Justice Department Dismantles Six-Decade Program Helping Immigrant Legal Representation

A Quiet But Devastating Change to Immigration Legal Services

In a move that has sent shockwaves through the immigration advocacy community, the Justice Department has effectively dismantled a program that has served as a lifeline for low-income immigrants for more than sixty years. The Recognition and Accreditation program, housed within the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, has long been the gateway through which non-attorney representatives receive authorization to help immigrants navigate the complex legal system. These representatives, who work primarily for faith-based organizations like Catholic Charities and Jewish Family Services, provide crucial assistance ranging from helping with citizenship applications to representing immigrants in deportation proceedings. What makes this development particularly concerning is how quietly it was executed—with no public announcement and minimal explanation from officials. Multiple sources familiar with the situation have revealed that the program’s senior attorneys were abruptly reassigned last week, leaving behind only two support staff members who lack the legal authority to approve or renew any accreditation applications. This essentially freezes a program that currently supports more than 2,600 accredited non-attorneys working across over 900 recognized programs nationwide, leaving thousands of vulnerable immigrants without access to the affordable legal help they desperately need.

The Human Impact: Who This Really Affects

The dismantling of this program isn’t just an administrative reshuffling—it represents a potential catastrophe for some of America’s most vulnerable residents. The accredited representatives who depend on this program serve immigrants who cannot afford traditional legal counsel, filling a critical gap in the justice system. According to Anna Gallagher, executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC), her organization’s 400 affiliates alone provided legal services to over half a million people in 2025. These aren’t just numbers on a page; they’re real families trying to become citizens, refugees seeking protection from persecution, children separated from parents, and workers trying to establish legal status. The majority of accredited representatives are authorized to help immigrants deal with the Department of Homeland Security as they petition for benefits like green cards, naturalization, or humanitarian protections. A smaller but equally important group has full accreditation, allowing them to represent immigrants in Justice Department immigration courts—often the difference between deportation and staying with family in the United States. Gallagher’s assessment is blunt but accurate: “This program saves lives and it also helps alleviate the backlogs in the immigration system.” She emphasizes that traditional lawyers simply cannot cover the enormous need, and any attempt to slow down or dismantle this program will only worsen an already stressed and broken system.

The Sudden Reassignment and Its Troubling Implications

The manner in which this program was gutted raises serious questions about the Justice Department’s intentions and respect for due process. The handful of senior attorneys who operated the program received abrupt reassignment orders last week from Jamee Comans, the acting Assistant Director for the Office of Policy, which administers the accreditation program. Comans, previously an immigration judge in Louisiana, made headlines last September when she ordered the deportation of pro-Palestinian protester and former Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil. When these experienced attorneys showed up to their new work locations on Monday, they discovered they’d been reassigned to work as entry-level law clerks—positions typically reserved for recent law school graduates. This represents not just a waste of expertise and experience, but what many see as a deliberate attempt to undermine the program without formally ending it. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on what they termed “personnel matters,” though a government official insisted to CBS News that the program “isn’t ending or being abolished” and would continue as a “longstanding program established by regulation.” However, actions speak louder than words, and removing all the senior attorneys who actually run the program while leaving only support staff effectively paralyzes it, regardless of official statements about its continuation.

Part of a Broader Pattern of Restriction

This move doesn’t exist in isolation—it’s part of a broader pattern of actions the Justice Department has taken to make the immigration legal system more difficult to navigate. Over the past year, the department has systematically dismantled various support structures for immigrants. They removed the head of the Office of Legal Access Programs and eliminated most of its legal orientation services that helped vulnerable immigrants, including unaccompanied children and families, understand and navigate the legal system. More than 100 immigration judges have been fired or removed, creating additional backlogs and uncertainty. Last fall, the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals issued a mandate requiring anyone who crossed the border unlawfully to be held without bond—a decision that has strained government resources and flooded federal district courts with habeas corpus petitions from detained immigrants seeking release. Earlier this month, new rules were imposed making it much harder for immigrants to appeal adverse rulings, a change that lawyers predict will soon overwhelm the federal appellate courts. When viewed together, these actions paint a picture of a systematic effort to restrict immigrants’ access to justice and their ability to effectively navigate the legal system, regardless of the merit of their cases or their circumstances.

The Faith-Based Foundation and Religious Freedom Concerns

The Recognition and Accreditation program has deep roots in America’s faith-based community, making its dismantling particularly troubling from a religious freedom perspective. The program, created through federal regulation in the 1950s, emerged because religious organizations felt a pastoral and moral calling to help low-income individuals navigate the bureaucratic maze of immigration law. This wasn’t about politics or ideology—it was about living out religious values of compassion, welcoming strangers, and helping the vulnerable. Peggy Gleason, a lawyer at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (which helps train accredited representatives), doesn’t mince words: “The reason these programs started in the 1950s is because the churches and faith-based organizations felt they had a pastoral duty to help this group of people.” She characterizes the removal of all the lawyers who work for the program as “an attack on freedom of religion.” This framing highlights an often-overlooked dimension of immigration policy—that restrictions on immigration services don’t just affect immigrants themselves, but also impinge on the ability of religious communities to practice their faith according to their conscience. Organizations like Catholic Charities, Jewish Family Services, and countless other faith-based groups have made serving immigrants a core part of their religious mission. By gutting the program that enables their work, the Justice Department is effectively preventing these organizations from carrying out what they see as their religious duty.

The Future of Fairness in Immigration Courts

Greg Chen, senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, situates this development within the larger question of justice and fairness in America’s immigration system. He describes the removal of staff from the accreditation program as “one more nail in the coffin to how the courts can operate fairly and be expected to be a balanced, impartial institution of justice that Americans expect out of our immigration courts and all courts nationwide.” His point is fundamental: a legal system cannot be fair if one side lacks access to competent representation. Chen emphasizes that accredited representatives are vital because most immigrants “don’t understand the legal system, let alone immigration law, and also are going to have limited English capacity to be able to navigate a highly complex process through the courts.” Without these representatives, immigrants will increasingly appear in court alone, facing trained government attorneys without any advocate of their own—a scenario that makes a mockery of the concept of due process. As of Monday afternoon, sources reported that staff received word the accreditation program is being shifted to a different office called the Public Resources Program, which is already understaffed. Whether this represents a genuine attempt to preserve the program or simply another step in its gradual elimination remains to be seen. What’s clear is that the current trajectory threatens to fundamentally transform America’s immigration courts from institutions of justice into assembly lines for deportation, where outcomes are predetermined by vast disparities in resources and representation. For the immigrants who depend on this system, and for the faith communities committed to helping them, the stakes couldn’t be higher.