Michel Marizco/KJZZ

The Border Patrol erected this facility for asylum seekers last summer. Congress allocated $708 million for facilities like these and $112 million for “consumables” that was supposed to be spent caring for migrants.

The Biden administration has pulled out of talks with migrant families separated at the border under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy. 

Under zero tolerance, migrants and asylum seekers could be criminally prosecuted and be sent to separate facilities from their children. 

More than 5,000 children were separated during the policy’s year-long run. The Biden administration says many have still not been reunited and a few hundred children have not been found yet, at all. 

Aid and rights groups say families face long-term trauma, and the policy was tantamount to abuse. Lawyers who filed suit for some of those who have been reunited have been in talks for months with the administration, trying to reach a settlement amount for damages, which at one point had reached as much as $450,000.

The ACLU, one of the groups representing families, told media the talks were ended with no explanation.