Biden pledges task force to reunite 545 children separated from families at border
Democratic nominee Joe Biden says, if elected president, he would create a task force focused on finding the parents of 545 children separated from their families at the United States border.
The pledge was included in a campaign advertisement posted privately to his campaign’s YouTube channel Wednesday. The ad says the former vice president would sign an executive order creating the task force on his first day in office.
He’s expected to officially announce plans for the task force Thursday, a source with the campaign told NBC News.
Lawyers have been unable to find the parents of 545 of the children who were separated from their families at the border by President Donald Trump’s administration, ABC News reports.
The administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy ordered criminal charges against those crossing the border without legal authorization. Parents who were taken into custody after doing so were separated from their children, and some families who crossed into the United States at official ports of entry were also separated, The New York Times reports.
The policy has since been reversed, but thousands of families were separated under it, and the United States has been unable to find the parents of 545 children.
During the final presidential debate, Biden called the separation of families “criminal.”
“It makes us a laughing stock and violates very notion of who we are as a nation,” Biden said.
Trump responded that the children are “so well taken care of.”
“They’re in facilities that were so clean,” he said.
This story was originally published October 29, 2020 at 8:01 AM with the headline "Biden pledges task force to reunite 545 children separated from families at border."
