US President Joe Biden has ordered to establish an inter-agency task force for "reunification of families" along the southern border, setting a 120-day deadline to submit an initial report.
"With the first action today, we're going to work to undo the moral and national shame of the previous administration that literally, not figuratively, ripped children from the arms of their families, mothers, and fathers at the border with no plan, none whatsoever, to reunify the children, who are still in custody, and their parents", Biden said in the Oval Office on Tuesday.
Biden said the second executive order he signed will address the root causes of migration to the US southern border. The third executive order directs a full review of the Trump administration's immigration policies.
In 2018, former US Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the United States had adopted a "zero-tolerance policy" for immigration offences that required prosecution of all illegal entry referrals at the southwest border, including misdemeanours, regardless of whether the migrant adult was with a family unit.
Last week, acting US Attorney General Monty Wilkinson formally terminated the Trump administration's so-called zero-tolerance immigration policy, under which more than 1,000 migrant families were separated in 2017.
In October, US media reported, citing the American Civil Liberties Union, that the Trump administration was unable to find the parents of nearly 600 migrant children in US custody.
Biden on his first day in office on 20 January took executive action to halt the ongoing construction of the border wall and to suspend the Migrant Protection Protocols programme, also known as the Remain in Mexico policy, while his team reviews the policies of the Trump administration.
