Trump-Linked Firm Picked to Represent Unaccompanied Immigrant Kids

Donald Trump’s administration is awarding a $150 million contract to give legal representation to immigrant children to a small Texas law firm with ties to the president—where only two of the attorneys actually practice immigration law. 

The Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, plans to give the contract to the Houston-based Burke Law Group, the Trump administration announced late Tuesday. Marcella Burke, one of the group’s four founders, was previously appointed by Trump to the Senior Executive Service for the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department. 

The contract for Burke Law Group was a “single source cooperative agreement,” meaning the firm was selected without a standard bidding process, according to the Associated Press.

Of the 26 attorneys currently employed by Burke Law, only two practice immigration law, per the firm’s website.  

Michael Lukens, executive director of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, a group providing children legal representation in the Washington, D.C., area, told reporters the group was “clearly unqualified.”

The contract is set to begin on August 15, while the existing contract already expired last Friday, according to the Associated Press. 

ORR officials previously said that they’d offered to extend the existing contract if providers agreed to share information about their clients with the government. But several nonprofit leaders said that the government had requested confidential information about the children and their sponsors, making them concerned that the information would be used to target families during immigration enforcement operations. 

The decision comes as the Trump administration has rapidly expedited the removal of immigrant children. Immigration hearings for children are reportedly being moved up by weeks or even months, making it increasingly difficult for children to obtain legal resources or relief. At the same time, the Trump administration has made it increasingly difficult for immigrant children to be allowed to stay in the United States. Sponsors in the U.S. now face stricter documentation requirements and even risk arrest themselves. 

Immigrant children are often subjected to extended stays with the ORR, during which they can be subjected to all kinds of alleged mistreatment and abuse, either at government shelters or foster homes. 

In June, there were an average of 1,796 children in ORR custody, whose average length of care was 194 days—roughly six months, according to the office’s website. 

Centrist Democratic lobbyists and strategists are preparing to go to “war” with the left following Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary.

The New York Times reported Thursday on Third Way, a prevalent, well-documented, dark money–funded, neoliberal think tank bankrolled by billionaires, corporations, and Wall Street executives, among others. Its president, Jonathan Cowan (who has worked for Bill Clinton and Andrew Cuomo), described the recent electoral success of progressives like El-Sayed, as well as democratic socialists, as “deeply troubling”—and he’s ready to spend millions of dollars to fight it.

“We are preparing for the next war that is coming.… It is deeply troubling to see radical, far-left candidates winning in places that are potentially presidential swing states,” Cowan told the Times, later describing the Democratic Socialists of America—a group that believes “working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few”—as a “mortal danger.”

Third Way wants to make DSA feel the pain of pushing prison abolition, reparations, a 32-hour workweek, and other policies it sees as overly radical. The organization is preparing to drop $15 million between now and 2028 to discredit democratic socialism, but it’s unclear where the money will come from.

“The upside of being associated with more extreme movements is you get attention and real and perceived energy and outsider status,” said centrist Welcome PAC founder Liam Kerr.

The left sounded off against the article on social media.

“Just so you understand, this is wall street, the military industrial complex, the Israel lobby, big tech AI money and all kinds of corporate money declaring war on the only faction of the dems that believes in something and knows how to fight Trump,” commentator Kyle Kulinski wrote. “‘Third Way’ is a Diet MAGA op.”

“Hey Shane is there a reason you don’t mention who funds Third Way, WelcomePAC and Center for New Liberalism?” podcaster Adam Johnson said to the article’s author, Shane Goldmacher. “They’re backed entirely by pro Israel billionaires, big pharma, big oil, big tobacco, Wall St, etc. isn’t this worth noting when reporting on their alleged motives?”

The Democratic centrist response to its own voters rejecting it and the establishment has been to reinject millions of dollars back into that failed establishment. While the DSA has certainly run spirited campaigns, what has stood out most in this ongoing left-versus-liberal battle is liberals’ institutional lack of vision—and their beholdenness to corporate power.

Why can’t we stop giving Israel money to blow up babies in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran? Why can’t we make sure Americans don’t go into financial ruin just to get chemotherapy? Why can’t we give the average person more power than corporate PACs and billionaires? These aren’t just frivolous talking points that only hold water in Bushwick—these are winning issues in the hearts and minds of Democratic voters across the country.

Edwin López-Cornejo, the 39-year-old Salvadoran immigrant who died in an unknown “medical emergency” at the Delaney Hall immigration detention facility on Saturday, had documented health concerns including epilepsy and high blood pressure just days before he died in the notoriously inhumane New Jersey detention center.

López-Cornejo’s attorney, Ingrid Echeverria, filed a habeas petition on July 24, referencing the various medications he was taking for epilepsy and blood pressure as justifications to have him released and prevent his transfer to another facility.

“If not, he at least asks that Respondents be required to give advance written notice before any transfer, identify the receiving facility, and ensure that his medications accompany him and are administered without interruption,” her petition stated.

López-Cornejo died just over a week later, the twenty-second person to die in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody this year—and the second to die in Delaney Hall.

Delaney Hall has been the center of anti-ICE protests, as multiple reports of inhumane treatment—from lack of adequate food to unsanitary conditions—have led hundreds of detainees to go on a hunger and labor strike. It is run by the private prison company GEO Group, and multiple elected officials have been denied entry to inspect the facility.

And while ICE insists that the facility meets condition requirements, López-Cornejo’s death gives the public yet another reason for disbelief. Hundreds of protesters met outside the center on Monday and Tuesday, joining local politicians in calling for its closure.

“Private companies like GEO Group are getting paid to keep people detained. Giving people proper medical care costs them money; neglect doesn’t. Medical abuse is now a business model, and ICE is encouraging it,” New Jersey Democratic Representative Analilia Mejia said on Tuesday. “Edwin Jovanny López Cornejo should still be alive today.”

The Trump administration is plotting a sweeping overhaul of Head Start that could threaten childcare for more than half a million children across the country.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday a proposed rule that would “increase access” to Head Start by “capping the cost of administrative overhead and reducing compliance-driven activities.”

The proposed rule would grant states the authority to set certain standards, including rules on class size and student-adult ratios, education requirements, background checks, and transportation practices. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has claimed that Head Start lost more than 100,000 slots during the Biden administration due to “burdensome paperwork.”

Vox’s Rachel Cohen Booth argued on X that the proposed changes would mean “larger class sizes, fewer staff and credential requirements, reduced health and family services, and potentially shorter hours.”

Without federal regulations to set the bar, the quality of care will likely depend on a person’s zip code. The proposed rule would also give parents more control over “structure and curriculum,” marking Head Start programs as yet another arena for President Trump’s inane culture wars.

The proposed rule would reduce the amount of money Head Start centers could spend on administrative overhead from 15 percent to 5 percent, thus saving the government an estimated $2.2 billion, according to Alex Adams, the assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

But Yvette Sanchez-Fuentes, senior vice president of Start Early in Illinois, told NPR that administrative costs are used to help fill the gaps for children who need special support. “If you, for example, have children with disabilities you [can use] some of those funds to pay for additional special services or staff with specialties who could come in and support kids,” she said.

In a press release, HHS claimed that the money saved would be reinvested back into the program “to preserve or expand” spots for more than 200,000 children—making it unclear whether the change would actually create new spots or just prevent them from disappearing.

Democrats have already condemned the rule as an “attack on children” and promised to fight for Head Start, which currently provides early childhood education, as well as nutrition and health and family support services to more than 700,000 children.

Donald Trump can’t seem to get even the most basic facts straight.

The 80-year-old president raised some eyebrows during a speaking engagement at the Red Rock Casino in Las Vegas Wednesday when he verbally misspelled a four-letter word.

“Nobody knows that ‘dumb’ doesn’t have a ‘b’,” Trump said sincerely, before proverbially patting himself on the back for cooking up the derogatory term “dumocrats” for his liberal opponents.

“I can’t imagine I didn’t think about that 10 years ago when I started this whole situation,” he added.

Trump was there to speak about his “no tax on tips” policy, but over the course of an hour-plus speech, he instead managed to stun attendees again when he told the Nevadan crowd that “Michael Whatley should be your governor.”

Whatley, however, is running for Senate in North Carolina.

Trump is the second-oldest man to ever serve as America’s commander-in-chief, and his increasingly erratic behavior has sparked global concern in recent months about his stability and judgment.

The octogenarian has spent hours at Walter Reed Medical Center on multiple occasions over the last year, fallen asleep during more than a dozen critical meetings, appeared lost and disoriented around foreign heads of state, frequently slurred his speech, and has emerged with discolored and bruised skin on several occasions.

He has also derailed press conferences to throw cheap and petty insults at members of the media, aggressed against the pope, abducted foreign leaders, sparked wars without congressional approval, and has become so obsessed with his Washington vanity projects that he has a difficult time focusing on anything else. That last detail has been flagged by leading clinical psychologists as a telltale symptom of dementia.