Law360 (September 24, 2026, 8:43 PM EDT) -- The U.S. Government Accountability Office has denied a contractor's protest over the terms of a solicitation for legal services for unaccompanied migrant children, saying the Office of Refugee Resettlement adequately explained how the challenged requirements were related to its needs.

In a Sept. 18 decision made public Wednesday, the GAO said the ORR successfully justified requiring invoices to be submitted at the completion of the representation or an identified phase of the service even if the process takes years. The current model is an attempt to address concerns over wasteful payments for service in the past, the GAO said, undermining the assertion by protester Acacia Center for Justice that the solicitation terms are unduly restrictive.

"Our office will not sustain a protest challenging an agency's determination of its needs unless the protester presents clear and convincing evidence that the specifications are in fact impossible to meet or unduly restrict competition," the GAO said.

The ORR said that under its previous system, it sometimes paid fixed prices regardless of how many children actually received services. The ORR explained that the new model tracks the payments made to contractors more closely to the services that were actually delivered, according to the GAO.

The GAO also said that Acacia misread the solicitation to mean it would have to have a qualified legal representative present at every immigration proceeding for the roughly 126,000 minors in or released from ORR custody. Acacia read the general requirements section without placing it within the context of the specific requirements of the contract tasks, the GAO said.

"As such, we find the protester's interpretation of the solicitation to be unreasonable, when read as a whole and in a manner that gives effect to all of its provisions," the GAO said.

The ORR's contract with Acacia expired July 31 without a suitable replacement, which left tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors without legal resources, according to groups advocating for the children. In August, a 1-year-old baby appeared unrepresented in immigration court in Arizona, according to subcontractors that had provided legal services to the children under Acacia's now-expired contract, the groups said.

A Northern District of California federal court ordered the Trump administration to maintain funding for legal services for the minors, as required by the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. An evidentiary hearing was held Sept. 8 to determine whether the administration had violated that order.

Richard B. Debany, ORR's chief for its Division of Acquisition Requirements, took the stand and at one point acknowledged that the government wasn't able to secure quickly a long-term replacement after the government's contract with Acacia expired in July. He also repeatedly said he could not specify how many kids are currently unrepresented or whether there are specific locations where no one receives representation.

But he testified that the government's efforts to secure a replacement contract have been thwarted by competing bidders, which have filed multiple bid protests with the GAO.

The process hit a snafu in August when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it intended to award a single-source contract worth up to a $150 million to a small Texas law firm to provide those legal services, but a few days later walked back that announcement. HHS said it had "been in touch" with Burke Law Group PLLC about a grant but that a grant had not yet been finalized.

Marcella Burke, founder and chairman of the Houston firm, said recently that she was blindsided by the Federal Register notice about the award because it seemed premature. Burke, who held high-level roles in Trump's first administration, said that while some of her attorneys have significant immigration law experience, Burke Law Group is not an immigration law firm.

She later withdrew the firm from consideration for the contract.

Acacia declined to comment, and a representative for the Administration for Children and Families, which oversees ORR, also declined to comment.

GAO attorneys Jungi Hong and Peter H. Tran participated in the preparation of the decision.

Acacia is represented by Jonathan J. Frankel and Karla J. Letsche of Frankel PLLC.

ORR is represented by Terrius D. Greene and Tami S. Hagberg of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The case is Matter of Acacia Center for Justice, file number B-424162.4, before the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

--Additional reporting by Daniel Connolly, Britain Eakin, Madeline Lyskawa, Dorothy Atkins and Tom Lotshaw. Editing by Amy French.

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