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HHS awarded a $150 million sole-source contract to a firm founded by Trump EPA/Interior appointees for migrant children's legal defense

On August 4, 2026, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement filed a Federal Register notice announcing intent to award a one-year, $150 million single-source cooperative agreement to Burke Law Group, a 26-employee Houston firm with no immigration-law practice area, to represent roughly 24,000 unaccompanied immigrant children in immigration court. The firm's founder, Marcella Burke, is a former Trump EPA and Interior Department appointee; co-founding partner Jeffrey Hall left the firm in late 2025 after Senate confirmation to lead an EPA enforcement office. The award follows the August 1, 2026 lapse of a longstanding, unpaid contract with a network of roughly 100 nonprofit legal-aid organizations that had represented the children for over two decades.

Part of: Trump Administration No-Bid and Irregular Contracts

Jurisdiction
Federal
Location
Washington, D.C.

Abuses documented

Actors

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement announced on August 4, 2026, in a Federal Register notice, its intent to award a one-year, $150 million single-source cooperative agreement to Burke Law Group, PLLC, a Houston law firm, to provide legal orientation, legal consultation, and attorney-of-record representation for unaccompanied immigrant children in immigration proceedings, effective August 15, 2026. Burke Law Group has 26 employees and no attorney listing immigration law as a practice area; its stated practice areas include administrative law, white-collar defense, commercial litigation, and securities litigation, according to ABC News.

The firm's founder and managing partner, Marcella Burke, previously served in the Trump administration as an appointee at the EPA and the Department of the Interior. Co-founding partner Jeffrey Hall left the firm in late 2025 after the Senate confirmed him as EPA's assistant administrator for the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. The Federal Register notice cites 8 U.S.C. 1232(c)(5) and a preliminary injunction in Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto v. HHS as the legal basis for continuing representation, but designates the award as single-source rather than competitively bid.

The award follows the August 1, 2026 expiration of a separate, longstanding contract held by the Acacia Center for Justice, which had coordinated legal services for the children through a network of nearly 100 nonprofit legal-aid organizations. HHS had withheld roughly $65 million in payments from that network since December 2025 after providers declined to turn over client-level data they said was protected by attorney-client privilege, and the agency gave no legally required transition notice before the contract lapsed.

Why we recorded this

Federal procurement law requires competitive bidding to prevent government contracts from being steered to favored, unqualified recipients. HHS instead awarded a $150 million sole-source contract for unaccompanied children's legal representation to a small firm with no immigration-law practice, co-founded by two Trump-administration EPA and Interior appointees, replacing an established nonprofit network without competition. Bypassing the competitive process to direct public funds toward politically connected recipients undermines the impartial stewardship of taxpayer money this norm protects.

Sources

  1. Intent to Award a Single-Source Cooperative Agreement: Burke Law Group, PLLC in Houston, TX — Federal Register primary accessed August 5, 2026
  2. Senate Confirms Jeffrey Hall as Assistant Administrator for EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance — U.S. Environmental Protection Agency primary accessed August 5, 2026
  3. Houston firm gets $150M contract for child migrant legal services — The Texas Tribune investigative accessed August 5, 2026
  4. Small Texas law firm without immigration expertise set to receive $150M contract to represent unaccompanied migrant children — ABC News secondary accessed August 5, 2026

See also