Justice Department rescinds stop-work order for programmes that provide guidance in immigration courts
Published:Monday | February 3, 2025 | 7:24 PM
Two days after non-profit groups sued the federal government over a stop-work order targeting programmes that provide information and guidance to people facing deportation, the US Justice Department reversed course and ordered that funding to the programmes be restored.
The four federally funded programmes educate people in immigration courts and detention centres about their rights and the complicated legal process. The Justice Department instructed the non-profits on January 22 “to stop work immediately” on the programs, citing an executive order targeting illegal immigration that President Donald Trump signed the day of his second inauguration.
A coalition of non-profit groups filed a federal lawsuit Friday challenging the stop-work order and seeking to immediately restore access to the programmes. The Justice Department rescinded its stop-work order for all four programs Sunday afternoon.
The non-profit organizations, which had expressed concern that the absence of the programs left people to navigate the system on their own, had worried that due process rights would be violated and the backlogged immigration courts would be further bogged down.
The effects of the stop-work order were already being felt in the just over a week since it had entered into effect.
Ruby Robinson, managing attorney at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, went to Detroit immigration court to post a notice saying the help desk the organization ran there was not available. That meant turning away people in the waiting room the help desk would have otherwise been able to help.
Despite the loss of federal funding, staff from the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights went to a Virginia detention centre to provide services the day after the stop-work order. They had spoken to about two dozen people when detention centre staff escorted them out, telling them they could no longer provide those services, Amica executive director Michael Lukens said.
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