WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Rep. Robert Garcia, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Sen. Ron Wyden, Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Finance, pressed Burke Law Group and Our Rescue, two organizations with close ties to the Trump Administration that were recently awarded no-bid contracts valued up to $394 million by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to handle legal representation and immigration cases of unaccompanied migrant children, despite a clear lack of experience by the organizations in handling sensitive immigration legal cases. Ranking Member Garcia and Sen. Wyden also questioned the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants on an additional agreement of up to $20 million to provide legal services through at least December 2026 under what ORR has described to a federal court as an interim legal-services model.
“The Trump Administration is corruptly awarding massive no-bid contracts for the legal representation of vulnerable children to unqualified organizations, including histories of sexual misconduct and shady financial dealings. Senator Wyden and I are demanding answers and accountability, and fighting to get these children the fair representation they deserve,” said Ranking Member Robert Garcia.
“These corrupt contracts are part of Donald Trump’s ongoing effort to deny unaccompanied kids the legal representation they desperately need and deserve. Lining the pockets of his buddies with taxpayer dollars is bad enough, but doing it at the cost of putting young children in harm’s way of human trafficking and other horrific abuse is craven, even by the standards of this administration,” said Senator Ron Wyden.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced a single-source cooperative agreement of up to $150 million to Burke Law Group, PLLC, a Houston-based commercial and environmental litigation firm with deep personal and financial ties to the administration. Burke Law Group, PLLC has since publicly withdrawn from consideration.
It then awarded a sole-source contract of $158.1 million, with a total contract value of up to $244 million, to Our Rescue, a Minneapolis-based non-profit which purports to be an anti-trafficking organization. Our Rescue was founded by Tim Ballard, a self-described former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer, who resigned from the organization in 2023 following complaints of sexual assault and harassment from female employees.
In July 2026, Ranking Member Robert Garcia demanded answers from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) regarding the vetting and training of ICE officers in the wake of the killing of Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero on July 13, 2026, in Biddeford, Maine.
In February 2026, Ranking Member Garcia released a report highlighting Oversight Democrats’ key findings regarding the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration enforcement agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Both victims were killed while bearing witness to the abuses and injustices on their neighbors by the Trump Administration’s aggressive, violent, and unlawful immigration enforcement tactics.
In December 2025, Ranking Member Garcia and Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal launched a series of bicameral hearings to expose and investigate abuses, excessive force, and constitutional violations by federal immigration enforcement agents.
In November 2025, Ranking Member Garcia led Oversight Democrats in launching a public Immigration Enforcement Dashboard to track and document incidents of abuse and potential misconduct by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration enforcement agents across the country.
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