WASHINGTON (NewsNation Now) — The United States could pay for transportation, healthcare, legal services, and career and educational services for migrants separated under former President Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” border strategy, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said on Monday.
“We are operating under a broken immigration system and we need to fix it,” said DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas at a White House press briefing Monday.
The announcement is part of a list of principles released by the administration of President Joe Biden to guide its family reunification task force as the administration seeks to reunite more than 500 migrant children and parents separated by his predecessor’s border policy.
The Biden administration will also consider bringing deported parents back to the United States to be reunited with their children, an option outlined in Biden’s Feb. 2 executive order creating the family reunification task force. They could also be reunited in their country of origin.
“I’m not making new law. I’m eliminating bad policy,” Biden said during the signing ceremony last month.
“We are dedicating our resources throughout the Department of Homeland Security and the federal government, and bringing our full weight to bear, to reunite children who were cruelly separated from their parents,” Mayorkas said in a written statement.
“We will dig out of the cruelty of the past administration and we will rebuild our nation’s asylum system.”
His comments came hours before President Biden was set to virtually meet with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador where migration was expected to be discussed.
