Biden to Sign Executive Orders on Immigration, With a Task Force Reuniting Families

By Mary Anne R. (staff@latinpost.com) First Posted: Feb 02, 2021 11:11 PM EST

Guillermo Campos-Ojeda says goodbye to his wife Adela and daughter Paloma before boarding a deportation flight chartered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) May 25, 2010 in Broadview, Illinois. The undocumented immigrants scheduled to take the flight began the morning at the ICE processing center in suburban Chicago before flying to Harlingen, Texas where they were then bussed to Brownsville and finally walked to the Mexican border and released from custody. The U.S. deports over 350,000 immigrants a year for entering the country illegally, most are Mexican, and more than 90 percent are men. (Photo : Scott Olson/Getty Images)

U.S. President Joe Biden has signed several executive orders on Tuesday to address several of the Trump administration's immigration policies. Biden has also signed an order introducing a task force on Tuesday to reunite families.

The president has also signed an executive order that reviews the "Migrant Protection Protocols." Meanwhile, the said task force will be led by the secretary of Homeland Security.

The task force will also work to identify the children and parents or guardians who were separated at the border, as well as facilitating and enabling reunification of children with their families, according to a USA Today report.

In addition, the said task force will provide a report to the president on recommendations to ensure that the general government does not have policies in place that separate families, according to a senior administration official.

Biden said as he signed the executive orders in the Oval Office that he is not making new law, adding that he is just eliminating bad policy.

Executive Orders on Immigration

Many of those parents that were separated from their children were deported to Mexico and Central America without their children. Advocates said that more than 600 children were separated from their families, according to a CBS News report.

An administration official said that the task force will also look at case-by-case basis whether separated families can be eligible for parole, visas, or other immigration benefits to allow their reunification.

Another order addressed the processing of asylum seekers along the border with Mexico, as well as committed the Biden administration to helping curb the poverty and violence that trigger U.S.-bound migration from Central America.

Officials were also ordered to consider revoking several Trump administration's asylum limits.

The order also directed a review of the Trump's administration's "Remain in Mexico" policy, which more than 70,000 asylum seekers were ordered to wait outside the U.S. territory while their cases are still pending.

Children Separated from Their Families

U.S. immigration authorities separated more than 1,500 children from their parents at the Mexico border during the Trump administration. The American Civil Liberties Union said on Thursday that this brings the total number of children separated from their family since July 2017 to over 5,400.

The ACLU said that the Trump administration told its attorneys that 1,556 children were separated from Jul. 1, 2017 to Jun. 26, 2018, according to a New York Post report.

This was when a federal judge in San Diego ordered that children in government custody be reunited with their parents. However, children from that period can be difficult to find as the government had inadequate tracking systems.

ACLU volunteers are searching for some of them and their parents by going door to door in Guatemala and Honduras.

During the 12-month period, those who were separated from their parents 207 were under five-years-old, according to ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt. ACLU filed a lawsuit to stop family separation.

Meanwhile, five were under a year old, 26 were a year old, 40 were two years old, 76 were three years old, and 60 were four years old.

Tags biden, executive order, immigration