By Jacob Soboroff and Julia Ainsley -
NBC News
Lawyers negotiating compensation payments to migrant families who were separated at the border by the Donald Trump Administration say President Joe Biden's remarks at a press conference on Wednesday may have hurt his clients' prospects.
A Fox News reporter asked Biden about reports in various media outlets that migrant families could receive up to $ 450,000 per person or "possibly $ 1 million per family."
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report on these negotiations last week.
For their part, NBC News and Noticias Telemundo reported that families who were separated could receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation.
Children separated from their parents still suffer trauma Isabel Mateos / AP
"It's not true
," Biden said Wednesday, "that's not going to happen."
The president came to describe the information as "garbage."
Shortly after Biden's comments, attorneys for the Justice Department contacted attorneys representing migrant families, including those from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
In a statement Thursday, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said: "The president's comments and the reaction of Congress appear to have affected the deal negotiations, which were undoubtedly in an unstable state."
[The Trump Administration applied the zero tolerance policy knowing that it would separate migrant families at the border]
Although the talks are still ongoing, Romero said, the Justice Department "communicated late Wednesday that the settlement figures for separated families were higher than the negotiation could achieve."
Democrats want 7 million undocumented migrants to apply for travel and work permits
Nov. 4, 202100: 47
Shortly after Biden's comments, Romero opined that perhaps the president "was not fully informed of the actions of his own Department of Justice even though he considers that the crimes committed against thousands of families separated from their children were deliberate government policy."
[What impact will the lifting of the limit on asylum applications at the border have?]
Under Trump's zero tolerance policy in 2018,
more than 5,600 children were separated from their parents when they
illegally
crossed the border
with them.
Until then, crossing the border illegally was a misdemeanor under the law, which did not result in migrants being processed at the federal level and therefore separated from their children to be taken to prisons.
Dengue cases and alleged attacks: what the migrant caravan faces on their way through Mexico
Nov. 2, 202101: 37
[Democrats include new help for the undocumented in their social plan: 5-year work permits]
The Trump Administration did not have a system to quickly reunite the families it separated.
Today it is estimated that more than 1,000 families remain separated, according to the White House.
E
n many cases, parents were deported to their countries of origin while their children remained in the
US
And, according to court records, more than 300 parents separated children have not been located yet