{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.murray.senate.gov/senators-to-rfk-jr-why-was-a-trump-aligned-firm-with-no-immigration-experience-considered-for-no-bid-contract-to-represent-unaccompanied-children/", "Senators to RFK Jr.: Why Was a Trump-Aligned Firm With No Immigration Experience Considered for No-Bid Contract to Represent Unaccompanied Children?", "2026-08-11", "2026", "2026-08", "Democrat", "Senate", "WA", "Patty Murray", "M001111", "www.murray.senate.gov", "murray", "https://www.murray.senate.gov/category/press-releases/", "scraper", "Washington, D.C. \u2013 Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member and former chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), alongside Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Ben Ray Luj\u00e1n (D-NM), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and Ron Wyden (D-OR) sent a letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. demanding he explain why the Trump administration planned to award a no-bid contract to a Trump-aligned law firm with no apparent immigration law experience, allowing them to represent unaccompanied children who are in the care and custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).\n\n\u201cGiven the political connections between the firm\u2019s senior leadership and the Trump administration, we have concerns about why you sidestepped the competitive bidding process to select this firm to provide legal services for children who are in ORR care and custody, and demand transparency into whether all federal procurement processes were followed,\u201d the senators wrote. \u201cChildren deserve competent representation by attorneys who practice at the intersection of child welfare and federal immigration law, but Americans also deserve to know why their federal dollars are being doled out to Trump\u2019s friends and allies.\u201d\n\nThe Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through ORR, has an obligation to ensure that unaccompanied children are provided competent legal aid as they navigate the immigration process. Despite this, Secretary Kennedy has cut legal service funding for 26,000 unaccompanied children, proposing to shift funding to the Trump-aligned Burke Law Group, despite the firm\u2019s lack of experience protecting the rights of immigrant children.\n\n\u201cThe firm appears to have little relevant experience with the legal and practical challenges that children face, raising serious concerns about the firm\u2019s ability to provide not just representation but adequate, zealous representation,\u201d the senators added. \u201cWithin hours of the notice in the Federal Register, the firm appears to have updated their website to include content about immigrant youth that didn\u2019t exist on the website the previous day. At best, this is concerning, and at worst, it is a part of a coordinated scheme to paper over the firm\u2019s lack of experience.\u201d\n\nBurke Law Group\u2019s inexperience in the area of the law they would be contracted to perform could result in serious harm for the nearly 2,000 children in ORR\u2019s care. The firm itself employs 26 people in total, adding an additional concern about the firm\u2019s capacity to provide adequate legal representation to innocent children, let alone its competency to do so. Instead, the only clear outcome of this contracting award is that another Trump-aligned business will receive millions from the Trump administration.\n\nIn the letter, the senators demanded that Secretary Kennedy provide transparency as to why the Burke Law Group was considered for this contract and details about the firm\u2019s plans to provide legal assistance to unaccompanied children.\n\nFull text of the letter is available HERE and below:\n\nSecretary Kennedy,\n\nWe are alarmed by the recent news that the Trump administration intends to award $150 million to a Houston law firm with close ties to President Trump and no apparent expertise in immigration law, to provide legal representation to unaccompanied children. Given the political connections between the firm\u2019s senior leadership and the Trump administration, we have concerns about why you sidestepped the competitive bidding process to select this firm to provide legal services for children who are in the Office of Refugee Resettlement\u2019s care and custody, and demand transparency into whether all federal procurement processes were followed. Children deserve competent representation by attorneys who practice at the intersection of child welfare and federal immigration law, but Americans also deserve to know why their federal dollars are being doled out to Trump\u2019s friends and allies.\n\nMost Americans agree children should not be forced to navigate the complex immigration process without adequate counsel, and Congress has enacted several provisions and funded counsel for these children for many years. The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) directs the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), to \u201censure, to the greatest extent practicable . . . that all unaccompanied alien children . . . have counsel to represent them in legal proceedings or matters and protect them from mistreatment, exploitation, and trafficking.\u201d Recently, ORR moved to withhold funding from over 100 legal services providers that had provided counsel to children for decades, which essentially cut off all funding for representation of approximately 26,000 unaccompanied children currently navigating the immigration court process.\n\nYet, seemingly overnight, ORR bypassed the competitive bidding process entirely, awarding the Burke Law Group (\u201cthe firm\u201d) a one-year single-source cooperative agreement. We are awaiting final details, but the new agreement appears to cover around 1,800 children currently in ORR custody.\n\nThe firm appears to have little relevant experience with the legal and practical challenges that children face, raising serious concerns about the firm\u2019s ability to provide not just representation but adequate, zealous representation. Within hours of the notice in the Federal Register, the firm appears to have updated their website to include content about immigrant youth that didn\u2019t exist on the website the previous day. At best, this is concerning, and at worst, it is a part of a coordinated scheme to paper over the firm\u2019s lack of experience. Furthermore, the firm\u2019s senior leadership has political ties to the Trump administration. One of the founders of the firm was a Trump appointee \u2013 to an agency with no involvement in either child welfare or immigration law \u2013 and still another founding partner now serves as Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA) for Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and has a questionable connection to harms perpetuated against detainees at immigration detention centers.\n\nConsistent with the TVPRA, Congress has funded, and ORR administered, robust legal services to unaccompanied children under past Republican and Democratic administrations alike. Counsel for children should have at a bare minimum, experience and knowledge of the complex laws, policies, and dynamics of the intersection of immigration and child welfare law. Beyond the professional duty of legal competence, there is long-standing concern about adequate representation by qualified counsel for this vulnerable population, which is why Congress authorized and funded the program originally. HHS has yet to clarify how a 26-person Houston-based law firm will be able to adequately satisfy the TVPRA\u2019s mandate to provide representation for unaccompanied children in ORR\u2019s care and custody.\n\nFor these reasons and our deep concern regarding the treatment and protection of unaccompanied children, we call for an independent, timely, transparent, and public investigation at both the state12 and federal level into this award, with the full cooperation of ORR and HHS.\n\nWe request the following information and responses to questions by August 25, 2026.\n\nPlease provide:\n\nNames of all legal services providers considered for this cooperative agreement. Please include the type of provider (e.g., law firm, nonprofit) and their qualifications.\n\nA copy of the firm\u2019s application for the award.\n\nA copy of the cooperative agreement and justification for single-source funding.\n\nAll communications between employees of the firm and agency personnel at ORR and HHS.\n\nCopies of the merits determination for this agreement and the compliance justification for why the agreement is in line with the grants policy agreement.\n\nQuestions:\n\nNothing in this agreement discusses how children who were already represented will be supported by the firm or how such children will be transferred to attorneys of the firm.\n\nWhat is the firm\u2019s plan to ensure adequate continuity, experience, and knowledge in taking these cases, including its anticipated case-per-attorney ratio?\n\nWhat, if any, subcontractors will the firm employ or plan to employ to handle the workload?\n\nDescribe the firm\u2019s coordination, if any, with the supplemental cooperative agreement awardee, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.\n\nThere are currently only two attorneys at the firm listed as having any immigration experience. How is the cooperative agreement expected to ensure proper legal representation of approximately 1,800 children in ORR custody?\n\nWill firm attorneys be required to convey a represented child\u2019s sensitive personal information, or information of the represented child\u2019s family members or prospective sponsors, to ORR or DHS without specific and credible reason to believe such information-sharing is in the best interest of the represented child?\n\nPlease explain what the firm is expected to share with ORR or HHS, including who will have access to such information, the cadence by which that information will be shared, and the purpose of such information-sharing.\n\nPlease also explain how the firm will be in compliance with ABA Model Rule 1.6 and Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct 1.05 and 1.06, involving a client\u2019s informed consent.\n\nHow will this firm be handling \u2018Know Your Rights\u2019 presentations and legal consultations? How will they be providing these services to children not in Texas? Please clarify whether these services will be provided in-person or virtually.\n\nSincerely,", 1, "2026-08-13T06:17:16Z", "2026-08-13T06:18:13Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.murray.senate.gov/senators-to-rfk-jr-why-was-a-trump-aligned-firm-with-no-immigration-experience-considered-for-no-bid-contract-to-represent-unaccompanied-children/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 3.2917908392846584, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}