The agreement also calls for the federal government to continue its years-long efforts to identify and reunite families that it said were “ripped apart” under the zero-tolerance rules and to provide a pathway for them to seek asylum in the United States.

“The practice of separating families at the southwest border was shameful,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement announcing the settlement. “This agreement will facilitate the reunification of separated families and provide them with critical services to aid in their recovery.”

“The ACLU has settled hundreds of lawsuits in our 103-year history, but none more important than this one,” added ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero.

“To America’s enduring shame, we tore children from the arms of their families to enact a xenophobic agenda. This settlement closes the darkest chapter of the Trump administration, but as welcomed as it is, the damage inflicted on these families will forever be tragic and irreversible,” he said.

The ACLU said the agreement will cover an estimated 4,500-5,000 children and their parents, allowing them to gain access to benefits “to get them on their feet,” including work authorization, housing and legal assistance and certain types of medical services.

The settlement does not involve the payment of monetary damages.

“The separation of families at our southern border was a betrayal of our nation’s values,” said Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta. “By providing services to these families and implementing polices to prevent future separations, today’s agreement addresses the impacts of those separations and helps ensure that nothing like this happens again.”

Trump instituted the so-called zero-tolerance policy in early 2018, under which all adults accused of illegally crossing the southern border were prosecuted. Because of that, officials separated children from their detained parents and housed them at facilities across the United States.

Later investigations found that poor planning and the lack of established procedures and systems to track separated families across multiple federal agencies for later reunification resulted in government officials being unable to identify separated children.

The zero-tolerance prompted outcries from pro-immigration activists and a legal challenge dubbed Ms. L vs. ICE, in which the ACLU accused the Trump administration of using asylum-seekers “as pawns in its draconian public policy experiment.”

The suit cited violations of the Constitution’s due process clause, federal law protecting asylum seekers and the government’s own directive to release asylum seekers.

In the case, attorneys said the plaintiff, Ms. L., fled the Congo along with her 7-year-old daughter, fearing for their lives in their home country. Upon reaching a port of entry near San Diego, the mother was assessed by an asylum officer as having a credible claim for asylum.

Despite that determination, she was imprisoned in the Otay Mesa Detention Center near San Diego while her daughter was taken from her and sent across the country to a facility in Chicago.

“When the officers separated them, ‘Ms. L’ could hear her daughter in the next room frantically screaming that she wanted to remain with her mother,” the suit claimed.

Several days after the suit was filed the government abruptly released the mother and she was reunited with her child on March 16, 2018.