and the TVPRA with an internal rule to “fund legal service providers to provide direct immigration legal representation” for unaccompanied children.
By 2025, the Trump administration backtracked.
In April 2025, Martinez-Olguin issued a temporary restraining order — and then a preliminary injunction — for the plaintiffs.
In each instance, the government was ordered to continue funding legal service providers under the auspices of the TVPRA.
Then, the case worked its way through the appellate system.
The government, in successive pleadings before the court, argued the judge herself lacked jurisdiction — essentially and repeatedly insisting the plaintiffs were in the wrong court system.
The San Francisco-based district court rejected those arguments, in turn, and so did the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Originally, a three-judge panel denied a government request to stay the injunction. The DOJ then asked the appellate court to rehear the case en banc—but the 9th Circuit declined in October 2025.
In late July of this year, the plaintiffs moved to enforce the injunction — in an emergency motion requesting miscellaneous relief.
“The TVPRA, Foundational Rule, and preliminary injunction all require Defendants to spend the allocated funding on legal services for unaccompanied children,” the motion reads. “Defendants’ failure to do so is the inevitable result of a situation they themselves engineered.”
The Trump administration, for its part, says it is withholding the funds due to a paperwork dispute with Acacia over the data the government believes necessary to substantiate billing practices.
But the judge has seen enough.
“Here, Defendants concede that they have withheld funds appropriated for direct legal representation services to unaccompanied minors since December 2025 and continue to do so,” the latest order reads. “This violates both the plain language as well as the spirit of the preliminary injunction, as maintaining the funding of legal representation for unaccompanied minors in accordance with the TVPRA and the Foundational Rule is the preliminary injunction’s objective.”
But Acacia was only one of many groups affected by the funding halt – and is not actually a party to the present litigation because they sued on their own in a separate court system.
“Defendants advance that they continue to withhold the funds based on a dispute with nonparty Acacia regarding contract terms enforcement and ‘invoice substantiation concerns,'” the order goes on. “Defendants’ contract argument reflects yet another attempt to transform this Administrative Procedures Act case into a contract case. The Court has rejected that attempt multiple times. The Ninth Circuit has also already rejected that argument.”
In ruling for the plaintiffs, Martinez-Olguin says the government’s arguments about Acacia are beside the point.
“[I]n so arguing, Defendants tie themselves in a knot—despite their insistence that this Court lacks jurisdiction over the government’s contractual disputes, they now attempt to utilize a contractual dispute as a shield for their failure to abide by the terms of the preliminary injunction,” the order continues. “The Court declines to interfere with the government’s contract with Acacia and instead expects the government to comply with clear Court orders compelling the government’s compliance with the TVPRA and ORR’s Foundational Rule.”
The post ‘Tie themselves in a knot’: Judge benchslaps Trump admin for poor legal arguments in order directing government to fully fund aid programs for immigrant children first appeared on Law & Crime.
