Amica Center for Immigrant Rights v. DOJ - District Court (federal funding for Legal Orientation Programs)

[ARCHIVED - September 2025]

A coalition of immigration legal service providers filed this lawsuit to challenge the Trump administration’s termination of funding for critical legal orientation programs for unrepresented individuals in removal proceedings.

For more than two decades, Congress has funded the Department of Justice’s Executive Office of Immigration Review (“EOIR”) to run several programs, including the Legal Orientation Program (“LOP”) and the Immigration Court Help Desk (“ICH”), to inform individuals in removal proceedings about their responsibilities and rights when appearing in immigration court. Congress has likewise funded EOIR to run a Counsel for Children Initiative (“CCI”), which facilitates direct representation of unaccompanied children in removal proceedings. The plaintiff organizations receive funding from EOIR, and have historically been granted access to detention facilities, to administer these legal access programs.

On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order requiring the Attorney General and DHS Secretary to review and audit, as well as to indefinitely pause, any funding going to non-governmental organizations providing legal services to undocumented noncitizens. Two days later, EOIR issued a “stop work” order that stopped funding for LOP, ICH, and other similar legal access programs. In some instances, the plaintiff organizations were subsequently denied access to the immigration courthouses and detention centers where they administer these programs.The Plaintiffs filed suit in the District of Columbia, asking the judge to declare that the termination of funding for these legal access programs is unlawful, and moved the court for an injunction preventing the federal government from terminating or otherwise withholding funding from these programs.

On January 31, 2025, a district court issued a temporary restraining order in New York v. Trump, a lawsuit brought by a coalition of 22 states and the District of Columbia to challenge the Trump administration’s pause on all federal grants, loans, and federal assistance programs. The court’s order lifted the pause on federal funding. As a result, on Sunday, February 2, 2025, EOIR rescinded its stop-work order for legal access programs and funding was temporarily restored.

In the instant case,  the court heard oral argument on the Plaintiff’s request for an injunction on March 17, 2025 and issued an order requiring the federal government to provide three business days’ notice before terminating any of the programs at issue in the case. The federal government subsequently issued a notice on April 3 purporting to cancel the programs, which it then rescinded because it did not provide the requisite three business days’ notice. The federal government issued another notice on April 10, stating that funding for the programs would terminate on April 16 “for the convenience of the government.” This prompted the Plaintiffs to file a renewed motion for a temporary restraining order on April 14, 2025.

The judge denied without prejudice the Plaintiffs’ renewed TRO motion and allowed them to file an Amended Complaint, which they did on April 18, 2025. The Amended Complaint challenges the April 16 termination of funding for the legal access programs, arguing that the funding termination was not properly reasoned or explained and violates the TVPRA; violates the Appropriations Clause, which requires the Executive branch to spend funds that Congress has appropriated; violates the Plaintiffs’ 1st Amendment rights to free speech, to assembly, to access to a limited forum, and to petition the government; violates the Separation of Powers because it “disregards the controlling acts of Congress,” to which the Constitution has given the exclusive right to appropriate funds; and is ultra vires and unauthorized by statute.

The federal government moved to dismiss the Amended Complaint on April 24, 2025. The judge subsequently issued an order setting a briefing schedule that enables cross-motions for summary judgment and a motion by the Plaintiffs for a preliminary injunction. Briefing concluded on May 10, 2025, and Judge Moss heard arguments from the parties on the pending motions on May 14, 2025.

Based on the parties’ submissions, Judge Moss gave the federal government one week to supplement the administrative record in the case, to provide information about a new “consolidated federalized program” for satisfying EOIR’s obligation to provide legal orientation services, which the government only mentioned for the first time in a declaration attached to its summary judgment motion. The judge also granted the plaintiffs leave to supplement their complaint by May 23, 2025, based on any information revealed in the supplemental administrative record, and gave the parties until May 30, 2025, to file any further supplemental briefing if the plaintiffs file an amended complaint.    

On July 6, Judge Moss denied Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and preliminary injunction, granted the federal government’s motion for summary judgment as to Plaintiffs’ constitutional and ultra vires claims arising from the newly consolidated federalized program for LOP and LOPC and the termination of the other programs (ICH, FGLOP, and CCI), and dismissed the remainder of Plaintiffs’ claims without prejudice. On July 14, Plaintiffs appealed this denial to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.