Parents of 54 migrant children found after separation under Trump administration
The parents of 54 migrant children have been found after being separated at the border under former President Trump’s administration, court records reveal.
Lawyers from the Department of Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union said in a court filing on Wednesday that it still has to locate the families of 391 children, down from the 445 it previously reported in April.
The parents of 277 of the remaining children are believed to have been removed from the U.S. after they were separated from their children, the lawyers wrote. The parents of another 100 children are believed to be in the U.S. and are being searched for.
There’s a remaining group of 14 chidden for whom the government hadn’t provided a phone number for the parent, child, sponsor or attorney.
The DOJ rescinded the Trump administrations “zero tolerance” policy in late January, one of the first efforts to undo Trump’s legacy on immigration. More than 5,500 families had been separate between 2017 and 2018, according to NBC News.
President Biden signed an executive order in early February establishing a task force to reunite children separate from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“My Administration condemns the human tragedy that occurred when our immigration laws were used to intentionally separate children from their parents or legal guardians (families), including through the use of the Zero-Tolerance Policy,” Biden wrote in the order.
Earlier this month, four families who were separated were reunited in the U.S. The families included two mothers, one from Honduras and one from Mexico, who were separated from their kids in 2017.
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