The White House declined to answer questions about a report that the Biden administration is in talks to offer migrant families separated by the Trump administration $450,000 per person in compensation, deferring questions to the Justice Department.
“I cannot speak to that from here,” principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Friday.
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Pressed further, Jean-Pierre said, “This is in litigation, and so you have to talk to the Department of Justice about this. This is not something that I can speak to from here.”
“One of the things we have to remember is [we are in the] place that we are today … because we had an administration that had an inhumane, immoral policy that was taking babies away from their families, away from their mothers,” she said, referring to former President Donald Trump. “That was the policy of the last administration.”
Biden has denied the claim that his administration was in talks to offer some separated families close to $1 million as part of a settlement agreement, calling a report by the Wall Street Journal “garbage.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Biden said.
Groups filed lawsuits on behalf of migrant families separated by the Trump administration after crossing the border illegally, with lawyers for the families arguing that the policy burdened them with lasting psychological trauma.
In a statement, the American Civil Liberties Union said that Biden would abandon a campaign promise were he to follow through on his comments. The group also accused his staff of failing to “fully” brief him on the issue.
“Biden may not have been fully briefed about the actions of his very own Justice Department as it carefully deliberated and considered the crimes committed against thousands of families separated from their children as an intentional governmental policy. But if he follows through on what he said, the president is abandoning a core campaign promise to do justice for the thousands of separated families,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said.
Biden, Romero said, called the family separations “criminal” during a presidential campaign debate with Trump “and campaigned on remedying and rectifying the lawlessness of the Trump administration.”
The White House later conceded that some payments were likely to occur.
Jean-Pierre revised the president’s statement during a later press briefing, saying that payments would go ahead “if it saves taxpayer dollars and puts the disastrous history of the previous administration’s use of zero tolerance and family separation behind us.”
Biden “is perfectly comfortable” with the Justice Department issuing settlements, she said.
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“The president, what he was reacting to was the dollar figure that you mentioned to him yesterday,” Jean-Pierre continued. “As press accounts today indicate, the Department of Justice made clear to the plaintiffs that the reported figures are higher than anywhere that a settlement can land.”
