The White House prevented families separated at the border from receiving psychological help

By Jacob Soboroff, Julia Ainsley and Geoff Bennett - NBC News

WASHINGTON - The White House prevented the Justice Department from reaching a legal agreement in October 2019 to pay for psychological care services to migrant families who were separated by policy of the Donald Trump Administration, according to four senior officials. level, two who continue in their positions and two who no longer work for the Government.

Three of the sources who were involved in discussions about the plan (and who asked to remain anonymous) told NBC News that the White House Office of Legal Counsel rejected the legal pact to end a lawsuit at the urging of Stephen Miller. , the ideologue of nearly all of Trump's immigration policies, including family separation at the border. 

The Justice Department "forcefully and

, but not all the agencies involved shared the support," said a person who still works in the government.

"In the end, the agreement was rejected by indications of the White House counsel," he added.

Another official indicated that "in the end it was Stephen who prevailed. He stopped everything."

The rejection of the legal agreement

of the money paid in taxes by the Americans.

[The $ 1,200 aid check is increasingly needed but Congress seems to be throwing in the towel]

A current White House official, who also requested anonymity to speak freely about the matter, declined to explain why the legal pact was rejected.

According to him, Miller was not involved "and any suggestion that he was is false."

After nine months of negotiations, which took place mainly in Los Angeles, lawyers from the Department of Justice and representatives of the separated families reached a tentative agreement of eight million dollars for the medical and psychological review and counseling for thousands of migrants. said Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney for Public Counsel, which represented 

 the families

.

Rosenbaum said there was a lot of pressure to reach an agreement quickly.

"Many of

and the longer it takes to deal with these traumas, the greater its consequences," said the lawyer.

"We had a pact and it was a good one. We all felt good about what we had achieved. Then they came back and suddenly said no more," he added.

Stephen Miller, Donald Trump's senior adviser, at the White House on August 20, 2020.

[Gustavo crossed the border just to meet his grandfather and the US deported him without warning.

The same happened to thousands of minors]

The government's legal defenders recommended that their superiors in Washington accept the agreement.

Deputy Attorney General Claire Murray of the Justice Department discussed the details with the White House Legal Counsel.

And it was then that the pact was rejected, according to the four sources of the Administration.

Rosenbaum said his impression was that the government wanted the agreement because it

, in which there would be interviews with children traumatized by Trump's zero tolerance policy. .

A former Justice Department official said immigration issues almost always have to be brought before the White House and that Miller is common there to get involved.

In the end, the lawsuit took six more months to resolve.

In November 2019, a month after the agreement fell apart, the judge in the case ordered the government to pay for psychological services.

The Justice Department appealed, without success.

It was until March 2020 that the Government contracted, for 14 million dollars, the NGO Seneca Family for Agencies to carry out the review and advice of separated families.

That delay meant that several families were slow to get the help they needed, and others were not even able to get it.

There are 666 migrant children still separated from their families: more than what was known to date

Nov. 10, 202000: 28

NBC News, sister network of Noticias Telemundo, has reported that, in addition, the lawyers in another lawsuit have not yet found the parents of 666 children who were taken from their relatives.

Seneca has been able to establish contact with 500 migrant families;

all of these were reunited and prevented deportation.

"But

It is only the first step in the healing process. The need to connect families with these services is urgent because if treatment is delayed further that can increase and worsen the trauma, "said Paige Chan, Seneca CEO.

[The number of migrant children who are still separated from their families grows: there are 666 pending to find their parents]

Cheryl Aguilar, founder and therapist of the Hope Center for Wellness in Washington DC, one of the groups associated with Seneca to provide mental wellness services, said they are treating four minors separated from their parents because of the case.

Aguilar commented that among those minors are an

and a pre-adolescent boy who began to wet the bed in a regression due to trauma.

"There were delays in these children receiving services and that causes delays in their improvement," said the therapist.

[Resources to find help against the economic crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic]

The Guatemalan David Xol-Cholom and his son, who were separated by the "zero tolerance" policy, manage to meet after a year and a half, in January 2020.AP / AP

Amy Lally of the Sidley Austin Law Firm and another of the attorneys representing the separated families said she was "extremely frustrated that the settlement fell apart" in October 2019.

"When the deal didn't get the final go-ahead the first thing that worried me was

Lally said.

He added that "the months that were dedicated to negotiating the legal pact," as well as the additional time to resolve the lawsuit and for the Government to finally hire Seneca, "were months in which families and minors continued to suffer, without get a government-imposed trauma remedy. "