Topline
The Biden administration is seeking to give migrant families who were separated at the border under former President Donald Trump the option to be reunified in the U.S. and remain in the country, a move that would mark a major win for immigration lawyers and advocates.
In this Dec. 9, 2018, file photo, the striped shadow of the U.S. border wall falls on a migrant ... [+]
Key Facts
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Monday that administration officials “hope to be in a position” to give separated families the choice between reunification in the U.S. or their country of origin.
“We will explore lawful pathways for them to remain in the U.S. and to address the family needs so we are acting as restoratively as possible,” Mayorkas said.
Mayorkas said the move would help the U.S. “dig out of the cruelty” of the Trump administration, which split thousands of migrant children from their parents at the border with Mexico as part of a broader effort to curb both legal and illegal immigration.
At least 105 migrant families have been reunited in the “recent past,” according to Mayorkas.
Key Background
The American Civil Liberties Union and other advocates have called on the Biden administration to allow reunited families to remain in the U.S., arguing that they may otherwise be forced to decide whether to be separated or return to dangerous living conditions. "We really need a Biden administration to not only help us find the families, but to do more than that. To allow the parents to come back to the United States to reunite with their children and to give these families some permanent status given what they've been through and create a fund to help them," Lee Gelernt, the lead counsel in a lawsuit the ACLU brought against the family separation policy, said on MSNBC in December.
Tangent
Following an uptick in the number of unaccompanied migrant children who have been detained at the southwestern border, Mayorkas pushed back against critics who have said the DHS has allowed a Trump-era policy to continue. “We are not apprehending a nine-year-old child who’s come alone, who has traversed Mexico, whose loving parents had sent that child alone,” he said. “We are not expelling that nine-year-old child to Mexico when that child’s origin, country of origin, was Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador.”
What To Watch For
Biden announced a task force in February to focus on efforts to reunite families still separated under the Trump administration, which kept inconsistent records on the parents and children it processed under the policy. In addition to legal residency, the task force is expected to review demands from advocates and lawyers for restitution, mental health services and other resources for the families.