Cruz Demands Answers from Biden's White House About His New 'Family Reunification Task Force'

by: Gilbert Rodriguez
2022-05-26
Source: texasinsider
05/26/2022

President Biden appointed Cuban-American lawyer Alejandro Mayorkas as Secretary of the Dept. of Homeland Security. by is licensed under

“Household members" would seem to indicate a broader pool of persons may be eligible for "re-unification"

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Texas Insider Report) — In one of his first acts as president, Joe Biden ordered the formation of the "Family Reunification Task Force," which works to reunite minors with their families if they are separated while trying to illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico Border to gain access into the United States. Now, given the grave and growing surge of illegal immigrants on the southern border, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has written a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas demanding specific answers to some concerning questions about President Biden’s Family Reunification Task Force (FRTF).

Senator Cruz is demanding answers to a series of questions, including those about:

How the Department of Homeland Security is executing this program
How the Family Reunification Task Force defines the word “household”
How FRTF vets household members to be reunified in the U.S., and
Whether FRTF is giving Legal Status to individuals who previously tried to illegally cross the border

Senator Cruz wrote to Secretary Mayorkas about how DHS is using its “temporary parole authority” – which grants temporary permission for family members to enter and legally remain in the U.S. – to reunite with separated minors.

The FRTF’s website says that DHS works to reunite children with “household members,” which Senator Cruz wrote “would seem to indicate that a broader pool of persons related to an applicant may be eligible for reunification.”

"Generally, such persons would be barred from re-entry to the U.S. for a period ranging anywhere from 5 up to 20 years

"It is unclear if standard vetting processes are applied in such cases where, presumably some, or perhaps many, of these household members reunified in the U.S. were previously expelled for illegally crossing the border in contradiction of federal criminal law," said Cruz in his letter to Mayorkas.

This is due to differences in the rules governing how long U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can legally hold minors versus adults.