Can Biden reunite 1,000 migrant children separated by Trump with their parents?

Despite a two-year effort by US President Joe Biden, almost 1,000 migrant children separated at the US-Mexico border by the administration of former President Donald Trump have yet to be reunited with their parents. Of the 998 kids still separated, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) revealed Thursday, 148 were in the process of reunification.

In April 2018, the administration of Trump, a republican and immigration hardliner, announced a so-called “zero-tolerance policy” intended to deter illegal immigration and encourage tougher legislation. Under this policy, each and every migrant, including asylum seekers, not using an official port of entry to cross the US border was to be detained and criminally prosecuted, Refugees International said.

Under the policy, scores of children were separated from parents or guardians with whom they had entered the US. While the kids were placed under the supervision of the US Department of Health and Human Services, the adults were prosecuted and held in jails or deported.

Following intense public outcry, the administration halted family separation and instead decided to detain entire families together.

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President Biden, a Democrat, issued an executive order shortly after taking office in January 2021 that established a task force to reunite the separated children, calling such separations a “human tragedy”. The task force has reunited 600 families so far.

Some reunified families have been connected to services like access to mental health resources, DHS said. There was still work to be done to completely address wounds inflicted by the zero-tolerance policy, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters on Thursday.

In one of the shocking instances, a Honduran mother, according to a 2022 report by Reuters, ended up homeless for a number of months in the US after she was reunited with her children she had not seen in years.