The negotiations, which began in the early months of the Biden administration, were aimed at settling claims brought by migrant families that were separated under the “zero tolerance” policy while seeking to enter the U.S. for asylum and other reasons.

But government officials abruptly pulled the plug on all settlement talks on Thursday, Lee Gelernt, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, and one of the lead negotiators told NPR.

Gelernt said the Justice Department did not explain why it was walking away from the talks.

“We can see no reason for this other than this administration does not want to use any political capital to help these children,” Gelernt said in an interview. “History will not judge this decision kindly.”

In a statement, the Department of Justice said the parties have been unable to reach a settlement, but “we remain committed to engaging with the plaintiffs and to bringing justice to the victims of this abhorrent policy.”

The controversial immigration policy was dismantled within Biden’s first week as president

In all, the Trump administration separated more than 5,000 families who crossed into the U.S. without visas. Under the policy adults who entered the U.S. from the southern border were prosecuted for illegal entry. Because children cannot be imprisoned with adults, the young kids were taken into separate federal facilities.

Government reports ultimately found the administration had no clear plan nor had it allocated resources to help reunite parents or guardians with their children when it implemented the zero tolerance enforcement policy. Hundreds of families remain separated, many more say they are still suffering the effects of the separation. More than 100 have brought claims seeking monetary damages from the government, Gelernt said.

Republicans and Democrats appeared united against the draconian policy, calling it a humanitarian failure. President Biden called it a “moral and national shame.” And settlement talks proceeded quietly behind closed doors for several months — until October, when the Wall Street Journal broke the story that financial compensation amounts could reach as high as $450,000 per person in some cases.

At that point, the negotiations became a political liability for Biden and his administration who came under fire by Republicans in Washington.

Lawyers representing families who’d been torn apart, have insisted most settlement amounts would be far lower, But the story generated enormous outrage among GOP members, who tried to link the issue to the soaring number of arrests at the southern border. They argued that giving large cash settlements to migrant families would encourage more illegal immigration.

In a Department of Homeland Security hearing on immigration last month, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said he takes the entire concept of compensation as a personal affront.

“As you can imagine, many Americans think it’s a pretty outrageous idea to offer massive taxpayer funded payments to illegal immigrants who broke our laws,” Grassley told DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, blaming the Biden administration for the current immigration crisis.

Grassley noted that the families of service members who die on active duty receive a tax repayment of $100,000. “Under what circumstances, if any do you think it’s appropriate for an illegal immigrant who broke our laws to receive more money from the government than the family of a fallen service member,” he asked.

Biden administration officials and the president himself were asked frequently about the settlement talks, which appeared likely to become an election-year issue in 2022.

Lawyers representing the families say they’re deeply disappointed and contend everyone who was a victim of the zero tolerance approach deserves recompense, including financial settlements. They also say the government could easily wind up spending even more money fighting these cases than if it had simply reached a settlement.

The Women’s Refugee Commission condemned the decision by the Justice Department to pull out of the negotiations.

“This move is a shameful, profound betrayal of the government’s responsibility to redress the harms of this heinous policy,” Katharina Obser, director of the Migrant Rights and Justice program with the group, said in a statement.

“While the U.S. can never undo what happened, we expected the Biden administration to engage in good faith with efforts for redress and repair,” she said, adding that “the cruelty of intentionally tearing families apart inflicted unspeakable and permanent trauma on children and their parents coming to the U.S. border seeking safety.”

Kathryn Hampton, deputy director of the Physicians for Human Rights Asylum Program, also noted the long term effects of the separation on children. The organization has documented the psychological harms and trauma many have suffered, including PTSD, depression, and anxiety.

“Instead of bowing to right-wing ideologues, the Biden administration should pursue justice and accountability for the deeply traumatized children and parents who endured these atrocious acts perpetrated by the United States government,” Hampton said in a statement.

The Biden administration says it will continue to identify and reunify families that were separated under the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, the ACLU is in negotiations with the administration over other issues, including the possibility of legal status for separated families. Those talks will continue, Gelernt said — but the end of financial negotiations won’t make them any easier.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2021/12/16/1065044185/justice-department-breaks-off-talks-on-compensation-for-separated-families

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A number of groups, including the ACLU and Sierra Club, had asked the high court to get involved again after the justices last year cleared the way for the administration to use military funds for construction while the case played out in the courts.

A federal appeals court had ruled against the administration last month, but the justices, for now, have given another temporary victory to the administration.

TRUMP TOURS WALL AS CONSTRUCTION HITS 200-MILE MARK, SAYS SOUTHERN BORDER HAS ‘NEVER BEEN MORE SECURE’

“The fight continues,” said Dror Ladin, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project. “Every lower court to consider the question has ruled President Trump’s border wall illegal, and the Supreme Court’s temporary order does not decide the case. We’ll be back before the Supreme Court soon to put a stop to Trump’s xenophobic border wall once and for all.”

The four liberal justices dissented from Friday’s order.

In June, the Supreme Court also declined to hear an appeal from a coalition of environmental groups that pushed back against the Trump administration’s construction of the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The groups, led by the Center for Biological Diversity, challenged a 1996 law giving the president authority to fight illegal immigration and border crossings, and limiting some legal challenges.

The post Supreme Court denies request to halt construction of the border wall first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

On October 21st, 2019, the Department of Justice issued a proposal that would permit the collection of DNA samples from migrants detained at the southern U.S. border. The biometric data collected from migrants in federal immigration custody would then be funneled into the FBI criminal justice DNA database, whose extensive data comes from people who have been arrested, charged and or convicted with serious crimes. The rule was published the following day, October 22nd, 2019, in the Federal Register and is currently open for public comments until November 10th, twenty days after it was published. According to an NPR article published by Joel Rose and Bobby Allyn, “Attorney General William Barr issued the rule, which is set to be published in the Federal Register on Tuesday [October 21st], with the expectation that federal authorities will gather DNA information on about 748,000 immigrants annually, including asylum-seekers presenting themselves at legal ports of entries.”

“The proposed rule change would help to save lives and bring criminals to justice by restoring the authority of the Attorney General to authorize and direct collections of DNA from non-United States person detained at the border and the interior by DHS, with the ultimate goal of reducing victimization of innocent citizens.” This was a statement given by Deputy Attorney General, Jeffrey Rosen, at the announcement of the rule on October 21st, 2019. Following the announcement by the Department of Justice, many prominent groups like the ACLU raised concerns about the violation of privacy and other important matters. Vera Eidelman, a staff attorney at the ACLU’s speech, privacy, and technology project, said that the “Forced DNA collection raises serious privacy and civil liberties concerns and lacks justification, especially when DHS is already using less intrusive identification methods like fingerprinting. This kind of mass collection alters the purpose of DNA collection from one of criminal investigation to population surveillance, which is contrary to our basic notions of freedom and autonomy.” Vera Eidelman wasn’t the only member out of the ACLU to issue a statement on the matter. Naureen Shah, the ACLU’S senior advocacy and policy counsel said in a statement that “This proposed change in policy is extraordinary in its breadth and transparent with its xenophobic goals. It seeks to miscast these individuals, many of whom are seeking a better life or safety, as threats to the country’s security.”

Resources are very limited and the budget is tight when it comes to the crisis happening on the United States-Mexico border. It is neither wise nor efficient to funnel the funds necessary to get this change in policy up and running when the conditions in deportation centers violate basic human decency. There are not enough resources at the southern border to even give the migrants detained at immigration centers basic hygienic products, yet the Department of Justice thinks the optimal solution at the moment is to resort to xenophobic policies. Not only does this raise privacy concerns, it also pushes the Trump administration’s caricature of migrants and immigrants. This reinforces the Trump idea that immigrants are criminals and rapists that are here to terrorize the American population, an idea that the president has been pushing since day one.

Even the way the Deputy Attorney General described the rule by saying that it will save lives and bring criminals to justice pushes the false narrative that migrants who are coming to the United States are criminals, despite studies showing that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than citizens. This change costs money and it’s not a necessary step that needs to be taken when fingerprinting is an identification process being used right now that doesn’t raise privacy concerns nor has the potential to collect information that can be abused. In fact, this change in policy only seems like a superficial action meant to make it look like the Trump administration is doing anything meaningful. The goal for the Trump administration may be to reduce the victimization of innocent citizens, but it’s at the expense of the victimization of innocent migrants.

The Trump administration has argued that this change is authorized by the DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005, which was meant to amend the DNA Identification Act of 1994 “to repeal provisions prohibiting the DNA profiles from arrestees who have not been charged in an indictment or information with a crime.” Up until now, immigrants detained at immigration centers were exempted from the DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005. According to the NPR article, “Under the Obama administration, Homeland Security officials said it wasn’t feasible to do that, and the collection hasn’t been required. But officials inside U.S. Customs and Border Protection thought that was wrong, and they stepped forward as whistleblowers to say their agency is violating the DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005.”

It doesn’t seem that this change can be stalled in the courts, yet with just a year remaining in Trump’s term and various factors affecting the probability of re-election, it will be hard to determine whether this will be a permanent and long term change and if so what the future implications are.

The post Crisis At The Border: The Collection Of DNA Samples From Migrants first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.