Biden administration scraps $450,000 payments to migrant families separated under Trump

The Biden administration has walked away from legal negotiations in which it was considering paying $450,000 to each adult and child separated at the southern border during the Trump administration, according to a spokesman for the plaintiffs.

The U.S. government "has ended negotiations over a settlement of the cases seeking monetary compensation," Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants’ Rights Project, wrote in a message to the Washington Examiner.

Officials from the departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and Justice had proposed paying each person $450,000, or nearly $1 million per two-person family, to settle claims about the lasting traumatic and psychological effects of being torn apart as a result of former President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance policy, the Wall Street Journal reported in October. The policy was rolled out nationwide in April 2018 and shuttered in June 2018.

ACLU lead attorney Lee Gelernt told CBS News that the Biden administration's decision not to pay affected families was the result of having “allowed politics to get in the way of helping the little children deliberately abused by our government.”