Leftist Group Gets Millions of Taxpayer Dollars to Help Illegal Aliens After Trump Order Bans It

The Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee is promoting his investigation of a leftist group that received massive amounts of taxpayer dollars from the Biden administration to help illegal immigrants while omitting that the Trump administration kept the cash flowing. In fact, a $200 million program that gives illegal alien minors free lawyers was briefly cancelled and quietly reinstated by the Trump administration within days, though there is no mention of the abrupt about face in the probe announced last week by Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, a former collegiate wrestling champion serving his tenth term in the House.

Shortly after President Trump issued an executive order, back in mid-February 2025, ensuring taxpayer resources are used to protect the interest of American citizens and not to incentivize or support illegal immigration, the $200 million allocation for migrant kids got axed. The money was going to the same leftwing nonprofit that Jordan’s committee is investigating, though the veteran lawmaker’s new audit only mentions that it is focusing on how the open borders group has spent hundreds of millions of dollars awarded under Biden-Harris. The target is the Acacia Center for Justice, a Washington D.C. nonprofit that partners with a national network of human rights defenders to provide legal defense to immigrants at risk of detention or deportation. “Acacia envisions a nation with a transformed immigration system that embodies freedom from detention, due process, and equal protection, where every person facing the prospect of exile and community separation has access to meaningful legal defense,” the group writes on its website, which assures its network of attorneys fight for all immigrants regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, race or previous interaction with the criminal system.

Just a few days after suspending the $200 million annual program that funds the Acacia Center’s initiative to provide illegal alien minors with free legal assistance, the Trump administration quietly restored it with no further explanation. The center’s executive director, Shaina Aber, celebrated the speedy reinstatement of the government’s multi-million-dollar UAC defense program, saying in a press release that “it is unconscionable” that children who arrive in the U.S. unaccompanied by parents or legal guardians should be forced to represent themselves in immigration court. The hefty award is part of a billion-dollar commitment launched in 2022 by a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agency known as Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to legally represent underage migrants, known as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), who cross the border without a parent. Over 600,000 UAC have crossed illegally into the U.S. through Mexico since 2019 and Uncle Sam spends hundreds of millions of dollars to house, educate, feed, entertain and medically treat them. Under Trump’s America First policies—and his executive order banning the use of taxpayer resources to incentivize or support illegal immigration—that was supposed to change.

While the House Judiciary Committee probe may provide some much-needed accountability, it does not appear that it will stop taxpayer dollars from going to the leftist group as the president’s executive order seems to imply. In a letter to Aber, the Acacia Center for Justice Executive Director, Jordan writes that he is requesting information about her nonprofit’s efforts to help illegal aliens remain in the United States at the expense of the American taxpayer. The congressman directs Aber to provide the House Judiciary Committee with information involving public funding under the Biden-Harris administration without mentioning that the money has kept flowing under Trump. Among the required information, to be provided by Feb. 13, is the total amount of federal funding that the center has received by year, how much it has spent on lobbying Congress and the total number of cases in which it represented a UAC.

So far the Acacia Center for Justice has responded to the congressional probe with a statement reaffirming that it is proud to advocate for access to justice and legal representation for people, including children, who are subject to detention and deportation proceedings. “The Unaccompanied Children Program has received bipartisan funding since the George W. Bush administration and during both Trump administrations,” the statement reads. The Trump administration has awarded Acacia well over $100 million in the aftermath of cutting and promptly reestablishing the UAC legal defense funding. Maybe the House Judiciary Committee will provide the American public some answers involving the administration’s odd actions surrounding the ongoing allotments to defend those who have entered the country illegally.