A Biden administration task force has reunited 400 migrant children separated under Donald Trump with their families, but advocates say more than 1,000 still remain apart.
The youngsters were from around 5,000 families separated during the Trump administration as migrants crossing into the United States at the southern border with Mexico.
Critics say that the Trump White House did not keep records of which children were separated and where they were sent, which has caused difficulty in identifying families.
Now, parents have the chance to return to the US with other dependent members of their family and live and work legally for three years.
Michelle Brané, the executive director of the Family Reunification Task Force, says that the process includes mental health services for those involved.
She told NBC News that many of the families impacted by the Trump policy have suffered mental health issues caused by the forced separation and require counseling.
“You don’t want to just throw kids into an environment with a parent they may not have seen for five years,” she told the news organisation.
Mr Biden established the task force by executive order after entering the Oval Office and ordered it to find and reunited the remaining separated families, which began in May 2021.
Under the Trump administration families were reunited on their own or with the help of lawyers.
“We are thrilled for the hundreds of children who will finally be with their parents after all these years, but we are not even halfway through reuniting all the families that remain separated by the Trump administration,” Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union representing the separated families in a class action lawsuit, told NBC News.
“And indeed, we still haven’t located nearly 200 families. I think the Biden administration would agree that there’s a lot of work yet to be done.”
