The Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee is promoting his investigation of a leftist group that received massive amounts of taxpayer dollars from the Biden administration to help illegal immigrants while omitting that the Trump administration kept the cash flowing. In fact, a $200 million program that gives illegal alien minors free lawyers was briefly cancelled and quietly reinstated by the Trump administration within days, though there is no mention of the abrupt about face in the probe announced last week by Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, a former collegiate wrestling champion serving his tenth term in the House.
Shortly after President Trump issued an executive order, back in mid-February 2025, ensuring taxpayer resources are used to protect the interest of American citizens and not to incentivize or support illegal immigration, the $200 million allocation for migrant kids got axed. The money was going to the same leftwing nonprofit that Jordan’s committee is investigating, though the veteran lawmaker’s new audit only mentions that it is focusing on how the open borders group has spent hundreds of millions of dollars awarded under Biden-Harris. The target is the Acacia Center for Justice, a Washington D.C. nonprofit that partners with a national network of human rights defenders to provide legal defense to immigrants at risk of detention or deportation. “Acacia envisions a nation with a transformed immigration system that embodies freedom from detention, due process, and equal protection, where every person facing the prospect of exile and community separation has access to meaningful legal defense,” the group writes on its website, which assures its network of attorneys fight for all immigrants regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, race or previous interaction with the criminal system.
Just a few days after suspending the $200 million annual program that funds the Acacia Center’s initiative to provide illegal alien minors with free legal assistance, the Trump administration quietly restored it with no further explanation. The center’s executive director, Shaina Aber, celebrated the speedy reinstatement of the government’s multi-million-dollar UAC defense program, saying in a press release that “it is unconscionable” that children who arrive in the U.S. unaccompanied by parents or legal guardians should be forced to represent themselves in immigration court. The hefty award is part of a billion-dollar commitment launched in 2022 by a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agency known as Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to legally represent underage migrants, known as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), who cross the border without a parent. Over 600,000 UAC have crossed illegally into the U.S. through Mexico since 2019 and Uncle Sam spends hundreds of millions of dollars to house, educate, feed, entertain and medically treat them. Under Trump’s America First policies—and his executive order banning the use of taxpayer resources to incentivize or support illegal immigration—that was supposed to change.