Nine hours in front of a computer: An 11-year-old waits his turn in a mass hearing for migrant minors

José waited nine hours in front of a computer for his virtual hearing before an immigration judge. He is 11 years old, and there were 25 children on the screen alongside him. He was the youngest at the mass preliminary hearing, one of the tools the Donald Trump administration has been using since May 2026, according to attorneys and advocacy groups, to speed up the deportation process for a larger number of migrants at the same time. In this case, children.

José and his father arrived at the home of an activist at 7:30 a.m. on a day in July, where she helped them log into the federal court system from somewhere on the U.S. East Coast. She is recounting the story anonymously, using a pseudonym for the boy and withholding their location for fear of jeopardizing the immigration cases of the entire family. An immigration attorney involved in José’s case verified her account.

“At 2:00 p.m. he was telling me, ‘Oh ma’am, we’ve already been here six and a half hours.’ He joked about it; he didn’t complain. He acted like a real champ,” the activist says in a video call. By order of the judge, José had to remain visible on screen throughout the hearing, like the other children, some of whom were unaccompanied minors attending from government shelters.

In José’s case, the activist fetched him food and, at one point, after seeing him rest his head on the table from exhaustion, brought him a pillow so he could rest. On the screen, another child had already fallen asleep with his head resting on his right hand.

The group was divided between those who had legal representation, about half the children, and those who did not, and their cases were reviewed in that order. José’s hearing was the second-to-last of the day. It began at 4 p.m. and lasted 15 minutes.

The judge asked whether he had a lawyer. He said no. Who was accompanying him? He said his father. The judge explained the process he would face, provided instructions, and granted him a few more days to obtain legal representation and evidence to support his asylum claim.

“He’s a minor. He didn’t even understand what any of that was about,” the activist says.

Since late May, the National Immigrant Justice Center has observed preliminary hearings, the first stage of immigration proceedings, in courts in Chicago and Indianapolis where between 30 and as many as 100 people were scheduled at the same time, many of them without legal counsel. In some cases, attorneys witnessed judges handing migrants forms that, if completed, could accelerate or alter the course of their deportation proceedings.

In the case of children who have just left a shelter — like José — or who are in federal custody, activists warn that the consequences for those without a lawyer could be even worse.

“The consequences are devastating”

José and his 15-year-old sister arrived with their mother at the U.S. southern border in May 2025. They wanted to reunite with their father, who had migrated to the United States years earlier. But on arrival, they were detained and the mother was deported immediately. The children were taken to a shelter run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), hundreds of miles from their father. The activist clearly remembers the siblings’ conversation in the car when she picked them up at the airport with their father after he regained custody.

“From the back seat, the girl said, ‘Oh dad, can you believe we’d already been there a year [in the shelter]?’ And the boy turned to her and corrected her: ‘Sorry, sis, 364 days.’ Somebody had been counting the days,” the activist recalls.

Until then, their father had only been able to speak with them briefly each day, and separately. The children were housed in different sections of the shelter based on gender.

The siblings were finally reunited with their father thanks to the legal assistance of pro bono attorneys from one of nearly 100 organizations that had received federal funding for years to represent migrant children. Those lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition that secured their release.

But on July 31, the government cut funding to those pro bono organizations after they refused to share data on the migrant children they represented in exchange for keeping their contracts. Thousands of minors, from infants to teenagers, are now at risk of losing that legal assistance in their immigration cases.

At a September 1 press conference, some of those organizations shared additional cases to illustrate the impact. A one-year-old child appeared without a lawyer at an immigration hearing in Arizona on August 18, where a judge instructed him to file an asylum application. In another court in Los Angeles on August 6, an unrepresented child requested voluntary departure, but a pro bono attorney who had spent years representing migrant children happened to be in the courtroom. She intervened and secured permission for the child to continue with their case.

“Five days later, a child in Texas wasn’t so lucky. There was no attorney in the room, and he gave up his immigration claims without truly understanding what he was accepting,” said Bilal Askaryar, communications director at the Acacia Center for Justice, the nonprofit organization that for years received government funding for the representation of minors and distributed it to partner organizations. “In just four weeks, the consequences have been devastating.”

In Chicago, Laura Smith, executive director of the Children’s Legal Center, said at the same press conference that seven of the children her organization represented between July and August, including kidnapping victims, children who witnessed the murder of their parents in their home countries, and children abandoned by their families, were deported without due process. She said the cases demonstrated the government’s intention to accelerate the deportation of migrant children as well.

“These are children who fled to the U.S. seeking protection from horrors no child should endure,” she said. “They are seven children with pending or approved applications under the law. What does this mean? That this administration is taking steps to return these children to their abusers, to traffickers, and to a country where they have no adult caregiver [...] These policies endanger the safety of minors and violate the laws meant to protect them.”

Since the expiration of the ORR’s contract with Acacia, it is unclear how the federal government is ensuring legal representation for children in immigration court. EL PAÍS asked the agency about the issue but received no response. As of August 31, 2026, ORR had 1,882 children in its custody, according to data published on its website.

Among the nearly 100 organizations that lost federal funding, some have closed their juvenile defense programs; others continue to represent children who were already clients but are not accepting new cases.

That is precisely what is happening with José. The pro bono attorney who filed his habeas corpus petition referred him to another organization in July, but it has been unable to take on his case because of budget constraints.

A network of volunteers

It is not the first time the activist telling José’s story has helped a migrant family. After the 2024 presidential election, she and a group of about 14 volunteers began educating members of their communities about their rights, how to stay safe, and organizing free workshops where attorneys could advise families.

The workload grew as arrests intensified, hearing dates were moved forward for dozens of migrants, and families were separated or deported. “It’s like a tsunami of bad news hitting them from every direction. It’s a tsunami of cruelty aimed at people who have done everything right,” she says.

The group also drives families to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) check-ins and accompanies them to appointments, helps them recover cars left behind on the street after a family member is arrested, retrieves belongings from apartments, and records enforcement operations on video. “If I were in their shoes, I’d want someone to hold my hand.”

That summer morning, the activist helped José’s father log into the virtual hearing and stayed with them patiently throughout the nine-hour wait. As the day went on, the boy’s father kept his boss updated on the progress of the hearing. He lost a full day of work.

After learning José’s story, the activist says she stopped thinking about her own needs and concerns and focused instead on providing him with a safe and welcoming environment. “The government is already doing everything it can to make following the law a miserable process.”

When the hearing finally ended, shortly before 5 p.m., the activist drove them home: “You simply do everything physically within your reach to make a child’s day better.”

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