It has been two years since the Biden administration took up the process of reuniting children with their families after the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy that separated an enormous number of loved ones at the southern border. Although the Biden administration was able to reunite around 600 kids with their parents, nearly 1000 have yet to see their families again.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a statement and information sheet outlining the number of migrant children who have been reunited with their families and the number of migrant children who have not. According to the data they collected, between January 20th, 2017, and January 20th, 2021, the task force claimed to have identified 3,924 migrant children who had been separated from their loved ones as a result of the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” border policy. As of February 1st, 2023, 2,926 of those separated children have been reunited with their loved ones. According to the Family Reunification Task Force, they have personally reunited 600 children with their families, and the remaining separated children were already brought back to their loved ones when the task force was originally formed in February of 2021. Therefore, this data reveals that almost one thousand migrant children have yet to be brought back to their relatives.
Based on what the Family Reunification Task Force has said, the reason it has been such a difficult process reuniting these children with their loved ones is due to the Trump administration maintaining awful records of how many of these kids were even separated from their families in the first place.
