WASHINGTON – The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it will restart a program that reunites children from several Central American countries with their parents who are in the United States legally.
But a senior White House official had a key message to individuals who might see this as a sign to come to the U.S.-Mexico border: “La frontera está cerrada” — or “the border is closed.”
“I want to be clear, neither this announcement nor any of the other measures suggest that anyone, especially children and families with young children, should make the dangerous trip to try and enter the U.S. in an irregular fashion,” Roberta Jacobson, special assistant to the president and coordinator for the southern border, said at a press briefing Wednesday. “The border is not open.”
The Central American Minors program, which was established in 2014, was terminated in 2017 under the Trump Administration. The program would allow parents from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras who are in the United States legally to request refugee resettlement for their children.
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The Biden administration will reopen pending and eligible cases that were closed after the program was ended, and officials will begin contacting parents as soon as the week of March 15.
Jacobson said that when the program ended abruptly in 2017, around 3,000 children already approved for travel were left…
