Federal law requires individuals who enter the United States illegally be separated from the children they bring with them, but Department of Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Wednesday his agency is putting a “structure” in place to facilitate bringing deported adults into the country under the claim of family unification.
Taxpayer-funded National Public Radio (NPR) helped Mayorkas advance the narrative, reporting that Biden signed executive orders “to unravel Trump-era immigration policies that separated thousands of families, including the creation of a task force to reunite some of the families that were separated at the U.S. southern border.”
One year ago, Biden created a task force to implement his executive order.
The NPR host also noted that of the 4,000 children who were separated from their parents, 2,187 had been reunited before President Donald Trump left office.
Mayorkas claimed his agency is making progress on the issue. He said:
We have accomplished a great deal.When we commenced our task force one year ago, what we encountered was an absence of records of the families who were separated, or incomplete or inaccurate records. And our first challenge was to actually identify the separated families. We have thus far reunified more than 120 families. We are in the process of reunifying more than 400. And we are present in the countries of origin to reach other families and encourage them to come forward.
When the NPR host commented about the small number of reunifications thus far, Mayorkas said his agency is putting a “structure” in place to increase the number. Mayorkas said:
Well, you know, we have, as I mentioned, almost 400 additional families in the pipeline. And much of the preliminary work was identifying the families in the first instance and also building the structure for them to reunify here in the United States to be able to build a system that grants them humanitarian parole, the ability to come forward, gain lawful presence in the United States, to be together again with their children.
The agency will be granting temporary lawful residency to these adults, according to the NPR report.
NPR also noted that border patrol agents are unhappy with Biden’s open border policies and Mayorkas acknowledged that is the case.
Mayorkas said, “I traveled to Arizona and different parts of Texas and was actually in New Mexico as well to hear from them and to hear their candid observations. They expressed concerns with respect to the resources they have to do their jobs – more personnel, more and better equipment. They, of course, expressed concerns with some of the policies of this administration, and I should say, not with unanimity. That’s what openness and candor are all about and what define a good organization [sic].”
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