A federal judge in California on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to release roughly $65 million in previously withheld funds for legal services provided to unaccompanied immigrant children facing deportation.

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin ordered that the Department of Health and Human Services release the funds owed to various nonprofit organizations by 12 p.m. PT on Friday.

Legal service providers told the Los Angeles Times that half an hour after the deadline, the administration had released the funds and that payments would begin going out on Monday.

“We are closely monitoring to make sure that happens,” Bilal Askaryar, spokesperson for the nonprofit Acacia Center for Justice, told the Los Angeles Times.

The nonprofit organizations representing unaccompanied migrant children in their deportation cases had been owed the money since December 2025, according to court documents.

“The court has affirmed what we have said from the beginning: Congress funded these legal services, the law calls for them, and no administration gets to weaponize levers of government to attempt to override legislation and strip children of effective access to their lawyers,” the Acacia Center for Justice said in a press release on Friday.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JULY 31: Children wait outside of an immigration court at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building on July 31, 2026 in New York City. More than 1,400 migrant children across New York, including more than 700 in New York City, are set to lose legal representation as a $200 million federal contract with the Acacia Center for Justice expires. The nonprofit oversees legal services for unaccompanied migrant children and estimates the funding loss will affect more than 24,000 children nationwide.

Michael M. Santiago via Getty Images

The Acacia Center for Justice is the prime contractor tasked with distributing the payments to its subcontractors and has held a contract with HHS for years to provide legal services for immigrant children.

However, the organization did not renew its contract after the Trump administration included a clause that would’ve required legal service providers to disclose confidential information about their clients to the government.

The organization’s contract expired on July 31.

The administration instead chose to award a $150 million contract to represent unaccompanied migrant children to the Burke Law Group, a small Texas-based law firm, according to a report from the Associated Press.

The firm has ties to the Trump administration, and of the 24 attorneys on its staff, only two of them specialize in immigration law, according to a report from NPR.