US President Joe Biden’s administration is expanding its effort to find and reunite migrant families. Those migrant families were separated under President Donald Trump as part of a zero-tolerance policy on illegal crossings. On Monday, a federal task force is launching a new program that officials say will expand efforts to find parents as many of whom are in remote Central American communities. It would help them return to the United States and they will get at least 3-years of legal residency and other assistance. The executive director of the administration’s Family Reunification Task Force, Michelle Brane said, “We recognize that we can’t make these families completely whole again. But we want to do everything we can to put them on a path towards a better life”.
The new program includes a contract with the International Organization for Migration to help with the often-complex task of getting expelled migrants back to the US. It is a reflection of just how difficult it has been for President Joe Biden s administration to address a chapter in US immigration history that drew widespread condemnation. Point to be noted that the task force has reunited at least 50 families since beginning its work in late February. But there are hundreds of parents who were separated from their children and have not been located. A lack of accurate records from the Trump administration makes it difficult to say for certain. Brané said, “It is a huge challenge that we are absolutely committed to following through to meet and to do whatever we can to reunify these families”.
The Trump administration separated thousands of migrant parents from their children in 2017 and 2018 as it moved to criminally prosecute people for illegally crossing the southwest border. However, minors could not be held in criminal custody with their parents and were transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. They were then typically sent to live with a sponsor, often a relative or someone else with a connection to the family. Trump issued an executive order halting the practice of family separations in June 2018. The executive order came days before the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit. A federal judge did the same and demanded that separated families be reunited in response to a filed lawsuit. ACLU indicated that at least 5,500 children were separated from their families.