Biden will form task force to reunite hundreds of separated immigrant children if he wins election

‘On his first day as president, Joe Biden will issue an executive order creating a federal task force to reunite these children with their parents’

Joe Biden pledged to sign an executive order on his first day as president for a task force to reunite 545 immigrant children separated from their families at the US-Mexico border.

Lawyers have been unable to find parents of the children after the majority of families separated in 2017 were deported back to Central America.

The pledge was announced in a digital ad titled “Separated — Joe Biden Para Presidente" which said the federal task force, to be created by executive order on the first day of a Biden presidency, and would focus on bringing the children together with their parents.

The campaign ad aired in key battleground states of Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Nevada, a Biden campaign official told CNN.

In the campaign’s final-week pitch to Latino voters, Mr Biden will travel to Florida on Thursday while Kamala Harris will visit Rio Grande Valley in Texas on Friday.

A court filing from the American Civil Liberties Union in October showed they have only made contact with parents of 550 children out of the 1000 families separated in 2017, when the Trump administration began trialing a "zero tolerance" policy at the US southern border.

While 25 of those parents may have a chance of returning for reunification, several families contacted by the federal court-appointed committee to identify separated families chose to leave their children in the US with a family member or sponsor.

Justice in Motion, the group on the ground in Mexico and Central America physically searching for the separated parents, said in a statement they were continuing to look for more deported parents.

“It’s an arduous and time-consuming process on a good day. During the pandemic, our team of human rights defenders is taking special measures to protect their own security and safety, as well as that of the parents and their communities,” the statement shared with NBC News said.

The 545 stranded children were a topic at the final debate between Mr Biden and Donald Trump, who said his administration was "trying very hard" to reunite the families.

“Their children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels, and they’re brought here, and they used to use them to get into our country,” he said.