The White House led by top aide and noted white supremacist Stephen Miller initially blocked an $8 million deal paying for mental health services for children and parents traumatized by the Trump administration’s family separation policy, NBC News reports. The court eventually forced the administration to pay—and for millions more than originally negotiated—but advocates say Miller’s delay wasted precious time.
“Lawyers and counselors for the families say the delay meant extended trauma for children, some of whom thought their parents ‘had deliberately abandoned them,’” journalist Julia Ainsley tweeted. NBC News reports that a White House official is denying Miller’s involvement, but another official says that’s bullshit. “Ultimately, it was Stephen who prevailed,” they said in the report. “He squashed it."
Geoff Bennett, Jacob Soboroff, and Ainsley report for NBC News that the Justice Department had been in negotiations for months when the Office of White House Counsel, with backing from Miller, rejected a deal in October 2019 that would have covered screenings and counseling for families ripped apart under the policy. The advocates who had negotiated in good faith were understandably outraged, but their main concern was what Miller’s sabotaging would mean for the families.
"Many of these children thought their parents had deliberately abandoned them. The longer that trauma goes unredressed, the more severe the consequences," Public Counsel attorney Mark Rosenbaum told NBC News. "We had a deal, a good deal. Everybody was feeling good about where we were. Then they came back and said no."
Miller initially squashed it but he was still ultimately a loser when a federal judge the next month ordered the administration to pay up, and for millions more than initially negotiated. “The nonprofit Seneca Family of Agencies was awarded a $14 million contract in March to provide screenings and counseling to migrant families,” the report continued.
Monique O. Madan of the Miami Herald reported this past fall that Seneca has since been treating hundreds of families who were traumatized by the policy, including one mother who said that she obsessively checks doors and locks before going to bed every night. “Maria” said it was 1 AM when border officials snatched her daughter away. “I never saw her again until two months later,” she told Madan. “You just can’t erase them, the memories.”
But while hundreds of reunited families are receiving mental healthcare services thanks to tireless work from advocates, Seneca’s Johanna Navarro-Perez told Madan that other families “are unfindable; they go off the grid and become ghosts.” Hundreds of others separated when the administration was “piloting” family separation in 2017 are still separated, after officials deported parents essentially without a trace.
While President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to create a federal task force to help reunite these families, he’s reportedly undecided if parents will be allowed to return to the U.S. to again seek asylum. Of course they should be allowed, and as Rep. Joaquin Castro has recommended, families who want it should be put on a path to U.S. citizenship as the U.S. creates a special commission to investigate this human rights disaster and those involved.
What’s also clear is that we have a long way to go before these families begin to see justice—and every day of delay continues to cause enduring harm.
"Reunification does not erase the trauma caused by the separation. It is just the first step in the healing process,” Seneca Executive Director Paige Chan told NBC News. “The need to connect families to services is urgent, because when treatment is delayed, it may exacerbate and compound the trauma of the separation.”