President Joe Biden is backing off a plan for his Department of Justice (DOJ) to negotiate a settlement to provide $450,000 reparations-style payouts to each border crosser subjected to former President Trump’s “Zero Tolerance” policy.
Last month, reports circulated that Biden’s DOJ, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were working to settle with a number of border crossers represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who claim they have suffered trauma as a result of the Zero Tolerance policy that was briefly imposed in 2019.
As part of the settlement, attorneys with the DOJ, DHS, and HHS are considering a plan that would give each border crosser about $450,000 and family units about $1 million. The total cost of the payouts would reach $1 billion.
On Wednesday, while promoting vaccines for the Chinese coronavirus, Biden claimed reports about the $450,000 payouts were “garbage” and called them “not true.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Biden said, though the West Wing of the White House has little-to-no role in negotiating and settling lawsuits for various federal agencies.
As Breitbart News has noted, the $450,000 payouts to border crossers would far exceed the compensation provided to the victims of the September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorist attacks and of the Boston Marathon bombings.
In addition, analysis by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) calculated that the single payout for a border crosser under the proposal could feed 42 American families for an entire year.
Meanwhile, the total cost of the payouts could provide homes to nearly 80,000 homeless Americans for a year or could forgive student loan debt for more than 27,000 American college students and graduates who are struggling to move up the economic ladder.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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