Joe Biden has spent his first ten days in office trying to right some of his predecessor’s most egregious wrongs: He’s undone some of Donald Trump’s toxic policies, like his bans on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries and on transgender Americans from serving in the military. He’s recommitted to international cooperation, rejoining the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization. And, of course, his administration is working to dramatically improve the nation’s response to the coronavirus crisis and its vaccine rollout.
But one of the most grotesque atrocities of the Trump era could also be one of the most difficult to rectify. The Biden administration on Friday announced that it will begin working next week to reunite the hundreds of children who remain separated from their parents as a result of the last administrations’ “zero tolerance” border policy, one of the ugliest chapters of the Trump years. “The president…now plans to launch a task force on reunifying families and children,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Friday, “something he’s personally committed to, something that his wife, Dr. Biden, is personally committed to and invested in.”
Biden had promised during his campaign to establish the task force and had originally been expected to announce it this week, but delayed the move after Republican Senator Josh Hawley stalled a confirmation vote on Homeland Security nominee Alejandro Mayorkas, who is expected to lead the reunification team. Biden will instead announce the task force Tuesday, the day after Mayorkas is expected to be confirmed. First Lady Jill Biden will also play a key role in the effort—a notable contrast from her predecessor, Melania Trump, who publicly called the separation of children from their parents “unacceptable,” but seemed more upset by the media’s coverage of her bizarre decision to visit a detention center wearing a jacket emblazoned with the words, “I really don’t care do u?”
Biden has already targeted Trump immigration policies through executive action, including ceasing construction on the ex-president’s signature border wall and ordering protections for Dreamers, and is expected to announce more immigration moves on Tuesday. But the family reunifications could be the most challenging: Of the nearly 3,000 children separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border by the Trump administration, more than 600 children have yet to be reunited with their parents. Bringing together the split families is sure to be a massive and complex undertaking, and won’t, on its own, undo the damage the policy caused on those impacted. “You’re talking about very young kids separated from the parents for years now,” Jeremy McClean, policy and advocacy manager with Justice in Motion, a group that has worked to reunite families, told USA Today last week. “That’s an incredible amount of trauma.”
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