Federal Appeals Court Rules: Children Facing Deportation Have No Right To Court-Appointed Lawyer

Immigrant children who enter the country illegally with their parents have no right to a government-appointed lawyer in court, an appeals court ruled Monday.

The ruling came in the case of a Honduran boy who arrived in the United States in 2014 at age 13 and was denied a stay of deportation.

The boy came to the U.S. with his mother and appeared in immigration court without a lawyer.

While criminal defendants, citizens or not, have the right to government-funded legal representation, that right doesn’t extend to immigration cases.

In the ruling, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Congress had not legislated to guarantee legal representation to minors in similar cases.

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