Trump pals are cashing in on migrant kids’ suffering
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/8/7/800080664/immigration/trump-pals-are-cashing-in-on-migrant-kids-suffering/
Trump pals are cashing in on migrant kids’ suffering
The Trump administration just managed to combine two of its favorite things into one horrifying Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of Garbage: hurting migrant children and showering unqualified cronies with taxpayer dollars. And unsurprisingly, everyone except those cronies is going to come out far, far worse.
Meet Texas-based Burke Law Group, which now has $150 million to represent unaccompanied migrant children detained in shelters by President Donald Trump’s deportation machine.
Burke Law got the contract last week, after the administration deliberately let lapse the contracts of legal aid groups that actually do care about keeping kids safe and preventing them from being deported or imprisoned. Now, unaccompanied migrants get … whatever this is supposed to be.
Of the 25 lawyers employed by Burke Law, a whopping two are listed as having any immigration experience. But even those two lawyers only joined the firm this July. The firm didn’t get around to updating its website to share all of their exciting expertise with working with unaccompanied minors, defending people against orders of removal, and asylum applications until Aug. 3, or two days before the announcement they got that fat $150 million.
One of those extremely great and cool and experienced attorneys also seems to be simultaneously running a different law firm, however, which doesn’t really make it look like Burke Law is primed and ready to handle a big influx of immigration cases.
The real reason this firm got the nod is that it was founded by Marcella Burke, who served in the Trump administration at both the Department of Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency. Also there, with an equal lack of immigration experience, is Justin Shubow, who the Associated Press describes as “the leading supporter of Trump’s efforts to require federal buildings to adhere to classical and traditional architectural styles, and a former Trump appointee to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.”
Also there’s Ilya Shapiro as “senior counsel.” As with Burke and Shubow, Shapiro has no experience representing unaccompanied minors or anything of the sort. Rather, Shapiro is known primarily for being an absolute gutter racist whom Georgetown Law placed on leave after he whined about former President Joe Biden’s choice of Ketanji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court. Seemingly mad that Biden didn’t ask him, Ilya Shapiro, noted racist random law guy, what he thought, and failed to choose Sri Srinivasan, Shapiro’s pick, Shapiro decided to tweet about it: “But alas doesn’t fit into the latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get lesser black woman.”
What a treat this guy is, huh? Definitely can see him as someone deeply concerned about protecting the rights of migrant kids of color.
Perhaps those kids will be helped by a different lawyer at the firm. How about Joshua Wright? Wright is a former Federal Trade Commission member and Trump crony whose deep experience in facing sexual harassment claims from eight women spanning two decades will no doubt come in super-valuable in helping migrant children.
This is such a transparent attempt to ensure that an actual lack of expertise will lead to correspondingly worse results for actual factual little kids, as well as a transparent attempt to remove from the playing field the legal aid groups actually committed to this work.
Even the immigration lawyers Burke Law added don’t do this type of immigration law. One dude, Kyle Farmer, has done employment-related immigration work for agricultural and construction companies. Another, Andrea Laprade, used to be at a white-shoe law firm doing securitization law, but reinvented herself a whopping five months ago as an immigration and business lawyer. She did not yet, however, reinvent herself as far as where she is admitted to practice, so she’s not even licensed to appear in Texas or other border states where most of these cases are heard.
Did I mention this was a sole-source contract? In other words, this is the only representation the government is now paying for, as far as unaccompanied minors, and likely only because it is required by law to facilitate legal representation for them. Sure, the law can require representation, but that doesn’t mean the administration is going to ensure it’s meaningful or helpful representation.
The administration has already made it very clear it doesn’t like the efforts of lawyers who actually do care about doing this work. Indeed, those folks have had their offices stormed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Health and Human Services agents in an attempt to intimidate them. But why bother with intimidation here and there when you can just wipe effective legal representation off the map and give the money to some Trump pals who are neither capable nor interested in helping unaccompanied migrant minors?
Related | Trump refuses to move on after massive fail on birthright citizenship
At the moment, there’s a very small silver lining, as this contract covers only the roughly 1,800 unaccompanied minors who are housed in shelters, not the 22,000 living with sponsors or family members. However, there’s no information at all yet as to who the administration proposes represent the much larger latter group.
Maybe the Trumpy law firm will add another fake immigration lawyer and just call it a day. No matter what choice is made, this is just another in the unforgivable, shameful behavior of an administration that abducts five-year-olds and went all the way to the Supreme Court to try to wipe out birthright citizenship. Moral monsters, every last one of them.
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