The SHIELD Act authorizes the Attorney General, through the Office for Access to Justice, to run a competitive grant program that helps states, local governments, nonprofits, community organizations, and educational institutions develop the staff and infrastructure needed to represent people in specified removal proceedings. Grants fund recruitment, training, technical assistance, coordination, retention strategies, and physical and technological infrastructure to expand capacity for immigration-related legal services.
This measure responds to persistent gaps in representation for noncitizens facing removal by directing federal grant dollars to scale programs and grow an ecosystem of lawyers, accredited representatives, social workers, and community navigators. The bill ties funding to reporting, audits, and other accountability measures while setting program priorities intended to expand services in underserved areas and to support jurisdictions that have already invested in public defense for immigrants.
At a Glance
What It Does
Establishes a competitive workforce development and capacity-building grant program administered by the Attorney General through the Office for Access to Justice. Funds may be used for recruitment and training of legal staff, technical assistance, regional coordination, retention strategies, diversity initiatives, and infrastructure investments; subawards and contracts are permitted.
Who It Affects
Directly affects states and units of local government that already allocate public funds to immigration services, community-based organizations and nonprofits that provide or train immigration service providers, and educational institutions with clinics or training programs. It also affects the Department of Justice (Office for Access to Justice and Inspector General) through new administrative and audit responsibilities.
Why It Matters
This is targeted federal investment in defense-side capacity rather than enforcement, creating an explicit federal role in growing representation for people in removal proceedings. It could reshape where and how immigration legal services are delivered by funding workforce pipelines, supporting underserved regions, and attaching formal reporting and audit conditions to recipients.
More articles like this one.
A weekly email with all the latest developments on this topic.
What This Bill Actually Does
The bill creates a grant program whose primary aim is to enlarge and strengthen the pool of people and organizations able to provide legal defense in certain immigration removal proceedings. ‘‘Individuals facing removal’’ is defined by reference to four specific Immigration and Nationality Act provisions, and the program is explicitly open to states and localities that have already put public money toward immigration legal services, as well as nonprofits, community organizations, and educational institutions that either provide or train people to provide those services.
Applicants submit applications to the Director of the Office for Access to Justice; awards are competitive and may be used for a defined set of purposes including recruiting lawyers and accredited representatives, clinical and fellowship programs, substantive and language training, leadership and management development, coordination across jurisdictions, retention interventions (like caseload management and burnout prevention), and investments in physical and IT infrastructure. Grantees may subcontract or make subawards to other eligible entities and must certify that their proposed uses align with the statute.Each grant runs for four years and may be renewed.
Grantees must produce annual reports for the Director describing services provided, service area, recruitment and retention outcomes, expenditures (including personnel and indirect costs), service outcomes, and remaining unmet needs. The statute requires that federal funds supplement, not supplant, other sources.
The Director has explicit authority to set competitive procedures and to prioritize applications that advance long-term, linguistically appropriate, independent representation and growth of legal services where needs are greatest.The bill builds in multiple accountability layers. The Inspector General must audit grantees annually (with the number of audits determined by the IG), and an ‘‘unresolved audit finding’’ triggers eligibility consequences and a period of individualized technical assistance.
Nonprofit grantees must make specified compensation disclosures and cannot hold offshore accounts to avoid certain taxes. The law also caps conference-related spending tied to the program at $100,000 unless the Deputy Attorney General provides prior written approval and requires that approvals be accompanied by a full cost estimate and annual reporting to congressional judiciary and appropriations committees.Congress authorized discrete funding for the program and included a rule of construction to preserve existing legal pathways for respondents to obtain counsel at no expense to the government under certain INA provisions.
The text also contains an ‘‘independence’’ instruction directing the Attorney General and the Office for Access to Justice to operate the program without regard to enforcement priorities, a clause that will shape implementation choices and inter-agency coordination.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The program funds competitive grants administered by the Attorney General through the Office for Access to Justice specifically to grow workforce and infrastructure for representation in removal proceedings.
Eligible recipients include states or local governments that have already allocated public funds for immigration services, community-based organizations and nonprofits that provide or coordinate services, and educational institutions that provide or train providers.
Grant funds may pay for recruitment and job training, substantive and language training, leadership development, regional coordination, retention strategies, diversity recruitment, and physical and technological infrastructure.
Grants run for 4 years and may be renewed; federal funds must supplement, not supplant, other funding available for these activities.
Accountability rules include Inspector General audits (with priority given to applicants without unresolved audit findings), nonprofit compensation disclosure requirements, a prohibition on awarding grants to nonprofits using offshore accounts to avoid certain taxes, and a $100,000 cap on conference spending absent Deputy Attorney General approval.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Definitions that limit coverage to specific removal proceedings and jurisdictions
Section 2 tightly defines the program’s scope: ‘‘individual facing removal’’ is anchored to four INA provisions (inspection at the border, expedited removal, section 240 removal proceedings, and post-order processes). The definition of State expressly includes territories. That parsing matters because eligibility for program services—and who the grants are intended to help scale representation for—turns on these statutory cross-references rather than a broader or catch-all definition of immigration court matters.
Grant program purpose, applicants, and permissible uses
Subsection (a) establishes the core purpose: workforce development and capacity-building to expand representation for people in removal proceedings. Subsection (b) specifies three eligibility tracks: (1) states/units of local government that already fund immigration legal services, (2) organizations that provide or coordinate those services, and (3) organizations that recruit or train providers. Subsection (d) lists allowable uses in granular terms—recruitment, clinical and fellowship programs, substantive and language training, technical assistance for complex litigation, leadership development, coordination, retention, diversity initiatives, and investments in administrative and tech infrastructure—creating a fairly broad fundable activities menu oriented toward long-term capacity rather than one-off service delivery.
Subawards, reporting, grant term, and supplement-not-supplant rule
Grantees can subcontract or issue subawards to other eligible entities, which enables regional consortia or state-local partnerships. The law requires a certification by recipients that proposed expenditures align with the statute and compels annual reporting within 90 days after the fiscal year end, with specific reporting items (services, service area, recruitment/retention stats, expenditures, outcomes, and unmet needs). Grants are structured as 4-year awards, renewable, and all federal dollars must ‘‘supplement not supplant’’ existing funding—an enforcement hinge point during monitoring and audits.
Authority of the Office for Access to Justice and independence directive
The Director of the Office for Access to Justice is empowered to set competitive grant procedures and to prioritize applications according to statutory objectives: building an independent defense workforce, scaling national infrastructure, long-term organizational capacity, support for jurisdictions already funding defense, and addressing regions with acute shortages. Importantly, the statute instructs the Attorney General and Director to exercise authority ‘‘in an independent manner’’ to expand access to representation ‘‘without regard to other priorities of the Federal Government related to immigration enforcement,’’ which authorizes an implementation posture that is operationally distinct from enforcement components of DOJ.
Audits, nonprofit conditions, conference limits, and congressional reporting
Section 5 creates a layered accountability regime: the DOJ Inspector General must audit grantees each fiscal year with the IG deciding the audit sample size; final audit reports must be delivered to the Attorney General. An ‘‘unresolved audit finding’’ is defined and has consequences, including eligibility and a two-year window for individualized technical assistance. The statute bars grants to nonprofits holding offshore accounts used to avoid certain taxes and requires disclosure of compensation-setting processes where a rebuttable presumption of reasonableness is claimed. It also caps conference-related program expenditures at $100,000 absent Deputy Attorney General preapproval and mandates annual reporting to relevant congressional committees, plus an annual DOJ certification about audit completion.
Funding authorization and construction preserving existing counsel pathways
Section 6 authorizes $100 million for each of fiscal years 2026 and 2027 to carry out the statute. Section 7 states that nothing in the Act should be read to preclude a respondent from obtaining counsel at no expense to the Government under existing INA provisions, clarifying that the program supplements—not replaces—other legal pathways and protections.
This bill is one of many.
Codify tracks hundreds of bills on Immigration across all five countries.
Explore Immigration in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- People in specified removal proceedings: the program is expressly designed to expand the supply of representation in the defined removal contexts, which should increase access to counsel and improve case outcomes for noncitizens in those proceedings.
- Community-based legal providers and nonprofits: the statute funds training, recruitment, leadership development, and infrastructure—resources that directly reduce organizational barriers to serving more clients and handling complex cases.
- States and localities that already invest in immigrant defense: the bill prioritizes jurisdictions that have taken leadership, enabling them to scale programs with federal support and potentially leverage their local expertise.
- Law schools, clinics, and fellowship programs: grants explicitly fund clinical, fellowship, and educational pipelines, creating internships, paid fellowships, and other career-path mechanisms that bring new attorneys into immigration defense.
- Underrepresented practitioners and linguistic minorities: the statute funds diversity recruitment and language training, which supports hiring and retaining staff from underrepresented backgrounds and enhances linguistically appropriate services.
Who Bears the Cost
- Department of Justice (Office for Access to Justice and the Inspector General): DOJ absorbs administrative costs of designing, running, and auditing the program, plus reporting to Congress and managing technical assistance obligations.
- Grantees (especially small nonprofits): award recipients must comply with detailed reporting, audit scrutiny, compensation disclosure, and conference-approval rules, imposing administrative and compliance workloads that translate into transaction costs.
- Applicants with prior unresolved audit findings or no history of public funding: the statute prioritizes applicants without unresolved findings and those that have already invested locally, which can disadvantage nascent programs in high-need areas without prior funding or clean audit histories.
- Federal appropriations: the program requires explicit funding ($100M/year for two years in the authorization), which competes with other priorities in appropriations decisions and may create pressure on future DOJ budgets if the program is extended.
- Nonprofits that hold offshore accounts or lack compensation transparency: the statutory prohibition and disclosure requirements can make some organizations ineligible or subject them to public scrutiny that has reputational and operational consequences.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is how to rapidly and equitably scale defense-side capacity while ensuring tight accountability and maintaining operational independence from enforcement priorities: strict audit and disclosure rules protect taxpayer funds and deter misuse, but they also raise entry barriers for under-resourced community organizations exactly where capacity growth is most needed.
Several implementation questions and trade-offs will shape whether the program achieves its stated goals. Measurement and evaluation requirements are extensive—grantees must report recruitment/retention numbers, expenditures, outcomes, and unmet needs—but the statute leaves key evaluation metrics undefined; absent standardized outcome measures, comparisons across grantees and meaningful assessments of cost-effectiveness may be difficult.
The program’s independence language seeks to shield grantmaking from immigration enforcement priorities, but it also raises coordination challenges inside DOJ (for example, tensions between grant-driven defense priorities and other DOJ components focused on enforcement), and the statute does not create an external firewall or dispute-resolution process to mediate those tensions.
The accountability regime is robust but double-edged. IG audits, the definition of unresolved audit findings, and conference spending limits strengthen stewardship of federal dollars but also raise the bar for small or newly formed community organizations that lack audit infrastructure.
The nonprofit restrictions (offshore account prohibition and compensation disclosure) aim to prevent abuse but could deter certain organizations from applying or impose additional compliance costs. Finally, the authorization is narrowly written—$100 million for each of FY2026 and FY2027—so long-term scaling depends on future appropriations decisions; that fiscal gap between a 4-year grant term and a two-year funding authorization may create planning uncertainty for potential awardees.
Try it yourself.
Ask a question in plain English, or pick a topic below. Results in seconds.