Jill Biden to monitor task force to reunite families separated at US-Mexico border

First Lady expected to take integral role in White House effort to unify thousands of families removed by federal government

First Lady Jill Biden’s chief of staff is expected to monitor President Joe Biden’s efforts to reunite families separated by the federal government at the US-Mexico border.

On Tuesday, the president is expected to announce his administration’s task force will begin the process, though few details have emerged about the plan to reunite thousands of people seeking asylum who were separated at the border – but not deported from inside the US – across the four years of Donald Trump’s administration.

Ms Biden’s chief of staff Julissa Reynoso, a former US ambassador to Uruguay, "will monitor the federal reunification effort given her background as a lawyer", according to a statement from a spokesman for Ms Biden.

The president’s chief of staff Ron Klain announced this month that the president would begin “the difficult but critical work of reuniting families separated at the border” by 1 February.

Mr Biden is expected to announce an interagency effort among the Department of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services and the Department of State, and headed by newly confirmed DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Nearly 3,000 children were separated from their parents at the border under the Trump administration’s "zero tolerance" policy in 2018, which sought to prosecute migrants for illegal entry. Hundreds of other families were separated during the administration’s pilot programme near El Paso, Texas.

The American Civil Liberties Union estimates 1,000 more families were separated in the months that followed.

Thousands of parents have been deported, and the critical task of finding them includes potentially presenting them with the difficult choice of bringing their child home to a dangerous country or allowing them to live in the United States with relatives. The task force announcement is not expected to include details on whether the families will be given special permission to come to the United States to reunite with their children.

Pro-bono groups that have so far worked to reunify families separated under the 2017 pilot programme and through zero tolerance of 2018 say they have not been able to reach the parents of more than 600 children, and they believe two-thirds of them have been deported.

The president has formally removed the “zero tolerance” policy and instructed federal prosecutors to resume the “longstanding principle of making individualised assessments in criminal cases”, according to a directive from Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson.

Mr Biden’s incoming immigration efforts follows several orders within the president’s first week in office to reverse core elements of his predecessor’s anti-immigration agenda, including freezing construction of Mr Trump’s border wall project and overturning a ban on US entry from majority-Muslim countries.

He also has proposed legislation to Congress that would provide a path to citizenship for 11 million immigrants in the US.

Justice Department watchdogs found that administration officials overseeing the "zero tolerance” policy at the US-Mexico border under then-attorney general Jeff Sessions, with aid from adviser Stephen Miller, had failed to implement the order or manage the chaotic fallout, while knowing it would result in separated families and imprisoned children who sought asylum in the US after fleeing violence and other dangers in Central and South American countries.

The agency's "single-minded focus on increasing prosecutions" of immigrant families crossing the southern border "came at the expense of careful and appropriate consideration of the impact of family unit prosecutions and child separations", according to the report released this month.

A separate report from the Department of Health and Human Services found that many of the children who were separated from their families at the border, after fleeing their countries and enduring dangerous journeys to the US, had suffered post-traumatic stress symptoms and other health issues.

Democrats on the House Judiciary and Oversight committees condemned the previous administration’s “chaos, cruelty, and reckless disregard for vulnerable children in our nation’s custody” outlined in the Justice Department report.

Immigration advocates have also said that the new administration must reckon with the separations of thousands of other families removed at the border during President Barack Obama’s two terms in office, during which Mr Biden served as vice president. That administration had provided the infrastructure for Mr Trump’s “weaponised” agenda, critics argue.