| Good lawyers know when it's in their client's best interests to settle. That's the warning of former U.S. attorney Joyce White Vance, who writes that criticism of reports that U.S. officials are in talks to offer "compensation" to immigrant families separated under the Trump administration's zero-tolerance border policy misses the bigger picture. The government isn't looking to make voluntary payments that would "encourage" immigration, Vance writes. More than 3,000 family separations were carried out under the Trump policy before a court ordered the government to stop the deliberately harsh practice in 2018. Neither the facts nor the law are on the government's side, Vance argues: Many cases involve people who were lawfully seeking asylum. "As of February, more than 500 children, many of them under the age of 5 when they were separated, had still not been reunited with their families." The government has already lost motions to dismiss in four cases. About 940 claims have been filed by families affected between April and June of 2018. "Ultimately," Vance writes, "the United States stands to pay large settlements, likely larger than what could be negotiated now. And the litigation process would further tarnish our national reputation if our country seeks to avoid responsibility for inflicting these horrors." Let's not be the country that says, "So much for the shining city on a hill." "The sensible — and right — thing to do in these cases is to negotiate settlements that provide appropriate compensation and support to the families."  (Matt York/AP) These are not voluntary payments. Settling is both in U.S. interests and the right thing to do. By Joyce White Vance ● Read more » | | | | Another judge dismissed charges against the shooters. Attorney General Merrick Garland can help. By Kelly Ghaisar ● Read more » | | | | The president's current precarious position is a product of more than his party's incontinent appetite for swaddling Americans in a cradle-to-grave blanket of government solicitude. By George F. Will ● Read more » | | | | Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) knows how to navigate an independent path in the Senate. Some on the other side of the aisle might try it, too. By Colbert I. King ● Read more » | | | | Trump would be shouting these numbers from the rooftops. By Catherine Rampell ● Read more » | | | | President Biden and Democrats in Congress need to change tack — and fast. By David Von Drehle ● Read more » | | | | Treatment drugs are the last tool needed to return to normal. By Henry Olsen ● Read more » | | | | Resistance to authority helped create our nation. It is deep in our DNA. By Kathleen Parker ● Read more » | | | | On both the economic and pandemic fronts, this could be an inflection point. By Paul Waldman ● Read more » | | | | 
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