Rosario Quiroz Villarreal and Isabel Coronado Release Statement on New Family Reunification Task Force

With the February 2 news that the Biden administration will create a task force to locate and reunite the children forcibly separated from their parents at the Mexico border, Rosario Quiroz Villarreal and Isabel Coronado, Next100 policy entrepreneurs, released the following statement:

“We have been counting down the days for President Biden to officially announce his promised task force to reunite all children forcibly removed from their parents at the Mexico border under the Zero-Tolerance policy. The trauma these families have endured is a national tragedy in need of an urgent and thorough response. We appreciate President Biden mandating an interagency response that requires four agency heads to be involved in rectifying the immediate crisis, that the task force will be delegated sufficient staff, and that it will provide recommendations to prevent this cruelty from occurring again. The task force has much work ahead of it, but with the collaboration and guidelines outlined in the order, the 628 children will be reunited with their families. We hope to see all the children reunited with their families as quickly as possible, and that they are granted free and ongoing mental health services, legal status to remain within the United States, and access to all public services.”  

Rosario and Isabel previously released a report on the public health impacts of the Trump administration’s family separation policy, as well as policies that can prevent this horrible practice from ever happening again. Read the full report here.