The United States will begin reuniting migrant children with
their parents this week after they were separated by the administration of
former President Donald Trump, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro
Mayorkas said on Monday.
Mayorkas tweeted that four mothers who had fled “extremely
dangerous situations in their home countries” would be reunited with children
as young as three years old.
“We are pleased that the process of reunifications is
beginning this week and that these four mothers will be hugging their children
after so many years,” he wrote.
He added in a statement released by his department that the
move was “just the beginning.”
“We are reuniting the first group of families, many more
will follow, and we recognize the importance of providing these families with
the stability and resources they need to heal.”
President Joe Biden has prioritized a special task force to
reunify the hundreds of families as part of his sweeping rolling back of
Trump’s hardline policies, which focused on deterring migration from Central
America.
Biden has called the family separations a “moral failure and
a national shame.”
Trump announced his zero tolerance policy towards
undocumented migrants in 2018, declaring that they would be arrested and
charged with a crime.
As part of the new regime children were separated from their
parents, on a promise that the families would be reunited within weeks. But
this did not happen in thousands of cases.
A public outcry and lawsuits forced the Trump administration
to halt the separations, but for as many as 5,000 children, the damage had been
done.
Trump’s immigration officials kept poor records and did
little to cooperate with groups seeking to help the children, forcing more
lawsuits.
It was not clear how many children were still separated from
their parents by the time the Biden administration took over, but estimates put
it at as high as 1,000.
Many of them are from rural, inaccessible mountain
communities, with reunification made even harder by the coronavirus pandemic
and two hurricanes that ravaged Central America last fall.
The task force created by Biden has been “working tirelessly
to establish a complete database of separated families, correct inaccuracies in
the files they were provided, and build the processes to find every family and
give them the opportunity to reunite and heal,” the homeland security statement
said.
It did not clarify if the children will be permitted to stay
in the United States legally with their parents.
(AFP)
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