U.S. efforts to reunify families separated at border moving slowly
Send a link to a friend
[June 08, 2021]
By Mimi Dwyer and Ted Hesson
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - An effort by U.S.
President Joe Biden to reunite migrant families separated by the
previous administration is moving slowly, with only seven children
reunited with parents by a task force launched in February, according to
a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report released on Tuesday.
Another 29 families are set to be reunified in the coming weeks, the
report said.
Biden issued an executive order shortly after taking office that
established a task force to reunify children separated from their
families at the U.S.-Mexico border under former President Donald Trump,
calling such separations a "human tragedy."
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2021/Jun/08/images/ads/current/graue_sda_042021.png)
The Trump administration split apart thousands of migrant families under
a blanket “zero-tolerance” policy that called for the prosecution of all
unauthorized border crossers in spring 2018. Government watchdogs and
advocates have found the separations began before and continued after
the policy.
The task force submitted its first 120-day progress report to Biden on
June 2, a senior DHS official said during a call with reporters on
Monday.
The official defended the small number of families reunified to date,
saying the agency "chose intentionally to start slow" to address
logistical hurdles so that the process can be scaled up in the future.
[to top of second column]
|
![](../images/060821PICS/news_c5.jpg)
Chanel, 7, and her sister Adriana, 10, both unaccompanied minors
traveling alone from Honduras, sits among other asylum-seeking
children as they await to be transported to a U.S. border patrol
processing facility after crossing the Rio Grande river into the
United States from Mexico in La Joya, Texas, U.S., May 6, 2021.
REUTERS/Adrees Latif/File Photo
![](../images/ads/current/centraldirect_lda_SPONSOR_2021.png)
The Biden task force, using information from
advocates and ongoing litigation, has identified roughly 3,900
children separated from parents at the border and 1,700 cases that
remain under review, the report said.
Of the 3,900 separated children identified, nearly 1,800 have been
reunified with a parent. Nearly all of those reunifications happened
before the creation of the task force, the report said.
While the overall number of children still separated from their
parents is unknown, the report estimates it could be over 2,000.
(Reporting by Mimi Dwyer in Los Angeles and Ted Hesson in
Washington; Editing by Leslie Adler)
[© 2021 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2021 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2021/Jun/08/images/ads/current/christianvillage_sda_SPONSOR_042720.png) |