Input from First Lady Jill Biden will form part of the Biden administration’s long-proposed task force aimed at reuniting parents and children separated at the U.S.-Mexico border, it was claimed Thursday by various reports.
Biden is tasking her East Wing with taking an active role in the reunification project, according to CNN, drawing on her legal background.
“As the first lady remarked on a ‘Charla’ with young Latinos earlier this week, her chief of staff, Ambassador Julissa Reynoso, will monitor the federal reunification effort given her background as a lawyer,” Biden spokesman Michael LaRosa told the network while confirming the East Wing’s involvement.
The parents of 611 children have yet to be located by lawyers to reunite the families, according to a court filing cited by CNN.
President Joe Biden promised to reveal the task force on day one of his administration, but he has yet to do so. The task force, however, is expected to be announced as early as later this week.
News of Jill Biden’s input is not the first time she has entered the debate over illegal immigration at the border.
As Breitbart News reported, she handed out tamales and Christmas gifts to migrants in 2019 when she toured a migrant camp across the border from Brownsville, Texas, home to over 2,000 asylum-seekers.
“It’s heartbreaking. It’s really heartbreaking,” Biden said of the camp, according to Border Report. “Across the river is the flag of the United States. The flag of the United States offers people hope. They’re bringing their families and their loved ones here for hope of a better future and a better life for themselves.”
“We are all immigrants and our nation was built on immigration and immigrants and we are welcoming nation, but that’s not the message we are sending here at the border. We’re saying ‘Stop, don’t come in!’ And that’s not who we are,” she added.
More recently she affirmed the president believes in letting asylum seekers into the U.S., because immigrants would be needed to fill areas of the country currently being depopulated.
She added we should “let in the asylum seekers,” and described her recent visit to asylum seekers in Mexico at Christmastime.
“We have seen those kids in cages,” she said before adding migrants from Central America were living in terrible conditions at the border with Mexico, under tarps, in the mud, with no shoes and with urgent health challenges.
“These families are escaping from the gangs, and violence — this is not who we are as Americans,” the first lady concluded.
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