(Washington) US President Joe Biden said on Saturday he favored financial compensation for the families of migrants who “lost” their children due to the “zero tolerance” migration policy put in place by his predecessor Donald Trump.
“Because of the aberrant policy of the previous government, if you crossed the border, whether legally or illegally, and you lost your child, lost, he disappeared, you deserve some form of compensation, regardless of the circumstances, ”said Joe Biden at a press conference on the occasion of the adoption of his vast plan for investments in infrastructure.
“What form it will take, I have no idea,” he added.
the Wall Street Journal wrote in early October that the US Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security were negotiating with families of migrants who complained about financial deals of up to $ 450,000 per person.
Joe Biden, who this week qualified these assertions as “nonsense”, again denied these amounts on Saturday.
“The figures disseminated by the media are higher than what no agreement can reach” according to the Department of Justice, thus indicated Thursday one of the spokesman for the White House, Karine Jean-Pierre.
The Democratic President has promised a more “humane” migration policy after the Trump era and his so-called “zero tolerance” policy, launched in 2018.
It consisted of instituting criminal proceedings against anyone who entered the border illegally with Mexico. Consequence: parents have been detained without their children and some families have never been reunited.
In all, nearly 4,000 migrant children had been separated from their families. More than 2,000 still had not reunited with their loved ones at the beginning of June 2021.