Court documents show that the Biden Administration is now asking parents, who got separated from their children at the United States-Mexico Border, to undergo another round of psychological evaluations to determine how traumatized they were by the Trump-era policy, per NBC News.
It comes in a lawsuit filed by migrants pursuing compensation from the government after thousands of kids were taken from parents in a policy maligned as inhumane by political and religious leaders worldwide.
The settlement talks with the attorneys and the government occurred late last year. The Justice Department attorney also reserves the right, if necessary, to have a psychologist examine the separated kids. The evaluations appear to be systematic in emotional-damages claims; hence, these cases are unusual as the government's role in traumatizing parents and children by the separations has all been well documented.
Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants' Rights Project and a lawyer for plaintiffs in the effort to compensate migrants, said that President Joe Biden acknowledged the Trump family separations as criminal and a moral stain on the nation, adding that the former president hired doctors to make claims that the families involved in the issue didn't suffer all that much.
The families involved claimed sustained permanent injuries
The requests came in two cases in which 11 families filed. Almost two dozen similar cases are pending in other courts, while some have already submitted to government-requested psychiatric evaluations. The parents sat for hours-long depositions in which they recollected what happened in detail.
The physicians for human rights, a nonprofit collective of doctors that works to document human rights violations, examined the patients and determined that they exhibited suicidal thoughts and sustained a raft of problems such as nightmares, depression, anxiety, panic, worry, and difficulty sleeping.
The government investigators said that the kids separated from their parents showed more fear, feelings of abandonment, and post-traumatic stress symptoms than those who were not taken away. Some kids believed their parents had abandoned them entirely or had been murdered.
According to a 2019 report from the inspector general's office in the Department of Health and Human Services, some kids experienced mental trauma that caused physical symptoms such as chest or heart pain, per AP News.
The government attorney claimed that the families involved sustained mental and emotional injuries that will never be fully healed as they will remain permanent in their lives.
Biden claimed they deserve some form of compensation
According to the court documents, Justice Department stated that parents have already undergone different and multiple health evaluations and added that an adult psychology expert found it was essential to get another opinion.
Federal attorneys pointed out a similar southern Florida case where the father and child agreed to the same examination and said it's well within what's considered appropriate, noting that it is a standard practice for plaintiffs alleging serious emotional injury to be examined by the opposing party's expert. The examination would take around eight hours, four hours for clinical interviews, and another four hours of emotional and trauma testing.
The two opposing sides had been negotiating a settlement, but Biden firmly stated that families of separated children deserve some form of compensation. The early proposal of $450,000 per individual was criticized by Republicans, and when Biden was asked by ABC News regarding the proposed figure, he said: "That's not going to happen."
Related Article: What to Do When You're a Parent Who Has Constant Suicide Thoughts
