Biden Administration Has Yet to Reunite Over 2,100 Migrant Children Separated at Border Under Trump
Thousands of migrant children, who were separated from their families during the Trump administration, have yet to be rejoined by the task force created by President Joe Biden.
A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report made public on Tuesday, June 8, said up to 2,100 children may still be separated from their parents.
Reports said at least 5,500 migrant families were separated after crossing the border between 2017 and 2018 under the Trump administration. Because of this, Biden created the Family Reunification Task Force to reunite the migrant families.
The separation of migrant children from their families resulted from a 2018 "zero tolerance" border policy, wherein the government tried to prosecute all adults who crossed the border illegally.
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More Than 2,100 Migrant Children Still Separated From Their Families
The Family Reunification Task Force's first progress report said the Trump administration separated around 3,913 children from their parents between July 1, 2017, and Jan. 20, 2021.
Out of those numbers, 1,779 were already reunited with their parents even before the DHS-led task force establishment.
According to CBS News, officials have a record of 2,127 migrant children, who have yet to reunite with their parents. However, the task force said there's a possibility that some children and parents may have found a way to reunite with their parents and the federal government had no records documenting their reunifications.
DHS said it is working to check how many of the 2,137 migrant children with no records of reunification are still separated from their parents.
So far, the task force has reunified only seven families over the past 30 days, and it expects to reunify 29 more families in the coming days, Al Jazeera reported.
Meanwhile, five migrant children, who have yet to reunite with their parents, remained in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) custody. That is because officials have yet to locate their family members in the U.S. willing to care for them.
DHS said it is analyzing 1,700 more separation cases to determine if they were justified, in addition to the 3,900 separations deemed to fall within the scope of the task force.
"The Task Force continues to review government records to identify any additional parents of children who were separated," the task force said in its 22-page report.
The report further noted that nearly 60 percent of the migrant children separated from their families were Guatemalans. There were also Hondurans, Salvadorans, Mexicans, Brazilians, and Romanians.
Migrant Children Deportations and Other Data Revealed in the DHS Report
Apart from the number of remaining migrant children separated by the Trump administration, the DHS report also revealed that the task force deported at least 1,613 parents and 399 migrant children to their country of origin.
CBS reported that only two percent of the parents and migrant children were deported together.
"We would really like to see more progress by now but intend to make sure that the government up the pace," said American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawyer Lee Gelernt, who oversees the federal court case over the Trump-era separations.
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WATCH: Why Hundreds of Migrant Children Remain Separated From Their Parents - From PBS NewsHour