May 3, 2021- 9:21 a.m.
oe Biden‘s administration will start the reunification process for migrant families separated as part of former President Donald Trump‘s zero-tolerance policies against illegal immigration.
Over the weekend, a group of migrant children started arriving at the Pomona Fairplex fairgrounds in southern California, which the administration set up as temporary housing for unaccompanied minors who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Officials say these children, ranging in age from 7 to 14, will remain at the site until they can be reunited with family or placed with sponsors.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a call Sunday night that four families of the estimated 1,000 that remain separated will be reunited this week.Â
Two of the four include mothers – one Mexican and one Honduran – who were separated from their children in 2017, Mayorkas detailed without providing their identities. He described the range of children from 3-years-old at the time of separation to ‘teenagers who have had to live without their parent during their most formative years.’
‘The Family Reunification Task Force has been working day and night, across the federal government and with counsel for the families and our foreign partners, to address the prior administration’s cruel separation of children from their parents,’ Mayorkas said in a statement announcing the family reunification.
‘Today is just the beginning,’ he added. ‘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.’
It is not immediately clear how DHS selected these four families to be reunited first and the agency has not yet responded to a request for more information from DailyMail.com.
The president promised during his campaign that he would reunite families separated after crossing the border and created a task force shortly after taking office dedicated to reunification.Â
Mayorkas, who heads the task force on reuniting separated families, told reporters Sunday: ‘Our team is dedicated to finding every family and giving them an opportunity to reunite and heal.’
‘We continue to work tirelessly to reunite many more children with their parents in the weeks and months ahead,’ he said during the call. ‘We have a lot of work still to do, but I am proud of the progress we have made and the reunifications that we have helped to achieve this week.’
The administration’s Family Reunification Task Force Executive Director Michelle Brane said the parents will return to the U.S. on humanitarian parole as authorities consider longer-term legal status.
Under Trump’s policies, families arriving at the border were separated into different facilities, upon which time most parents and adults were deported, while children were kept in federal custody.
Now, Biden will begin the process of allowing parents who were previously deported to return to the U.S. to be with their children.
Starting in the summer of 2017, Trump implemented ‘zero-tolerance’ policies to easier criminally prosecute illegal immigrants, which led to more than 5,000 children being separated from their parents. The practices officially ended by court order in June 2018.
Brane believes there are still 1,000 families who are separated.
Despite the reunification process kicking off this week, the Biden administration is still facing its biggest issues at the southern border.
In recent months, Biden has seen record-numbers of illegal immigrants crossing as he vowed during his campaign all asylum-seekers would have a place in the U.S.
There are also tens of thousands of unaccompanied minor children in federal custody after public messaging from the White House promised not to turn away any children arriving at the border without an adult.
The new Pomona Fairplex migrant holding facility has a capacity to hold 2,500 children. The new measure comes after the Long Beach Convention Center in Los Angeles also opened its doors to house unaccompanied minors.
‘These children as you know have endured abuse, persecution, deep poverty, and violence and they are simply seeking refuge,’ LA County Board of Supervisors Chair Hilda L. Solis said Thursday, according to KTLA.
The Pomona and Long Beach centers are meant as a temporary means to house the hundreds of minor migrants apprehended every day at the southern border without an adult accompanying them.
Migrants from Northern Triangle countries continue to take dangerous measures to get into the U.S.
Four people were killed and more than two dozen others were hospitalized Sunday after a boat capsized and broke apart in rough water just off the San Diego coast during a suspected human smuggling operation, authorities said.
