Over 425,000 Kids in U.S. Face Deportation Hearings Without Lawyers

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Over 425,000 Kids in U.S. Face Deportation Hearings Without Lawyers<br>A new analysis of federal immigration data found that 57% of children with deportation orders in the U.S. do not have access to an attorney.

Mehr Sher<br>Jun 26, 2026

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A child plays on the floor in the halls of immigration court at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building in New York City, on March 05, 2026. Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images.<br>In April, a 10-year-old Venezuelan boy named Wilfredo Hoyos-Gomez appeared in immigration court in Texas, unaccompanied and without a lawyer. His mother, Nexoli Anyis Gomez Bracho, was arrested during a traffic stop and has been in ICE custody in Houston since December.<br>Wilfredo entered the U.S. three years ago with his mother. She has a work permit, and their asylum cases are pending. They have no other family in the U.S., and Gomez’s former employer has been looking after Wilfredo while he faces deportation hearings alone.<br>“I was nervous because it was my first time going to a court,” Wilfredo told Univision after his hearing. The DHS is seeking to deport him to Ecuador, a country where he knows no one and has never been.<br>Wilfredo is one of hundreds of thousands of children facing pending immigration cases without legal representation nationwide, according to federal immigration data. His case offers a rare glimpse into a system operating outside of public scrutiny. While technically open by law, immigration hearings for children are effectively blocked from public access.<br>A new analysis of federal immigration data, conducted by the Vera Institute of Justice in response to questions from Drop Site News, shows that children like Hoyos-Gomez are not an anomaly but part of a wider pattern. More than half of all children facing pending immigration cases are doing so without legal representation, according to data from the Department of Justice. The analysis shows that legal representation appears to be one of the most important factors shaping children’s outcomes in immigration court.<br>Of 751,861 children with pending removal cases, 57%—or 425,093 children—lacked legal representation, according to the most recent data. This rate is slightly higher than that of adults, 54% of whom are unrepresented in immigration court in pending cases. Nearly two thirds of children’s cases that are still pending were initiated by the federal government in 2023, under the Biden administration. The gap widens in completed cases. Last year, 64% of children’s completed immigration cases went forward without legal representation.<br>The data, from the DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), indicates that children under the age of 18 are increasingly appearing in immigration court without lawyers at a time when deportation orders are surging as the Trump administration attempts to deport more than a million people annually and immigration relief is becoming harder to obtain. The Vera Institute analysis could not determine how many of these children are unaccompanied, because EOIR data does not distinguish between accompanied and unaccompanied children.<br>Former judges, attorneys, and advocates interviewed by Drop Site describe an immigration court system under mounting pressure to move cases quickly, straining due process protections for the most vulnerable.<br>“The scale is alarming,” said Neil Agarwal, the principal data scientist who led the analysis at the Vera Institute of Justice. These figures reflect the administration’s coordinated effort to pursue its “mass deportation scheme,” he added.<br>The Justice Department and ICE did not respond to requests for comment. In an emailed statement, a spokesperson with the Department of Homeland Security claimed that ICE does not separate families. “Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates,” a DHS spokesperson said, adding that the U.S. encourages voluntary departures and if people don’t choose to do so they will be arrested and deported. “The United States is offering illegal aliens $2,600 and a free flight to self-deport now.”<br>“Any possible way to be harsh and unforgiving is being utilized by the government at this point,” said former immigration judge Dana Leigh Marks, who presided over cases for more than three decades in San Francisco. “It makes me ashamed.”<br>“I don’t know if...