A U.S. humanitarian program, called the Central American Minors Refugee and Parole Program (CAM), was established for the purpose of reuniting Central American children with their family members in the United States. However, it is not doing as well as President Biden presumed it would. It has gotten off to a slow start despite an attempt to revive the program from its termination during former President Trump’s presidency. The program was revived in an attempt to encourage legal access to humanitarian and immigrations resources. A report from the International Refugee Assistance Project stated that the program is experiencing several issues including lack of attorney support along with lengthy waiting times and transparency issues. As a direct consequence of these issues, many families eligible for this program do not have the option to submit a CAM application, and are left waiting indefinitely to be reunited with their family members.
Since the restart of the program in March of 2021, only a few hundred of the 3,800 families eligible for CAM have had their cases completed, and all their applications were filed before Trump put a halt to the program. Since phase two launched, nobody that has filed a new application that has been reunited with their families present in the U.S. through CAM. It is unfortunate that the program is not yet functional, but supporters of the CAM program are devoted to reuniting children with their families in this country. Advocates of CAM are working tirelessly to resolve the concerns of this program to make it successful and beneficial.
