FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 24, 2026
CONTACT: Rachel Dupree, [email protected]
***Interviews with signatories available***
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As first reported by CBS News, this week, more than 330 nonprofit organizations sent a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) urging them to fully restore the Recognition and Accreditation (R&A) program, which was gutted one month ago by the Trump administration. For over 60 years, the R&A program had provided accreditation to legal service organizations to support the legal representation needs of individuals and families in their communities—filling a critical gap created by the immigration court system’s lack of a public defender system. The signing organizations report that no applications have been approved since the administration cut program staff last month.
In the letter, the coalition of organizations calls on the administration to reinstate trained adjudicators, including senior officials, restore the ninety-day processing standard, and resume meaningful stakeholder engagement.
Historically, R&A applications were processed within ninety days—a standard that allows organizations to plan, staff, and serve their communities with professionalism and competence. By 2025, processing times had slowed to between six and eight months due to understaffing, leaving applicants vulnerable to detention and deportation. As a direct result of these staffing cuts, organizations cannot obtain or renew recognition, representatives face uncertain credentials, people lose affordable legal help, courts have to manage more unrepresented cases, and fraud risk increases. With over 11 million unadjudicated USCIS applications and more than 3.3 million cases pending in immigration court, the signatories maintain that “this is not the moment to dismantle one of the immigration system’s most effective and affordable legal infrastructure programs.”
Said Nicole Melaku, National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA) executive director, “Gutting the Recognition and Accreditation program is not a bureaucratic oversight—it is a deliberate act of sabotage against one of the few remaining lifelines for access to legal representation and services for immigrants and refugees. The administration has quietly pulled the rug out from under tens of thousands of people seeking accessible immigration legal services in their communities. The Department of Justice must reinstate these adjudicators and fully restore the R&A program—or risk even more cruelty, inequity, and widespread inefficiency in the U.S. immigration system.”
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The National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA) is a multi-ethnic, multiracial coalition of over 70 of the nation’s largest immigrant and refugee rights organizations with reach across over 40 states. Together with our members, we advance immigrant and refugee equity and inclusion, build and expand immigration legal services and integration programming capacity, and drive campaigns that strengthen democracy through increased civic participation. See our website for more information at partnershipfornewamericans.org.