A plan being circulated by President Joe Biden’s administration that would give payouts of $450,000 to each border crosser subjected to former President Trump’s “Zero Tolerance” policy would outpace payments to the victims of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings.
This week, as Breitbart News reported, the Biden administration is weighing whether to provide border crossers — who were subjected to the Zero Tolerance policy — with $450,000 each as part of a payout in lawsuits filed.
U.S. President Joe Biden gives a speech on his Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal and Build Back Better Agenda at the NJ Transit Meadowlands Maintenance Complex on October 25, 2021 in Kearny, New Jersey. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
In some instances, a family unit could secure about $1 million from the payout and overall, the payouts could cost American taxpayers more than $1 billion. Lawyers representing the border crossers have argued that each family unit should get $3.4 million in payouts.
Following the Boston Marathon bombings by Islamic terrorists, who took the lives of three Americans and injured 265 others, a charitable fund was set up for victims of the attack. At the time, nearly $61 million was raised, providing each victim with about $262,500 — nearly double what Biden’s payouts to border crossers would be.
Ron McCracken of Dallas pays his respects at a makeshift memorial honoring to the victims of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings ahead of Monday’s 118th Boston Marathon, Sunday, April 20, 2014, in Boston. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Likewise, Biden’s payouts to border crossers would cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than what Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been ordered to pay victims.
In January 2016, Tsarnaev was ordered to pay 49 victims and the Massachusetts Victim Compensation Fund about $101 million. The court order is only symbolic as Tsarnaev has no way to pay the money. Still, that amount is nearly $900 million less than what Biden’s payouts to border crossers would cost, estimated at about $1 billion.
As Breitbart News reported, Biden’s payouts to border crossers would exceed the payments rewarded to the victims of the September 11, 2001 Islamic terrorist attacks and the $100,000 “death gratuity” provided to the families of American service members who die in combat.
Trump had instituted the Zero Tolerance policy at the United States-Mexico border in 2018 to reduce illegal immigration. The policy had been utilized since at least before 2001.
As a result of the policy, adult border crossers were often put into separate holding facilities from the children they arrived with at the southern border. Since then, the border crossers who were subjected to the policy have sued the federal government.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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