Photo: John Moore / Getty Images
Sunday, September 29
The US government breaks the negotiation to compensate families separated at the border
Negotiations to reach an agreement that would have awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars to the immigrant families separated at the border between the United States and Mexico during the Trump administration under its “zero tolerance” policy, broke up abruptly, three attorneys for the families told The Washington Post on Thursday.
The attorneys had been in discussions for months with the Department of Justice and had been negotiating the possibility of a settlement of up to $ 450, 000 dollars per person for mental anguish, suffering and , sometimes, the physical abuse suffered by separated families .
Justice Department officials informed plaintiffs’ attorneys in a conference call that the government will not offer a settlement general for cases of family separation, and instead it will be defended on a case-by-case basis in court, said Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who filed one of the lawsuits.
The decision was made later eight months of negotiations, and weeks after reports of a proposed settlement that would include payments of several hundred thousand dollars to each family sparked outrage from critics of President Joe Biden’s administration in Congress and elsewhere.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced the decision of the Department of Justice on his Twitter account:
Candidate Biden promised to help these children and families. But today, President Biden is shamefully playing politics with their lives and futures.
We will never forget who takes action to help these families – and who turns their backs on them.
– ACLU (@ACLU) December 16, 2021
The attorneys said the The Department of Justice did not give a clear reason to walk away from the negotiations.
The United States separated more than 3, 000 children of their parents along the border with Mexico between May and June of 2018, the peak of Trump’s “zero tolerance” campaign to deter migrant families from crossing the US-Mexico border to enter the United States.
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