The White House continued to dodge questions Monday as to why the Department of Justice is going to great lengths to fight against monetary relief for migrant families separated at the border, including subjecting parents to lengthy examinations meant to weaken their trauma claims.
Its lack of answers comes after USA TODAY and the Arizona Republic published a story on Monday revealing previously unseen details about the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy. That reporting, among other things, found some government officials had believed the purpose of the plan was to harm families. In one case, a father said he was forced to sign documents agreeing to be deported without his daughter, but he couldn’t read what he signed.
On Monday, during the White House briefing, a USA TODAY reporter asked Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre why the Justice Department continued to fight the cases despite Biden calling the policy a “moral and national shame.”
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What did the White House say about separated families?
Jean-Pierre largely repeated what the White House already told USA TODAY, and said Biden has repeatedly described the policy as a violation of, “every norm of who we are as a nation.” She added that Biden ended the practice and created a task force meant to reunite families. That group has reunited at least 700 families and she said the administration is continuing to support families.
She said that work remains ongoing, though she declined to directly answer why government attorneys are fighting the tort claims brought by families in court.
“When it comes to DOJ and what they’re doing and how they’re moving forward on their litigation, I am just not going to comment from here,” she said.
Biden himself has previously spoken out against the policy, calling it “abhorrent” and one of his earliest actions as president was to officially end the practice. His Department of Justice attorneys, meanwhile, are fighting against tort claims brought by dozens of families who the government separated. By refusing to settle these claims, advocates and families say the government is asking those affected, including the children, to relieve their pain or risk losing out on a payout.
What did the USA TODAY Network reporting find?
In reviewing hundreds of pages of court filings, reporters also found that government officials didn’t have a framework in place to track separated families and struggled to keep phone lines open to children in detention.
The documents also revealed how immigration officials interpreted their orders to split families at the US-Mexico border, and how quickly those decisions were made.
Shawn Jordan, a special operations supervisor for the Border Patrol in Arizona when the policy was in place, said agents couldn’t wait on criminal referrals from U.S. attorneys to separate families. Instead, the intent to separate was often enough. In another incident, Michelle Lee, an administrator with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Arizona, gave approval to split a child and a parent after receiving an email on her BlackBerry in just two minutes.
Prior to the story’s publication, USA TODAY reached out to the departments of Justice and Homeland Security. DHS declined to comment and referred questions to the Department of Justice. That agency declined to comment on the cases, but did point USA TODAY toward a statement it had previously given in 2021 after monetary negotiations between the administration and families fell apart.
“While the parties have been unable to reach a global settlement agreement at this time,” the statement read, “we remain committed to engaging with the plaintiffs and to bringing justice to the victims of this abhorrent policy.”
Have any news tips or story ideas about immigration in the Southwest? Reach the reporter at rafael.carranza@arizonarepublic.com, or follow him on Twitter at @RafaelCarranza. Chris Quintana is an investigative reporter at USA TODAY, and he can be reached at cquintana@usatoday.com or via Signal at 202-308-9021.
