Immigration

Biden Admin. Will Let Separated Migrant Families Reunite Inside US

Lawyers for the families had asked the Biden administration to let parents deported without their children come back to the U.S. to reunify the families

FILE - Activists, including childcare providers, parents and their children, protest against the Trump administration's family detention and separation policies for migrants along the southern border, near the New York offices of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), July 18, 2018, in New York City.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images (File)

The Biden administration's task force for reuniting migrant families separated by the Trump administration will allow separated families "the option of being reunified either in the United States or their county of origin," Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at a news briefing on Monday.

Lawyers representing the families in a federal lawsuit had called on the Biden administration to allow reunification inside the U.S., arguing that without special protections for those deported parents, they are forced to choose between bringing their children back to dangerous conditions in their home countries or remaining separated, NBC News reports.

Other benefits and protections the task force will give the separated families include transportation, healthcare and mental health services as well as legal, career and educational services, with no costs being passed down to families.

Mayorkas called the separation of thousands of migrant families under the Trump administration "the most powerful and heartbreaking example of the cruelty that proceeded this administration," in a White House briefing.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com.

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