Immigration law is complicated for anyone. For a child navigating it alone, without a parent, without a lawyer, and often without fluency in English, it can feel impossible.
Legal advocacy for immigrant children is the work of ensuring that children are not left to face that system by themselves. It takes many forms: a Child Advocate sitting with a child in court, an attorney filing a brief to protect thousands of children at once, or an organization pushing for systemic policy change. All of it matters. And all of it starts with the same belief: children deserve to be treated as children, not as cases to be processed and resolved.
Why Immigrant Children Need Legal Advocates
Within the U.S. immigration system, children have few special protections. Most are required to defend themselves in court, with or without a lawyer, against government attorneys who argue for their deportation. Immigration proceedings are designed for adults. The language is complex, the stakes are high, and the consequences of a misstep can be permanent.
Many unaccompanied immigrant children have already survived extraordinary circumstances, including violence, persecution, trafficking, family separation, or the trauma of migration itself. Asking them to navigate a federal legal system alone, without support, compounds that harm.
Legal advocacy exists to change that. It ensures that someone is in the child’s corner, someone whose job is to understand the child’s situation, protect their rights, and make sure their voice is heard.
What Legal Advocacy for Immigrant Children Looks Like
Legal advocacy is not one single thing. It operates at different levels and through different roles, all working toward the same goal: ensuring immigrant children are treated fairly and protected under the law.
Child Advocacy: The Individual Level
At the most direct level, legal advocacy means standing with an individual child. The Young Center’s Child Advocates are trained volunteers and staff who are appointed to the most vulnerable unaccompanied immigrant children in federal custody. They are not attorneys; their role is distinct. They focus entirely on understanding what is in that child’s best interests and communicating that perspective to immigration judges, asylum officers, and government officials through written best interests determinations (BIDs).
This is advocacy at its most personal: learning a child’s story, accompanying them to hearings, and making sure that every decision-maker who touches their case understands who that child is as a human being, not just as a case number.
Legal Representation: The Case Level
Legal representation means having an attorney argue a child’s case in immigration court or before an asylum officer. An attorney can file applications for relief, present evidence, cross-examine witnesses, and make legal arguments on the child’s behalf.
In the United States, immigrant children are not guaranteed a government-appointed attorney, even if they cannot afford one. The majority of children who do receive legal representation rely on government-funded legal services or pro bono attorneys. When those services are cut, as happened in 2025 when the Trump administration eliminated funding for legal services for 26,000 unaccompanied children, children are left to stand in court alone. The Young Center filed an amicus brief opposing that decision, documenting the direct harm it caused to children.
As one Young Center Child Advocate witnessed firsthand: a 14-year-old girl broke down in tears in a courthouse lobby when she was told she would not have a lawyer and would need to stand up in court alone. That moment captures what is lost when legal representation is denied.
Impact Litigation: The Systems Level
Beyond individual cases, legal advocacy for immigrant children includes strategic litigation, using the courts to challenge harmful policies and establish protections that benefit children broadly. The Young Center’s Litigation Program engages in this work by litigating cases, filing amicus briefs, and participating in cases as experts or through declarations. The program’s goal is systemic change, ensuring that courts consider the experiences and perspectives of immigrant children in decisions that affect them at scale.
This work is directly informed by what the Young Center’s Child Advocates see in the field. When a pattern of harm emerges across individual cases, including children being detained unnecessarily, legal services being cut, or policies that fail to consider children’s best interests, litigation becomes a tool for addressing that harm at its root.
Policy Advocacy: The Legislative Level
Legal advocacy also happens outside of courtrooms. Policy advocacy means working to change the laws, regulations, and practices that govern how immigrant children are treated. It means engaging with lawmakers, submitting public comments on proposed regulations, participating in coalition advocacy, and ensuring that the voices and experiences of children inform the policies that affect them.
The Young Center’s policy work is grounded in its direct services and the stories of individual children it advocates for every day. When policymakers understand what it looks like for a child to navigate immigration court alone, or what it means for a child’s safety when detention is prolonged, policy arguments carry the weight of lived reality.
The Principle Behind It All
Every form of legal advocacy for immigrant children, whether it happens in a shelter, a courtroom, or a congressional hearing room, is grounded in the same principle: the best interests of the child. This standard, enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and recognized in U.S. child welfare law, requires that a child’s safety, well-being, and long-term needs take priority in every decision that affects them.
In a system designed for legal outcomes, legal advocates for immigrant children exist to hold that principle in place. To remind courts, agencies, and lawmakers that behind every case is a child. And that every child deserves someone asking: what is truly best for them?
How You Can Support Legal Advocacy for Immigrant Children
The Young Center’s legal advocacy work is powered by volunteers, donors, and a community of people who believe children deserve better. You can support this work by becoming a Volunteer Child Advocate, standing directly with a child through their immigration proceedings, or by making a donation to sustain the programs that make this work possible. Learn more about the Young Center’s mission and approach to advocacy for immigrant children.
