Two days after nonprofit groups sued over a stop-work order targeting programs that provide information and guidance to people facing deportation, the U.S. Justice Department reversed course and ordered that funding to the programs be restored. Via the Associated Press:
The four federally funded programs educate people in immigration courts and detention centers about their rights and the complicated legal process. The Justice Department instructed the nonprofits on Jan. 22 “to stop work immediately” on the programs, citing an executive order targeting illegal immigration that President Donald Trump signed the day of his second inauguration.
A coalition of nonprofit groups filed a federal lawsuit Friday challenging the stop-work order and seeking to immediately restore access to the programs. The Justice Department rescinded its stop-work order for all four programs Sunday afternoon.
The nonprofit organizations, which had expressed concern that the absence of the programs left people to navigate the system on their own, had worried that due process rights would be violated and the backlogged immigration courts would be further bogged down.
