The refugee resettlement office intends to award up to $150m to a single Houston law firm to represent unaccompanied children in immigration proceedings
The Office of Refugee Resettlement plans to give one law firm up to $150,000,000.
A notice filed with the Federal Register at 16:15 Eastern on Tuesday announces the intent to award a single-source cooperative agreement to Burke Law Group, PLLC, a firm the notice describes as headquartered in Houston, Texas. The proposed period of performance runs from 15 August 2026 to 14 August 2027. Publication is set for 6 August.
Single-source means no competition. The notice says so in its action line.
What the money buys
The award would pay for legal orientation, legal consultation and attorney-of-record representation for children in the office's care during proceedings before the Executive Office for Immigration Review and in hearings before United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. The document uses the statutory term, unaccompanied alien children.
It would also cover what the notice calls limited discharge-related legal continuity planning and referral support, which is help connecting children leaving custody with legal resources outside it.
The notice states that the award would expand the office's capacity and complement existing funded legal services, and that it is intended to help address identified gaps in exactly those three services. It gives no further account of how the recipient was selected.
The authority, and the case underneath it
Three things are cited together as the basis for the requirement being met.
The first two are ordinary: 8 U.S.C. 1232(c)(5), and the department's own regulation at 45 CFR 410.1309(a). The third is a preliminary injunction in Community Legal Services In East Palo Alto, et al. v. HHS, et al., No. 4:25-cv-02847, in the Northern District of California.
That places a twelve-month, nine-figure agreement inside live litigation. The notice does not describe the injunction's terms, does not say what stage the case has reached, and does not address what becomes of the agreement if the order is modified or dissolved.
The statutory authority paragraph reaches further back. It names section 462 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which moved custody of these children to the office, and the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, which requires the department, to the greatest extent practicable, to ensure the children have counsel.
What the notice does not contain
There is no number of children. There is no breakdown of the $150,000,000 by service, by location or by year, and no ceiling on any component.
The document is signed by Dawnisha Helland, Assistant Principal Deputy Director of the Unaccompanied Alien Children Bureau, and the contact given is Reina Byrd, Assistant Deputy Director at the same bureau.
