“We advocate that Congress provide that permanent status that requires legislative action,” Mayorkas said in an interview with NPR public radio.
The White House said it supported that initiative.
Biden, who came to power a year ago promising a “fair and humane” immigration policy, created on February 2, 2021 the Task Force for the reunification of migrant families, who had been separated during the Trump era (2017-2021) to discourage illegal border crossings.
In June, the group led by Mayorkas reported that it had identified 3,913 minors separated from their families between July 1, 2017 and January 20, 2021, when Biden took office. In addition, he said that he was reviewing another 1,723 cases of separations; some occurred even since January 2017.
Of the 3,913 identified, 1,779 had already been reunited with their families during Trump’s term. Seven were met after the creation of the Group and 41 were in the process of meeting. Another 1,695 had been contacted, although they had not yet returned to their families. The whereabouts of 391 were unknown.
“When we started our task force a year ago, what we found was no records of separated families, or incomplete or inaccurate records, and our first challenge was actually identifying separated families,” Mayorkas said Wednesday.
“So far we have reunited more than 120 families. We are in the process of reunifying more than 400, and we are present in the countries of origin to contact other families and encourage them to start the process,” he added.