Nearly 1,000 Migrant Children Separated At The Border By The Trump Government Has Not Reunited With Their Parents

JAKARTA - Nearly 1,000 migrant children separated at the United States-Mexico border by former President Donald Trump's administration have not been reunited with their parents despite two years of efforts by President Joe Biden.

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said on Thursday, of the 998 children who were still separated, 148 were in the process of being reunified.

President Biden issued an executive order shortly after taking office in January 2021, which formed a task force to reunite children separated from their families under the Trump Administration, calling such separation a "humanitarian tragedy".

The administration of former President Trump separates thousands of migrant families under a "zero tolerance" policy calling for prosecution of all unauthorized border crossers in the spring of 2018.

Supervisors and government advocates have found separations began before and continued after official policies began.

DHS said the task force's hard work in combing the "tambalah sulam" information held by the Trump Administration on policy had so far found 3,924 children, mostly from Central America, separated at the border.

Many were found and reunited before President Biden took office through court proceedings after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued to stop the split policy.

"The number of new identified families continues to rise, as families progress and identify themselves," DHS said in a fact sheet about the work of the task force released Thursday.

Until now the task force has reunited 600 families.

DHS also said it had linked some united families back to services such as access to mental health resources.

Meanwhile, Minister of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters on Thursday there was still work to be done to fully deal with the injuries posed by the policy.

"That's what informs our efforts to expand behavioral health services, as a component of reunification," he explained.