President Joe Biden is reportedly dropping plans to provide $450,000 payouts to nearly 1,000 illegal alien families after fierce backlash from the American public.
For months, Biden’s Departments of Justice (DOJ), Homeland Security (DHS), and Health and Human Services (HHS) were in settlement talks with border crossers represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who claim they have suffered trauma as a result of former President Trump’s Zero Tolerance policy.
Now, ACLU attorneys involved with those talks have told the Wall Street Journal that the Biden administration has dropped the settlements previously considered to be upwards of $450,000 per border crosser, costing about $1 billion in American taxpayer money and more than was given to the American victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Instead, the DOJ will litigate the border crossers’ claims individually. ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt told the Journal:
We are hardly naive that politics sometimes plays a role in Justice Department decisions, but it is shameful that it happened when the lives of little children are at stake. History will not look kindly on the Biden administration’s decision not to stand up for these small children.
In the settlement talks, about 940 illegal alien families had filed claims against the federal government and each was asking for an average of $3.4 million as a result of their being subjected to the Zero Tolerance policy.
As Breitbart News recently reported, the talks had stalled as a result of massive public outcry with polls showing overwhelming opposition to the payouts.
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) showed similar results where a majority of Americans, including likely swing voters, oppose the payouts.
Meanwhile, Angel Families — those who have lost loved ones from illegal immigration — slammed the payouts as “a plan to create millionaires out of over 5,000 illegal alien families” in statements to Breitbart News.
“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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