US increases effort to find, reunite families separated at border
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is expanding its effort to find and reunite migrant families who were separated at the U.S.-Mexico border under President Donald Trump as part of a zero-tolerance policy on illegal crossings.
A federal task force is launching a new program Monday that officials say will expand efforts to find parents, many of whom are in remote Central American communities, and help them return to the United States, where they will get at least three years of legal residency and other assistance.
The new program, which includes a contract with the International Organization for Migration to help with the often-complex task of getting expelled migrants back to the U.S., is a reflection of just how difficult it has been for President Joe Biden’s administration to address a chapter in U.S. immigration history that drew widespread condemnation.
The task force has reunited about 50 families since starting its work in late February, but there are hundreds of parents, and perhaps between 1,000 and 2,000, who were separated from their children and have not been located. A lack of accurate records from the Trump administration makes it difficult to say for certain, Brane said.
The Trump administration separated thousands of migrant parents from their children in 2017 and 2018 as it moved to criminally prosecute people for illegally crossing the southwest border. Minors, who could not be held in criminal custody with their parents, were transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. They were then typically sent to live with a sponsor, often a relative or someone else with a connection to the family.
Amid widespread outrage, Trump issued an executive order halting the practice of family separations in June 2018, days before a federal judge did the same and demanded that separated families be reunited in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Mosque bombing trial: The leader of an Illinois anti-government militia group who authorities say masterminded the 2017 bombing of a Minnesota mosque was sentenced Monday to 53 years in prison on several civil rights and hate crimes for the attack, which left a community terrified.
Emily Claire Hari, who was previously known as Michael Hari and recently said she is transgender, faced a mandatory minimum of 30 years in prison for the attack on Dar al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington. Defense attorneys asked for the minimum, but prosecutors sought a life sentence, saying Hari hasn’t taken responsibility for the attack. Victims also asked for a life sentence for Hari.
Hari was convicted in December on five counts, including damaging property because of its religious character and obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs.
Authorities say Hari, 50, led a group in Clarence, Illinois, called the White Rabbits and came up with the plan to attack the mosque.
Federal deficit: The U.S. budget deficit rose to $2.71 trillion through August, on track to be the second largest shortfall in history due to trillions of dollars in COVID
relief.
In its monthly budget report, the Treasury Department said Monday that the deficit for the first 11 months of this budget year is 9.9% less than the imbalance during the same period last year.
For the entire budget year, which ends Sept. 30, the Congressional Budget Office is forecasting a deficit of $3 trillion, which would be just below the record deficit of $3.13 trillion set last year.
For the first 11 months of this budget year, government revenues totaled $3.39 trillion. That marks a healthy increase of 17.7% from last year, fueled by the economic rebound from the COVID-induced recession that allowed millions of people to go back to work, boosting individual incomes and corporate profits.
Mideast meeting: Leaders of Egypt and Israel met publicly for the first time in over a decade Monday, with rising tensions in the Gaza Strip at the top of their
agenda.
Gaza is sandwiched between Israel and Egypt, and both countries have enforced a border blockade of the territory to varying degrees since 2007 when the Islamic militant group Hamas took control there.
Earlier Monday, Israeli aircraft struck a series of targets in the Gaza Strip while Palestinian militants launched rockets into Israel in the third consecutive night of fighting between the sides.
The meeting between Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett signaled a significant thaw in a relationship that had been frosty under Bennett’s predecessor, Israeli hard-liner Benjamin Netanyahu.
They met in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, according to an official statement from the Egyptian presidency.
It was the first official visit by an Israeli premier since
2010, when then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hosted a summit with Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Less than a year later, a popular uprising toppled Mubarak.
Britain vaccines: Britain decided Monday to follow other countries in offering coronavirus vaccines to children 12 and up, as the government gambled that expanded vaccination and mild tweaks to social behavior can avert the need for lockdowns in the winter.
On Monday, the chief medical officers of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland recommended that children ages 12 to 15 be given a single dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, despite the government’s vaccine advisors saying this month that the step would have only marginal health benefits.
Other countries including
the United States, Canada, France and Italy already offer coronavirus vaccines to children 12 and up, but Britain has held off. It is currently inoculating people 16 and up. Almost 90% of those eligible have had at least one vaccine dose.
Political fundraising: The campaign organization aiming to maintain Democratic control of the House in the 2022 midterm races raised $10 million last month, its best August haul ever during a year without a national election.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says that nearly 250,000 grassroots donors provided $6.6 million, accounting for two-thirds of its monthly total, according to numbers shared before a public filing deadline. That total included transfers worth more than $1 million from other Democratic campaign accounts. The largest, from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was worth nearly $800,000.