President Joe Biden wants to bring back illegal aliens who have been deported from the country in what his administration is characterizing as reuniting families separated by the Trump administration’s adherence to federal immigration law.
The Biden administration announced on Monday that the Family Reunification Task Force has hired an international organization to find illegal aliens from mostly Central America and bring them back to the United States.
The Boston Globe claimed President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy led to the deportations and not the fact the legal protocol for people entering the country illegally requires adults to be separated from minors because the latter cannot be held by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for more than 72 hours.
The Globe reported on the development:
The new program, which includes a contract with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to help with the often-complex task of getting expelled migrants back to the United States, is a reflection of just how difficult it has been for President Biden’s administration to address a chapter in US immigration history that drew widespread condemnation.
The task force has reunited about 50 families since starting its work in late February, but there are hundreds of parents, and perhaps between 1,000 and 2,000, who were separated from their children and have not been located.
“We recognize that we can’t make these families completely whole again,” Michelle Brané, executive director of the administration’s Family Reunification Task Force, said. “But we want to do everything we can to put them on a path towards a better life.”
“It is it a huge challenge that we are absolutely committed to following through to meet and to do whatever we can to reunify these families,” Brane said in an interview with The Associated Press (AP).
Alejandro Mayorkas, Department of Homeland Security secretary, spoke with reunited families last month, the Globe reported.
“He made it very clear that an apology is not enough, that we really need to do a lot more for them and we recognize that,” Brané said.
The new program includes allowing people to visit a website to contact the feds and will feature information in English, Spanish, Portuguese “and several indigenous languages of Central America.”
The report said most of parents are believed to be in Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Brazil. The international group will help the parents get passports and other documents so they can come to the United States.
The Globe reported returned individuals will also be given work permits, legal residency for three years, and “some support services.”
The left-wing American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) supports this effort to bring in more people to compete with American workers and access the federal safety net designed to serve citizens, but it thinks the three-year limit on residency is too short.
“Ultimately, we need the families to be given permanent legal status in light of what the United States government deliberately did to these families,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s immigrant rights project, said in the Globe report.
The contract with the IOM is for one year, but it could be extended, the report said.
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