Overview
- HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement published a Federal Register notice saying it intends to award a single-source cooperative agreement worth up to $150 million to Burke Law Group that would begin on August 15 and run one year.
- The agreement tasks Burke with legal orientation, consultations, and attorney-of-record representation for eligible unaccompanied children in ORR custody and allows the firm to subcontract work to outside providers.
- The move follows the expiration of a long-standing Acacia-managed network contract and a months-long funding standoff in which nonprofits say ORR withheld roughly $65 million in reimbursements while demanding client-level data those groups call privileged.
- Advocates and providers warn capacity and expertise gaps because Burke is a small Houston firm with few attorneys listing immigration practice experience and critics say roughly 20,000 children have been left without the prior legal network since the Acacia contract ended.
- Litigation over unpaid invoices and contract continuity is pending, with a federal hearing scheduled for August 6, and coverage of the change splits along political lines where conservatives welcome the shift and legal-aid groups describe it as risky for children’s due process.