WASHINGTON – The White House is likely to delay the rollout of a series of executive orders on immigration, including the long-awaited announcement by a task force to reunite migrant families separated under the Trump administration, according to two sources familiar with the discussions .
During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden showed advertisements with the promise of setting up a task force on his first day as president. In a memorandum outlining early executive action, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said the Biden government “will begin the difficult but critical work of reuniting families separated at the border.” A separate planning document distributed among Biden officials indicated that the immigration action would be announced on Friday.
Sources involved in the discussions say they are being delayed ‘by a few days’, but declined to say what caused the delay.
When the task force is announced, it is expected to be an effort between agencies over the Department of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services and the Department of Foreign Affairs, led by Biden’s choice to manage DHS’s Alejandro Mayorkas, according to three sources familiar with the planning.
Their focus will be on reuniting all migrant families separated at the border – not by deportations from the interior of the country – in all four years of the Trump presidency, the sources said. They will also report on what led to the separation and recommend that such a policy never be repeated, although they will not conduct an investigation that could lead to criminal referrals from officials, the sources said. Instead, any investigation for which witnesses should be summoned will be left to the Ministry of Justice to do so, the sources said.
But other important details are still being worked out, such as what factors could disqualify families from reunification and whether those who do qualify but are deported will receive special protection, such as humanitarian relief, to come to the US
All three families separated at the border during the four years of the Trump administration, not just those separated during ‘zero tolerance’, are eligible for reunification by the task force, according to three sources familiar with the planning discussions.
Nearly 3,000 migrant children were separated from their parents on the U.S.-Mexico border under the ‘zero tolerance’ policy, which systematically separated children from parents whose only crime crossed the border illegally during May and June of 2018. But before that more than 1,000 families were separated in a pilot program in and around El Paso, Texas. And after June of 2018, the ACLU estimates that another 1,000 families have been separated at the U.S. border.
But many of the parents have now been deported, which makes it harder to find, and if found, they may suggest the difficult choice of bringing their child home to a dangerous country or to be with family members in the United States. to be able to live. The task force announcement is not expected to include details on whether the families will receive special permission to come to the United States to reunite with their children.
Pro-bono groups that have worked so far to reunite families separated under the 2017 pilot program say through no tolerance of 2018 that they could not reach the parents of more than 600 children and believe two-thirds of them was deported.
