Large contract savings claimed by DOGE defunds lawyers for vulnerable migrant kids

Children who trekked for over a month in the hopes of reaching the United States, play at a temporary shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, near the border with the US, on November 30, 2018. (GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP via Getty Images))

One of the largest claimed savings from a contract canceled by the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) involves cutting off funds for the legal representation of thousands of unaccompanied minors. The Elon Musk-led austerity initiative says it saved taxpayers $367 million by partially canceling the contract, which ensures vulnerable children have representation in immigration courts, according to data compiled by Musk Watch’s DOGE Tracker.

It’s unclear how DOGE arrived at that total. The actual savings for the contract terminated by DOGE is about $46 million, which Musk Watch calculates by subtracting the obligated funding from the value of the contract when it was canceled. Even using DOGE's typical calculation, which includes unexercised government options as "savings," would yield less than $100 million in cuts. DOGE did not respond to a request for comment.

The contract — initially terminated in March — was between the Departments of the Interior and Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Acacia Center for Justice, a nonprofit that funds legal aid groups representing 26,000 unaccompanied minors, according to the Washington Post. Defunding legal representation for immigrant children could increase the risk of children being sent to places where they could be subjected to human trafficking or other abuses. DOGE claims to be canceling contracts that constitute "waste, fraud, and abuse."

As has been the case for many of the cost-saving measures taken by DOGE, its effort to cut off funding for legal representation for children has been challenged in court. On Tuesday, Araceli Martínez-Olguín, a U.S. district judge in Northern California, issued a temporary restraining order requiring the Trump administration to restore funding to Acacia through April 16. The lawsuit against HHS was brought by 11 organizations whose funding was cut following DOGE’s changes to the Acacia contract.

“Terminating funding for direct legal representation for unaccompanied children, without any plan to ensure continuity in representation,” wrote Martínez-Olguín, “potentially violates Congress’s express directive in the [Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act] and [Office of Refugee Resettlement’s] own commitments in the Foundational Rule.”

The “Foundational Rule,” implemented by HHS in 2024, standardizes how the agency cares for unaccompanied migrant children. The rule was put in place to ensure HHS's compliance with several laws, including the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008.

Despite Martínez-Olguín’s order, Acacia has warned that it is extremely difficult for lawyers to provide unaccompanied minors with effective representation while funding remains in limbo. “We’re still stuck in this impossible situation where the attorneys that work with these vulnerable kids have no clarity,” Acacia spokesperson Bilal Askaryar told the Associated Press.

For its part, the Trump administration has argued that the contract is a “discretionary, resource-dependent program,” meaning the executive has the unilateral authority to halt it. The administration previously issued a stop-work order to Acacia’s partners in January but was stymied by a temporary restraining order from a federal judge in Rhode Island.

DOGE’s March cuts to the Acacia grants came a few weeks after it gutted the HHS office that handles complaints about the federal government's treatment of migrant children. While HHS maintains that the Unaccompanied Children Office of the Ombuds is still open, Bloomberg News reported that nearly all its employees were let go in February.

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Musk bashes Trump's trade advisor in late-night rant

While objecting to the comprehensive tariffs announced by Donald Trump last week, Elon Musk scorned the president’s top trade adviser in a late-night outburst on his social media platform. “He ain’t built shit,” the Tesla chief wrote in a post on X, referring to White House senior trade counselor Peter Navarro. Musk has since deleted that post, which he shared at around 1 a.m. Eastern Time on Sunday. But he left up a pair of other posts criticizing Navarro.

“[Navarro’s] PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing,” Musk wrote in response to a clip of Navarro explaining the tariffs on CNN. Musk, who also questioned Navarro’s “ego/brains,” then expressed agreement with a quote from Thomas Sowell, in which the economist said, “In every disaster throughout American history, there always seems to be a man from Harvard in the middle of it.”

Navarro, using a conciliatory tone, responded to Musk’s attacks by linking them to Tesla. “Elon — when he’s in his DOGE lane — is great,” Navarro said during a Sunday appearance on Fox News. “But we understand what’s going on here. Elon sells cars. He’s simply protecting his own interests… [Tesla gets] a lot of their content from China, Mexico, Japan, and Taiwan and elsewhere.”

Musk’s disparaging remarks about Navarro came shortly after the billionaire exhorted Europe and the U.S. to enter a free trade agreement. "I hope it is agreed that both Europe and the United States should move, ideally, in my view, to a zero tariff situation, effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America," he said on Saturday during a remote appearance before a conference hosted by Italy’s deputy prime minister. Musk also called for a freedom-of-movement agreement between North American and European countries, adding, “If [peope] wish to work in Europe or wish to work in America, they should be allowed to do so, in my view. So that has certainly been my advice to the president.” (Earlier in the week, Musk endorsed a post in which U.S. Senator Mike Lee wrote, “Europeans despise free speech. Let’s leave NATO.”)

Under Trump’s new trade policy, E.U. countries face 25% tariffs on imported cars, as well as steel and aluminium, and 20% tariffs on most other goods.