Justice Department attorneys acknowledge in court documents that parents have already undergone multiple mental health evaluations but say an adult-psychology expert found it was necessary to get another opinion, according to court documents.
“It is standard practice for plaintiffs alleging severe emotional injury to be examined by the opposing party’s expert,” federal attorneys wrote. They point to a similar southern Florida case in which a father and child agreed to the same examination and say it’s “well within” what’s considered appropriate.
An examination would take about eight hours, four hours for clinical interviews and four hours of emotional and trauma testing, federal attorneys wrote. It would not be invasive and would happen at an agreed-upon place and time. The previous evaluations were done by experts chosen by the parents’ lawyers.
The two sides had been negotiating a settlement, but then Biden said that families of separated children deserve some form of compensation. An early proposal of $450,000 per person was reported and was heavily criticized by Republicans. When asked about the proposed figure, Biden said: “That’s not going to happen.”
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Talks ended shortly after. The settlement talks had also included discussion of granting the families legal U.S. residency and providing counseling services.
There is a separate legal effort to reunite other families, and there are still hundreds who have not been brought back together. The Biden administration has formed a reunification task force that has reunited roughly 600 families.
Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy meant that any adult caught crossing the border illegally would be prosecuted for illegal entry. Because children cannot be jailed with their family members, families were separated and children were taken into custody by Health and Human Services, which manages unaccompanied children at the border. No system was created to reunite children with their families.
According to the government watchdogs, Trump administration leaders underestimated how difficult it would be to carry out the policy in the field and did not inform local prosecutors and others that children would be separated. They also failed to understand that children would be separated longer than a few hours, and when that was discovered, they pressed on, the watchdogs said.
This article originally appeared here.
