Over 425,000 Kids (ALL Non-White) in US Face Deportation Hearings without Lawyers

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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. [MORE]