Joe Biden Does Total Reversal on $450,000 Payouts to Border Crossers

President Joe Biden has done a total reversal on his reported plans to make $450,000 payouts to nearly 1,000 illegal alien families, now demanding their lawsuits be dropped.

Last year, Biden’s Departments of Justice (DOJ), Homeland Security (DHS), and Health and Human Services (HHS) were in settlement talks with border crossers represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who claim they have suffered trauma as a result of former President Trump’s Zero Tolerance policy.

In late December 2021, after intense backlash, ACLU attorneys announced that the Biden administration had dropped their plans to offer $450,000 payouts to 940 border crossers filing claims. The attorneys had asked for an average of $3.4 million for each illegal alien family.

Now, not only has Biden reversed his plans to give payouts to border crossers, his Department of Justice (DOJ) is seeking to have the claims dismissed in federal court, according to CBS News:

But a review of court records and interviews with four attorneys working on these cases show the Justice Department under President Biden has sought to dismiss lawsuits filed by migrant families requesting reparations, and is not settling individual cases to give families compensation it deems just. [Emphasis added]

Instead, lawyers representing the Biden administration have argued to federal judges that families seeking financial redress over Trump-era border separations are not eligible for compensation under the Federal Tort Claims Act, citing the discretion U.S. officials have over the detention and processing of migrants. [Emphasis added]

In one recent case, U.S. Magistrate Judge Kandis Westmore denied the Biden administration’s request that a lawsuit brought by an illegal alien family be dropped.

“The fact that the Government is now attempting to evade liability for a policy that is still being unwound, as some children are still waiting to be reunited with their families, is not legally defensible,” Westmore wrote, denying the request.

Last year, Angel Families — those who have lost loved ones at the hands of illegal immigrants —  slammed the payouts as “a plan to create millionaires out of over 5,000 illegal alien families” in statements to Breitbart News.

The cost of the payouts to border crossers would have been upwards of $1 billion and more than was given to the American victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks or the Boston Marathon bombing victims.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.