Vox Sentences - Reparations for family separations

The US could offer payment for “zero tolerance” family separations; Sudan's coup leader promises a civilian government among protest casualties.

Tonight's Sentences was written by Ellen Ioanes.

The Biden administration floats payments for families separated at the US border under Trump

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

• The Biden administration’s Justice Department is in talks to pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars to families separated at the southern US border under the Trump administration’s border separation policy, piloted in 2017 and legally enforced in 2018. The payouts could begin as soon as next month. [NBC / Julia Ainsley and Jacob Soboroff]
• The government could pay as much as $450,000 per person directly affected by the policy; so if a parent and child were separated at the border, that family could receive up to $900,000 depending on their situation. The ACLU has identified 5,500 children affected by the policy using government records. [WSJ / Michelle Hackman, Aruna Viswanatha, and Sadie Gurman]
• Lawyers representing the families say that the payments — as well as the opportunity for the families concerned to become citizens of the US — would help families mitigate the psychological trauma of the separation. People who endured the separation have reported depression and other psychological issues; some young children separated from their parents regressed or didn’t recognize them when reunited. [NYT / Miriam Jordan]
• The payments are the result of several of the affected families filing suit against the US government on the grounds that they dealt with severe psychological trauma as a result of the Trump “zero tolerance” immigration policy. Furthermore, many of the families may have been entitled to make asylum claims based on persecution in their country of origin. [Washington Post / Nick Miroff, Maria Sacchetti, and Kevin Sieff]
• “At this point all I can say is that negotiations are ongoing about what type of immigration relief might be available” in terms of a path to citizenship, Lee Gelernt, one of the ACLU’s head negotiators in the lawsuit and deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrant’s Rights Project, told Vox via email.
• Although some families have been reunited, mostly through the efforts of NGOs, a progress report from the Interagency Task Force on the Reunification of Families revealed that 1,727 children — a third of all those identified as having been separated from their families — have yet to be reunited with their families. [The Hill / Shirin Ali]

More protester deaths as the head of Sudan's coup promises a new government

• After a military coup on Monday, Sudan erupted in protests calling for a civilian government; in the chaotic week that has followed, the country has seen a number of casualties among the protesters — at least nine killed and 170 wounded by the state security forces. The leader of the coup, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has promised to install a “technocrat” prime minster to share power with the military, according to an interview with Russian state media. [Al Jazeera]
• The nation overthrew dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019, and was in the process of transitioning to a civilian government, with the intent to hold elections in 2023. Al-Burhan was in a power-sharing arrangement with civilian Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, whom he arrested on Monday, along with several other civilian politicians. [NYT / Abdi Latif Dahir and Declan Walsh]
• But al-Burhan also claims he has been in discussions with Hamdok about forming a new government. “He is free to form the government, we will not intervene in the government formation, anyone he will bring, we will not intervene at all,” al-Burhan said in a video aired on Al Jazeera TV. [Reuters / Khalid Abdelaziz and Doina Chiacu]
• Biden and other Western leaders have called for Sudan return to civilian power; indeed, some civilian officials have refused to step down from power, and several unions are planning a general strike to protest the coup. [AP / Samy Magdy]

The FDA has authorized Pfizer/BioNTech's vaccine for use in 5- to 11-year olds; shots could start next week if the CDC signs off. [NYT / Noah Weiland and Sharon LaFraniere]

• Tonga, an island nation near Fiji, reported its first Covid-19 case on Friday, after an infected traveler from New Zealand arrived there Wednesday. [AP / Nick Perry]
• An 83-year-old woman now thought to be Afghanistan’s last Jewish person has been evacuated to Albania. [AP / Ilan ben Zion and Llazar Semini]
• The US and other international partners are discussing a round of sanctions against Nicaragua’s Ortega regime after a “sham election” planned for November 7. [Reuters / Matt Spetalnick]

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"It came up — we just talked about the fact he was happy that I was a good Catholic and I should keep receiving communion."

[President Joe Biden on his conversation with Pope Francis on Friday, in response to reporters asking if he and the pope had discussed abortion / Reuters]

Sean Illing talks with Joe Bernstein of BuzzFeed News about online disinformation and what — if anything — can be done about it. [Spotify]

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