The government pays for migrant children’s lawyers. Challenge the government, and they can lose...

The U.S. refugee agency that cares for children who have crossed the border alone has for years threatened to cut off funding to legal advocates if they challenge a child’s detention or placement in juvenile jails, according to attorneys who have worked within the system.

Without legal help to protest the government’s decisions, many migrant children end up separated from their families for longer, languishing in detention without an avenue for appeal.

By law, migrant children in federal custody are supposed to get free legal help. But in the fraught relationship between the lawyers who advocate for detained migrant children and the agency that holds them, the Office of Refugee Resettlement wields powerful leverage: It pays the lawyers’ salaries.