The Trump administration has awarded a second federal contract to legally represent unaccompanied immigrant children in court to an organization whose former leader was accused in federal court of human trafficking.
The Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of Refugee Resettlement announced late last week the award of a $158 million contract to Our Rescue, a nonprofit group focused on fighting child trafficking that has been accused by five women in a 2024 federal lawsuit of sex trafficking and forced labor, according to a Washington Post report. The lawsuit is ongoing.
The organization’s founder, Tim Ballard, is a former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employee who left his job over a decade ago with the mission of rescuing children from sex trafficking rings across Latin America and Asia. The 2023 film Sound of Freedom was inspired by his efforts and touted by Republicans as a look at the truth about children smuggled to the border.
Ballard stepped down from Our Rescue abruptly in 2023, shortly before the trafficking allegations came out. The organization’s website does not mention the newly awarded contract.
The award to Our Rescue is a departure from historic norms of awarding contracts to represent children in legal proceedings to well-known immigrant advocacy groups. Under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, the U.S. government is required to pay for and provide attorneys for single children in deportation proceedings.
Our Rescue’s new executive, Derek Benner, is the former leader of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations arm. As a nongovernmental organization, Our Rescue’s website states that it works “hand-in-hand with law enforcement, local communities, and global partners to confront exploitation and human trafficking head-on.”
“We help equip operations that identify and stop predators, and we walk with survivors every step of the way, offering care with dignity and compassion,” the group’s website states.
HHS awarded a similar contract worth $150 million to the small Texas firm Burke Law Group in early August. The group’s leader, Marcella Burke, was a former Trump administration appointee.
Children who cross the U.S.-Mexico border alone are initially apprehended by Border Patrol agents, then swiftly turned over to HHS ORR, which houses them in facilities for minors. Authorities will determine whether a child can be returned to a nearby home country, such as northern Central America or Mexico, or whether a family member or adult friend in the United States can take custody of them through deportation proceedings in court.
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The child is then required to appear in court, likely not for years due to the massive backlog, to account for entering the country without permission.
More than 500,000 unaccompanied immigrant children entered the U.S. from Mexico during the Biden administration, far more than during any previous administration. Many of those children are still waiting to appear in court and learn whether they will be required to leave the U.S.