Our Rescue, the group once led by "Sound of Freedom" inspiration Tim Ballard, is now in charge of legal aid for unaccompanied children. A competing no-bid contract with a Texas law firm fell apart within a week of being announced.
The Trump administration has handed a no-bid federal contract to Our Rescue, a nonprofit built by a former federal anti-trafficking agent, putting the group at the center of legal representation for children who arrive at the U.S. border without a parent. Health and Human Services quietly posted the award notice late on Friday, Aug. 7, and outlets — the Washington Post and NOTUS — put the confirmed obligation at just over $158 million with room to grow to $244 million if the government exercises further options.
Who Runs the Group Now
The contract comes from the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the HHS division that takes custody of children who cross the border alone. Reports also disagree on how long the deal lasts: NPR, citing an ORR statement, says it covers six months, ending Feb. 6, 2027, while NOTUS, citing the same federal contracting record, describes a one-year term with a possible extension into February 2028. That gap hasn't been resolved in the reporting so far.
Our Rescue's chief executive, Derek Benner, previously held one of the most senior posts inside U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — he served as executive associate director of Homeland Security Investigations and, earlier, as acting deputy director of ICE itself. In a statement carried by NOTUS, Benner said the children in ORR custody "deserve nothing less than the full weight of our experience."
From Undercover Missions to a Hollywood Movie
The organization traces back to 2013, when founder Tim Ballard left a twelve-year career as a Department of Homeland Security special agent — much of it spent undercover fighting child sex trafficking along the southern border — to start Operation Underground Railroad, later rebranded Our Rescue. Ballard led operations against trafficking networks in countries including Colombia, Haiti, Mexico and Thailand, work that inspired the 2023 film "Sound of Freedom," starring Jim Caviezel. The movie became a conservative box-office hit, though NPR and other outlets note its marketing was heavily amplified by QAnon-adjacent conspiracy communities. During Trump's first term, in 2019, Ballard was named co-chair of a White House council tasked with recommending anti-trafficking policy — a credential the administration has now leaned on twice in awarding contracts tied to his old organization.
Scandal, Exit and a Rebrand
Ballard's run at the group he founded ended abruptly in mid-2023, right as the film was elevating his public profile. Within months, several women filed suit accusing him of coercing them into unwanted sexual contact during overseas missions, describing what they called a "couples ruse" — a cover story requiring them to pose as his romantic partner while undercover. Separately, Rolling Stone reported that Ballard's field operations had already drawn scrutiny for being wildly overstated before the misconduct allegations ever surfaced. Ballard has denied the claims and has filed defamation counterclaims against some of his accusers.
The legal fallout has been mixed. A Utah judge dismissed one lawsuit last year, ruling that the plaintiff had improperly obtained the internal documents used as evidence — a procedural ruling that did not address whether the underlying misconduct occurred. Months later, the Salt Lake County District Attorney's office said it would not pursue criminal charges, citing insufficient admissible evidence to meet the burden of proof, while stressing the decision didn't mean investigators disbelieved the women who came forward. A separate federal lawsuit filed by multiple accusers remains active.
A Second No-Bid Deal, and a Fast Collapse
Our Rescue's contract is the second no-bid legal-services award the administration has pursued in as many weeks — but the first one no longer stands. Roughly a week earlier, HHS published notice of its intent to award close to $150 million to Burke Law Group, a small Houston firm led by Marcella Burke, who served in the first Trump administration at the EPA and the Interior Department. That announcement drew immediate criticism, since the firm's public staff bios showed little immigration-law experience before the contract was made public. By Aug. 12, the firm had walked away: it posted on social media that it had "decided not to apply for a grant or a contract," and an ORR spokesperson confirmed to reporters that no grant had ever been finalized. The firm said reporting on its involvement had been inaccurate and that it had only been weighing a small slice of the total contract.
Both proposed deals followed the July 31 expiration of a much older contract with the Acacia Center for Justice, which for nearly two decades had funneled federal money to a network of almost 100 legal-aid nonprofits representing unaccompanied children nationwide. The government had stopped paying Acacia months earlier in a dispute over sharing confidential information about the children in its care, and a federal judge has since ordered HHS to pay the group more than $65 million for services it continued providing without compensation. Since the Acacia contract lapsed, ORR has relied on the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants to cover representation through the end of the year.
Advocates Push Back
Immigration attorneys have been sharply critical of the pivot toward Our Rescue. Michael Lukens, executive director of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights — whose organization held work under the old Acacia contract — told NPR that HHS is funding a group with no track record in immigration law and a difficult recent history. "HHS is causing chaos in the system, and that may be on purpose," Lukens said. Our Rescue's website advertises "legal support to help prosecute offenders," but it remains unclear whether the organization employs immigration attorneys at all, and it has not responded to multiple reporters' requests for comment. An ORR spokesperson maintains that the agency remains committed to ensuring every unaccompanied child has legal representation in court.
The dollar figures involved are large relative to Our Rescue's own finances: the Prospect notes the contract, at its top-line value, would be roughly seven times the $36.9 million in total assets the nonprofit reported on its most recent tax filing — its first-ever contract with the federal government, according to the same filing records cited by NOTUS.
