My short introduction to
the following story from various sources that is apt to get a lot of headlines along
with more GOP wackiness.
GOP members of Congress
are outraged as this FOX news article shows in the most-disgusting and perhaps outrageous
way to date.
But in typical fashion
just like the old Wendy’s TV hamburger commercial grandmother asks: “Where’s the beef?”
Or like the late great
Paul Harvey used say when he introduced a hot button story: “Now
the rest of the story.”
Below is the growing story
seen from various sides with the full story (not FOX’s condensed red meat
version) showing what is missing from the FOX and GOP spin are the facts, or just
like Sgt. Joe Friday used to say (or not) on the “Dragnet” TV show when
investigating a case: “Just the facts, Ma’am.”
Here is the story. I have boxed
off what FOX ignores along with the hyped letter from the GOPers in Congress and
as usual in typical raw partisanship statements.
The basic story is here from
the Washington Post with this headline – surely to dominate the news
for many days, weeks, and months to come:
“Biden
administration is negotiating financial compensation for families separated at
border by Trump”
Note: This
WaPo piece was updated from their earlier
article above.
Migrant families separated during Trump’s “Zero Tolerance”
border crackdown are in talks with the Biden administration to receive
significant financial compensation for the ordeal, according to three people
familiar with the settlement negotiations. The dollar amounts remain under
discussion.
One person with knowledge of the negotiations said payouts
could total $450,000 per person, with some families potentially receiving $1
million.
The Background: The Trump administration took more than
3,000 children away from their parents along the Mexican border in May-June
2018, the peak of Trump’s “Zero Tolerance” prosecution effort.
DHS officials say the
total number taken while Trump was in office probably exceeds 5,500 children.
In most cases, the children
were separated from their parents by border agents and sent to government
shelters, while their mothers and fathers were jailed to face prosecution for
entering the country illegally.
Trump officials launched
the crackdown with little interagency coordination and no effective system to
track and reunite children with their parents, resulting in bureaucratic chaos,
according to federal courts and oversight reports.
1. Physicians for Human
Rights, a New York-based human rights organization, called the separations “torture.”
2. The American Academy of
Pediatrics told CNN that it amounted to child abuse.
Related: Deleted
families: What went wrong with Trump’s separation effort?
Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney who has led the legal effort to reunite
the families and has filed a class-action lawsuit seeking damages, declined to
discuss the ongoing negotiations, which were first reported by the WSJ, he says: “Given the harm
these families suffered, especially the young children, and that the harm was
deliberately inflicted by our government, they deserve not only adequate
monetary compensation but the chance to remain in the United States so that
they can have a chance to lead a safe, healthy life. I am hopeful that families
will receive holistic relief as President Biden promised.”
Attorneys for DHS, the DOJ, and HHS all have been involved
in the settlement discussions, said one of the people familiar with the
negotiations, who, like others, was not authorized to discuss the sensitive
talks. DHS referred inquiries to the DOJ.
A spokeswoman for the DOJ declined to comment.
Chad Wolf, the former Trump DHS acting secretary who also was the
department’s Chief of Staff during those separations, criticized the potential
settlements on Twitter, writing: “There are no limits to what this Administration
will do. Everything they have touched re: border security / immigration is
wrong for America But this may be at the top of the list.”
Related: Trump’s administration used an early, unreported program to launch family separations.
Lawyers for families have been meeting with Federal government officials for months as part of their “...nationwide effort to settle federal
lawsuits and administrative tort claims over the separations, federal court
records show.
KEY FACT: Separate from the ACLU lawsuit, attorneys and
advocates had filed other claims over the separations even before Biden took
office.
Those cases were often
handled individually or in small groups by pro bono attorneys and filed under
the Federal Tort Claims Act.
Note: This
aspect FOX and the GOPers in their letter skip over in their one-sided
bent out of shape reporting with outrageous headlines with few legal details
which is both GOP and FOX strategy to keep
the focus on Biden who was not even if office when the lawsuits against Trump
hit the courts.
But the Biden administration began considering a
standardized way to handle the lawsuits, offering families compensation
depending on trauma the parents and children suffered while in U.S. government
custody.
The ACLU and other lawyers
said in an October 20 court filing that they had made “meaningful progress
toward settlement” and asked the judge to stay proceedings through
December 13 so negotiations could continue.
Among the plaintiffs
in one ACLU lawsuit filed in 2019 in Arizona are two children, ages 7 and
8, who sobbed as they were pulled from their mother; a 7-year-old girl who fell
asleep and woke up to discover that her father had vanished; and a 13-year-old
girl handcuffed on Christmas Day to control her while her mother was taken
away.
The lawsuits say
in part: “Defendants destroyed families to inflict severe pain on
Central American immigrants, hoping that this would cause them to abandon their
asylum cases and deter other Central Americans from seeking asylum or other
immigration relief in the United States.”
People close to the settlement agreement say that $450,000
may end up being roughly the average compensation, but will vary.
Some parents may not receive any compensation at all,
depending on any criminal charges against them. Others still have not filed
tort claims. Advocates have raised concerns that publicizing possible financial
settlements could put families in danger. Some 1,000 parents remain separated
from their children. Most still live in Central America where criminals engage
in kidnapping and extortion.
Noteworthy:
The first families reunified under the
Biden administration crossed back into the United States in early May. A total
of roughly 60 families have been reunified since then — a pace much slower than
many advocates had hoped for.
My 2 Cents: This story will be followed closely and updated.
F/N: Fair or not is the issue, but be sure the attorneys are looking at big bucks, too in any settlement(s).
Thanks for stopping by.
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