Years after a extensively criticised United States coverage generally known as “household separation” forcibly took refugee and migrant youngsters away from their households on the US southern border, almost 1,000 have but to be returned.

Officers mentioned on Thursday {that a} job drive created below President Joe Biden has reunited about 689 youngsters with their households. One other 2,176 youngsters had been reconnected with their kin earlier than the duty drive’s creation, due partially to authorized motion by teams such because the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Nevertheless, out of an estimated 3,881 youngsters taken from their households between 2017 and 2021, a complete of 998 stay separated as of February 1, the Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) mentioned in a reality sheet on Thursday.

However officers expressed optimism the quantity would proceed to say no as the duty drive makes use of governmental data and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to find fractured households.

“The variety of new households recognized continues to extend, as households come ahead and establish themselves,” the DHS mentioned in its assertion.

Of the 998 youngsters who’ve but to return to their households, 148 are “within the strategy of reunification”, the actual fact sheet mentioned. One other 183 households “have been knowledgeable of the chance to reunify” by way of an NGO.

In a gathering with reporters on Thursday, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas recounted assembly a mom who was separated from her 13-year-old daughter below the coverage, then reunited years later when she was 16.

Mayorkas mentioned the daughter “nonetheless couldn’t perceive how her mom would let her be separated. She didn’t perceive the drive behind the separation”.

Some households break up aside by the separation coverage have been linked with psychological well being sources, DHS officers mentioned. However below the Biden administration, the US Justice Division has argued that victims of the coverage usually are not entitled to restitution.

The household separation coverage was initiated below former Republican President Donald Trump as a part of a crackdown on unauthorised crossings alongside the US-Mexico border.

It was one in every of a number of controversial immigration insurance policies enacted below the Trump administration, together with an govt order to ban folks from numerous Muslims-majority international locations from travelling to the US.

Biden referred to as the household separations a “human tragedy” and was extremely vital of Trump’s hardline positions on immigration throughout his marketing campaign for the presidency. Biden defeated Trump within the 2020 election and started his time period in January 2021.

Shortly after getting into workplace, Biden reversed a number of key Trump insurance policies, together with the chief order critics had dubbed the “Muslim ban”. In February 2021, Biden additionally created the Interagency Activity Drive on the Reunification of Households to deal with the separation coverage. Thursday’s statistics mark the duty drive’s second anniversary.

Nevertheless, Biden has come below fireplace from migrant and refugee rights teams in addition to members of his personal celebration for holding a few of his predecessor’s immigration insurance policies in place.

Probably the most high-profile is Title 42, a Trump-era coverage that allowed the federal government to show again asylum-seekers within the title of combatting COVID-19.

Immigrant rights teams have denounced the coverage for infringing on asylum seekers’ proper to due course of, and the US Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention has declared the coverage “now not needed”.

The Biden administration initially tried to finish the programme however Republican politicians pressed for Title 42 to stay in place, pursuing the matter in court docket. In December, the Supreme Court docket upheld the coverage and is about to listen to arguments over it this month.

Underneath strain from Republicans, because the variety of border crossings surged, the Biden administration introduced a plan in January to right away flip away asylum-seekers from Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua who arrived on the border – just like a coverage already in place for Venezuelans.

As a substitute, the administration mentioned it might settle for as much as 30,000 folks per 30 days from these 4 international locations by way of an utility system that requires background checks and US-based sponsorship for every asylum seeker.

Whereas the Biden administration maintains it “continues to organize for the top of the Title 42”, critics of the brand new coverage say it quantities to an enlargement of Trump’s programme, with its automated expulsions and inflexible necessities.

In a press launch, the ACLU mentioned Biden’s choice “additional ties his administration to the toxic anti-immigrant insurance policies of the Trump period as an alternative of restoring truthful entry to asylum protections”.