The government chaired by Joe Biden is in talks to offer payments of $ 450,000 per person to migrant families who were separated at the border during the application of the zero tolerance policy imposed in the Donald Trump administration.
According to information released exclusively by The Wall Street Journal, the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Health are in discussions with lawyers representing immigrants who denounced the psychological trauma suffered by children to claim financial compensation .
The total payment could reach 1,000 million dollars, says the aforementioned publication.
A group of Brazilian migrants make their way through a gap in the border between the United States and Mexico in Yuma, Arizona.Eugene Garcia / AP
According to the American Civil Liberties Union (UCLA), which represents migrant families in one of the lawsuits filed, 5,500 children have been separated at the border by the Trump Administration.
So far some 940 requests for repair have been submitted.
[The Trump Administration applied the zero tolerance policy knowing that it would separate migrant families at the border]
Advocates for immigrants want the government to admit the emotional damage caused by this policy.
The children suffered from physical illnesses such as malnutrition and now face psychological consequences such as separation trauma, anxiety and even suffer from nightmares, according to experts.
The newspaper assures that the lawsuits demand
average
payments
of 3.4 million dollars for each affected family.
"The hardest thing was that my girl was hungry for two days."
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Biden has been critical of the separation of families and has called the zero tolerance policy "a moral and national disgrace."
"The President agrees that the family separation policy is a historic moral blemish on our nation that must be fully remedied," said Lee Gelernt, ACLU deputy director and chief negotiator in one of the lawsuits.
[The number of migrant children separated from their families grows]
Gelernt added that they not only hope that the families will be repaired but that they will be given the opportunity to stay in the country.
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The Wall Street Journal learned of a meeting where a lawyer for the Department of Homeland Security complained that the requested payments are higher than the compensation received by families who were victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, although in this case the responsibility was not It was from the Government.
One of the complications of the lawsuit is that no close references are known to calculate the compensation.
"It's a complicated litigation," said Margo Schlanger, who led the Office for Civil Rights during the Barack Obama Administration at the Department of Homeland Security, and now teaches at the University of Michigan law school.
The results could be known in November.
The zero tolerance policy was officially launched in spring 2018 with the order to prosecute all adults who crossed the border illegally.
By taking them to prison, the parents were thus separated from their children, who remained in the immigration detention center.
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The measure was withdrawn on June 20 of the same year after pressure and rejection for the cruelty with which parents were separated from their children, often without information about their whereabouts.
So far it has reunited 52 families, parents who were deported and is in the process of reuniting about 200 more.
[The Biden Administration annuls the zero tolerance policy implemented at the southern border]
Some families filed tort lawsuits against the Trump Administration seeking compensation to cover mental health treatment to deal with the emotional and psychological ravages of the practice.
A family from New Jersey received $ 125,000 in compensation.