Civil rights attorneys with the Southern Poverty Law Center in Atlanta and Covington and Burling in Washington, D.C., filed complaints against the federal government Thursday on behalf of fathers separated from their children at the southern U.S. border with Mexico.

The fathers are seeking compensation for the trauma to their children, a boy and a girl, both 11. They were fleeing Guatemala after threats on their lives and the rape of another girl in one of the families, according to the suit, which claims the families have suffered and will continue to suffer damage to their mental, physical and emotional health for years to come.

The two suits filed Thursday are the latest in a series of complaints filed by the same lawyers.

Lawyers listed on the complaint for the fathers include Michelle Lapointe of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Decatur, Georgia, and Matthew Schlesinger of Covington in Washington.

"Thousands of children and parents will live with intense trauma the rest of their lives as a result of this policy, which the administration knew would leave indelible scars on these families," Lapointe, senior supervising attorney at the SPLC, said in a news release Friday. "The government must be held accountable for its actions and it must put a stop to this practice once and for all."

The filings describe cruelty of both the practice of family separation and the treatment of these families while in federal custody. The lawyers said the the well-documented intent of the family separations was to deter future migrants by deliberately subjecting immigrants in custody to harsh conditions that would ensure their suffering.

"The harm inflicted on these fathers, their children and their entire families can never be undone," said Jay Carey, a partner at Covington. "But those responsible for their pain can and must be held accountable. And a message must be sent to this administration—which has acted in the name of the American people—that such cruelty will not be tolerated here or in any civilized society."

During the summer of 2018, the SPLC, through its Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative, worked with more than 40 families who were separated at the border and sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers in Georgia and Louisiana. In addition to these claims, the SPLC and Covington have filed complaints on behalf of five other families who claim they were separated and continue to suffer as a result.

The U.S. Justice Department did not respond immediately to a request for comment on the latest filings.

The complaints identified the children and their fathers by their initials.

"Between mid-2017 and late 2018, the United States government forcibly took thousands of children from their parents, sending them to facilities and foster homes hundreds of miles away. These families often had fled persecution in their home countries, only to encounter it in the very place they sought refuge," one of the complaints said. "After being separated, children and their parents often were unable to communicate for weeks or months. Parents did not know whether their children were safe—or even where their children were. Children could not understand what had happened to them. The government tore apart families, subjecting children and parents to months of terror, anguish, and torment. The government understood the harm that it was inflicting on these families. It took children from their parents not in spite of the harm, but because of it, intending that the terror inflicted on these families would deter other families from migrating to the United States."