The Biden administration is considering paying out a whopping $450,000 per person to families separated at the southern border as it tries to settle lawsuits with migrants who say the policy caused them lasting psychological damage.
Officials from the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services are considering the payments that could total close to $1 million for two people within the same family, people familiar told the Wall Street Journal.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the separated families, has identified about 5,500 children separated from parents at the border during the course of the Trump-era policy.
Former President Trump's administration enacted the policy in April 2018 and withdrew it two months later after much controversy in June.
The total potential payout could cost $1 billion or more.
The 'zero-tolerance policy' applied to families who illegally crossed the US-Mexico border to claim asylum. Since children could not be detained alongside their parents, the families were separated, sometimes with no way to track and reunited them later on, government investigations found.
The Biden administration is considering paying out a whopping $450,000 per person to families separated at the southern border
Officials from the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services are considering the payments that could total close to $1 million for two people within the same family
Now, many families are released into the interior of the US and asked to appear in court at a later date. Some are deported under Title 42, the coronavirus public health policy.
Lawsuits allege that the separated children were housed in poor conditions, and sometimes suffered from malnutrition or heat exhaustion or were kept in freezing cold rooms and offered little medical
