Attorneys from Washington D.C. working to reunite children with their parents separated during the previous administration reported finding the parents 105 children recently.
The committee of people working to unite the families said it still had to find the parents of 506 kids, down from 611, as of January 14.
According to the attorneys, the parents of around 322 of the 506 kids are believed to have been deported, making it much harder to locate them.
The attorneys are not required by the judge to state how many of the families have been reunited.
President Biden’s administration recently put together a task force that will be responsible for reuniting families separated during the Trump era, mainly under the “zero-tolerance policy” of 2018.
The last time there was joint status report, in January ahead of Inaugration Day, parents of 611 children had not yet been reached. So lawyers have been able to make contact with parents of 105 kids who were separated by Trump since then.
— Jacob Soboroff (@jacobsoboroff) February 24, 2021
Attorneys are now representing the separated families and doing everything they can to get them back together.
They said they are ready to work with the task force.
Justice Department attorneys said they’re hoping the task force will “resolve many — if not all — outstanding issues” concerning the lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of California, that gave fruit to the reunification process.
Lawyers have found the parents of 105 separated migrant children in past month – The parents of 506 separated migrant children still haven't been found, however. Lawyers say the parents of 322 of them were likely to have been deported.https://t.co/tB6CYrZ2SA
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) February 25, 2021
One of the reasons it has been so difficult to find the parents is that many people agreed to be sent back to their country without their kids in order to give them a chance to stay in the United States to claim asylum, their attorneys have said.
Lawyers have found the parents of 105 migrant children separated at the border with Mexico.😎-Rachel Maddow, MSNBC pic.twitter.com/p1ZLmhkR9l
— Sagrario – Families’ Reunification NOW🙏🏼500K RIP (@sagrario_melo) February 25, 2021
Lee Gelent, an attorney who represents the families and deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, has said the mission of the task force should be to bring the deported parents back to the United States under special protections to reunite with their kids.
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