Contact Me | Media Center | Our DistrictFor Immediate ReleaseContact: Jessica LycosDate: November 3, 2021jessica.lycos@mail.house.gov
Special Mid-Week Newsletter
WASHINGTON D.C. – Dear Friends— Mohave County Supervisor Buster Johnson wrote the following important information about illegal aliens and the corrupt Biden Administration offering to pay criminals $450,000 supposedly based on being separated from children. As Supervisor Johnson explains well, the parents of these children separated themselves when they sent their kids, alone, on a journey to this country, relying on drug cartels, pimps, traffickers, and strangers to get them here. As Johnson notes: “In the United States, if you leave your child alone in the car for five minutes or less you could get arrested, yet these parents are sending their little children thousands of miles away intentionally where they could be subjected to sex trafficking, violence and physical and mental injuries.”
-Congressman Gosar
U.S. Government Encourages Abuse of Children
By Mohave County Supervisor Buster Johnson
Lake Havasu City, AZ – “The abuse of children” is how Mohave County Supervisor Buster Johnson has viewed the recent influx of migrant children to the United States over the past two years. “It has always bothered me that when the topic of illegal migrants coming to the United States from Central America is brought up that no one ever really mentions the dangers these children face,” Supervisor Johnson stated. “What is happening is these parents are sending their children thousands of miles away from the only home they have ever known and most of the time they are not being accompanied by their parents,” Johnson explained. “In the United States, if you leave your child alone in the car for five minutes or less you could get arrested, yet these parents are sending their little children thousands of miles away intentionally where they could be subjected to sex trafficking, violence and physical and mental injuries.”
According to federal authorities, 227 adult migrants were found deceased along the U.S./Mexico border in 2020. While some migrants come up from Central America with a family member, there are others who come alone or with an unrelated friend. “It is unknown how man children’s remains were discovered along the border, but if adults are dying at those high numbers, I can assure you the children are as well. Children are more susceptible to dehydration and other outside ailments,” Johnson said. “The United States Justice System doesn’t let American citizens just abandoned their child and send them thousands of miles to live on their own, yet the US Department of Justice has decided that migrant children are different. Children are children whether they are a U.S. Citizen or not. We should not be rewarding the parents or guardians by spending millions of taxpayer dollars reuniting them and then using millions more in taxpayer dollars to settle a lawsuit over it,” Johnson continued.
The Wall Street Journal this past month released a scathing article about how the Department of Justice is in talks with The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who is representing over 5,000 migrant families, to negotiate a possible $450,000 payment to each adult and child who was separated at the boarder under former President Trump’s separation policy. That amount is over 100 years’ worth of the average wage of these migrants back in Central America. “These families knowingly broke the law by crossing our border illegally. While we all feel for the children, whose parents put them into these horrific situations, it is infuriating to me that we are even considering settling these lawsuits,” Supervisor Johnson stated. “Many parents sent their children through Mexico alone, risking their lives. We should not be rewarding anybody for that,” Johnson continued.
As part of a so-called zero-tolerance enforcement policy, in May of 2018 immigration agents separated thousands of children, ranging from infants to teenagers, from their parents at the southern border after they had crossed illegally from Mexico into the U.S. The policy was not in place for long. Due to political backlash, the policy ended via Executive Order in June of 2018. Within a year, the ACLU had already filed their first lawsuit stemming from the short-lived policy. The lawsuit claims that these families were forcefully broken up with no provisions to track and later reunite them. The lawsuits allege some of the children suffered from a range of physical and mental ailments.
The lawsuits being filed are called tort claims, a type of civil claim seeking damages for loss or harm. Some of the cases were resolved under the Trump administration. The first of the lawsuits to settle occurred in 2019 when the Department of Justice settled for a total of $125,000 for an adult and minor out of New Jersey. While the ACLU claims to have 5,500 migrant families waiting to sue, so far only 950 have filed a claim.
A Department of Homeland Security attorney familiar with the case stated that if these negotiations proceed, the payout could be larger than some families of the 9/11 victims received. While some say going to trail could be far more costly, others say it’s worth the gamble. “I would rather a jury of American citizens force the hands of the government to pay this outrageous amount, than for us to just negotiate and settle. I believe if we settle, this will set a precedent. It will show that in America if you break the law, you get rewarded. That is not the precedent we should be setting,” Johnson ended.
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