A plan circulated by President Joe Biden’s administration to provide border crossers subjected to former President Trump’s “Zero Tolerance” policy with $450,000 payouts has seemingly stalled amidst backlash.
Biden’s Departments of Justice (DOJ), Homeland Security (DHS), and Health and Human Services (HHS) are working to settle with a number of border crossers represented by the ACLU, who claim they have suffered trauma as a result of the Zero Tolerance policy.
As part of the settlement, attorneys with the DOJ, DHS, and HHS are considering a plan that would give each border crosser about $450,000 and family units about $1 million. The total cost of the payouts would reach $1 billion.
ACLU attorneys have since suggested that the payouts have stalled, according to the Associated Press:
Migrants whose children were taken from them under former President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance border policy have not reached a settlement agreement with the U.S. government, a lawyer for the families said Thursday as he and other advocates pushed back at increasing criticism of a proposal to pay compensation to them. [Emphasis added]
Attorney Lee Gelernt of the American Civil Liberties Union would not discuss details of the talks nor confirm a previously reported settlement proposal of several hundred thousand dollars to each affected person. He did, however, hold out the possibility of a trial, featuring parents separated from children as young as six months as witnesses, if there’s no agreement to end the litigation. [Emphasis added]
“All I can say is there’s no deal on the table and we have no timeframe necessarily,” Gelernt said in a conference call with reporters. [Emphasis added]
The sudden slow-walking of the case has come after intense backlash following initial reports in October that stated the Biden administration was considering the $450,000 payouts — an amount greater than the American victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks have been given.
Angel Families: Biden Plan Is $450K for Illegal Aliens, $0 for American Victimshttps://t.co/yjzubPWtI7
via @BreitbartNews @JxhnBxnder— Immigration Reform Law Institute (@IRLILaw) November 10, 2021
About 63 percent of Americans told CBS News/YouGov pollsters that they are opposed to the payouts, including 64 percent of swing voters, and even 4-in-10 voters who supported Biden against Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
Polls from Rasmussen Reports and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) have shown similar results where a majority of Americans, including likely swing voters, oppose the payouts.
Last week, during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was forced to seemingly defend the payouts to border crossers — portraying the issue as standard legal proceedings.
“What is an appropriate outcome of that litigation in response of the family separation policy, the cruel policy, is something I cannot opine on,” Mayorkas said.
Meanwhile, Angel Families — those who have lost loved ones as a result of illegal immigration — have slammed the payouts as “a plan to create millionaires out of over 5,000 illegal alien families.”
“None of these illegal aliens deserve anything more than a removal back to their country of origin,” Angel Families with Advocates for Victims of Illegal Alien Crime (AVIAC) wrote in a statement. “… what does the government owe the families who have been victimized by illegal aliens, often forever?”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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