Biden Admin to Reunite Whole Families Not Just Parents With Border Kids
Central American families bid farewell to others boarding wait a bus back to their home countries from a camp for asylum seekers on December 08, 2019 in the Mexican border town of Matamoros, Mexico. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Thursday that the Biden administration is working to reunite entire migrant families separated at the southern border during the previous administration.

Mayorkas noted that not only parents but also siblings of separated children would have a chance to get permanent legal status in the United States, NBC News reported.

The reunification of separated families is a joint effort between the DHS and the Interagency Task Force on the Reunification of Families.

Biden Admin to Reunite Migrant Families

Michelle Brané, the executive director of the task force to reunite families, said her group is working on a system in which "immediate family members" could also apply, New York Post reported.

Brané noted that this would include siblings, partner or spouse, or other parents "if they're in the picture." Brané said that once the applications are approved, they will facilitate travel arrangements.

The White House estimated about 1,000 migrant families who remained separated. This week, four families are scheduled to be reunited. The said migrant families were separated in 2017 and 2018.

"We are very much focused on providing stability to the reunited families," Mayorkas told NBC News as he discussed a mother who reunited with her son recently.

Mayorkas, who also serves as the Task Force chair, noted that he could not guarantee the migrant families would have permanent legal status. However, he said they would do everything they can "to make it work out."

The move to reunite families came a day before White House press secretary Jen Psaki highlighted the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) nearly doubling their processing rate of unaccompanied migrant children on the border to reunite them with their families.

Migrant Families and Biden Administration

In February, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that established the Interagency Task Force on the Reunification of Families to bring families back together and ensure the families are provided support.

The order also tasked the group to identify the parents and children separated under the previous administration.

Apart from the DHS and the Task Force, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of State, and the Department of Justice also help in reuniting the migrant families.

The task force is now working on a database and correcting the inaccuracies in the files provided with them. The group is also in the process of reviewing an "additional trove of documents" for family reunification in the coming months.

When asked if the current levels of immigrants crossing the southern border have created a humanitarian crisis, the DHS secretary noted that the "real crisis" is the reason why immigrants are leaving their countries.

Meanwhile, the task force said that they are also recommending policies that will prevent repeating the "unnecessary and cruel" separation between migrant families in the future.

WATCH: Biden Administration Begins Reuniting Some Families Separated at US-Mexico Border - From ABC7