The U.S. Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services are considering payments that could amount to close to $1 million a family, though the final numbers could shift, the people familiar with the matter said. Most of the families that crossed the border illegally from Mexico to seek asylum in the U.S. included one parent and one child, the people said. Many families would likely get smaller payouts, depending on their circumstances, the people said.

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The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents families in one of the lawsuits, has identified about 5,500 children separated at the border over the course of the Trump administration, citing figures provided to it by the government. The number of families eligible under the potential settlement is expected to be smaller, the people said, as government officials aren’t sure how many will come forward. Around 940 claims have so far been filed by the families, the people said.

The total potential payout could be $1 billion or more.

As part of a so-called zero-tolerance enforcement policy, immigration agents separated thousands of children, ranging from infants to teenagers, from their parents at the southern border in 2018 after they had crossed illegally from Mexico to seek asylum in the U.S. In some cases families were forcefully broken up with no provisions to track and later reunite them, government investigations found. The lawsuits allege some of the children suffered from a range of ailments, including heat exhaustion and malnutrition, and were kept in freezing cold rooms and provided little medical attention. . . .

Some Republicans criticized the potential payments on Thursday afternoon after The Wall Street Journal reported on them. “The Biden administration’s promises of citizenship and entitlement programs have already caused the worst border crisis in history—a huge cash reward will make it even worse,” Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas said.

The discussions about the payouts have taken place over the past few months among a group of dozens of private lawyers representing the families and government lawyers. Some government lawyers have viewed the payouts as excessive for people who had violated the law by crossing the border, the people said. One government lawyer threatened to remove his name from the case out of disagreement with the potential settlement offer, the people said. . . .

Immigration law gives children greater legal protections than adults, so while the adults’ asylum cases could be dismissed quickly, allowing them to be deported, children mostly remained in the U.S. in child-welfare shelters or living with relatives. The Trump administration also hadn’t built a system to track which children belong to which parents before beginning to separate them.

A January report from the Justice Department’s inspector general faulted senior Trump Justice Department officials for knowing the policy change would result in families being separated, but pressing ahead without preparing for it.

President Trump ended the policy through an executive order on June 20, 2018, following bipartisan blowback and global condemnation.

Many of the families filed tort claims, a type of civil claim seeking damages for loss or harm, asking for compensation to cover mental-health treatment to address the emotional and psychological toll the practice took. Some of the cases were resolved under the Trump administration. In a 2019 settlement in New Jersey, for example, an adult and a minor received a total of $125,000.

(Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.)

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