WASHINGTON | U.S. First Lady Jill Biden will participate in her husband’s government efforts to reunite migrant families separated by Donald Trump’s administration, the White House said on Friday.
In keeping with one of his campaign pledges, Democratic President Joe Biden plans to announce on Tuesday the “launch of a task force on the reunification of migrant families and children,” his spokesman, Jen Psaki said at the meeting. ‘a press conference.
“His wife Dr. Biden will be personally involved and invested” in this team under the leadership of Alejandro Mayorkas, who must be confirmed Minister of Internal Security Monday by the Senate, she added.
Jill Biden, 69, has a doctorate in education and plans to continue teaching at a university near Washington despite her husband entering the White House.
In December, she visited a migrant camp in Mexico, near the border with Texas. “We are a welcoming nation, but this is not the message we send,” she then lamented.
Its tone contrasts with that of Melania Trump, the wife of the former president, who visited migrant children in 2018 with a jacket crossed out with the words “I really don’t care, do u?” (I don’t care, do you?).
That year, Donald Trump’s government decreed a “zero tolerance” policy on the border with Mexico, which led to the separation of hundreds of families.
The tragedies experienced by the children had aroused an outcry even in the ranks of the Republicans and the billionaire had ordered in June to put an end to it, a judge imposing for his part the reunification of divided families.
Authorities then identified just over 2,700 children to reunite with their parents.
But the parents of 611 children separated when they entered the United States have not been found, according to the powerful civil rights association ACLU.
And the majority of deported parents remain stranded in their home countries away from their children, she said, asking the Democratic government to allow them to return legally to the United States.