Why are so many migrant families still separated?

President Joe Biden has a huge to-do list and a humanitarian crisis.

The new administration is working to repair norms and rollback policies covering so much from the Trump era. So where does immigration sit in the priority list? The White House already rescinded the “zero-tolerance” policy that separated migrant families, but unwinding rules and reuniting those families are very different things.

Hundreds of children are still separated from their parents today, well after the courts demanded reunification.

“It’s an overwhelming number of people, an overwhelming task that we’re talking about now,” said Caitlin Dickerson, immigration reporter for The Atlantic. “Discussions for separations began within weeks of President Trump taking office, so that thousands of families had already been separated before the policy was announced.”

Dickerson joins us today to talk about the scale of the problem, the Biden administration’s progress and the lasting effects on the families.

Later in the show, we’ll talk about the return of earmarks, women in the workplace and things that go brrr. Plus, we’ll get a very meta answer to the Make Me Smart question.

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Here are links to everything we talked about on the show today:

• Dickerson’s piece from The New York Times last year: “Three Years After Family Separation, Her Son Is Back. But Her Life Is Not.”
• “Trump and Aides Drove Family Separation at Border, Documents Say” also from The New York Times
• “Biden signs executive orders on family separation and asylum” from Politico
• Another interview with Dickerson on MSNBC about how Biden is taking steps to tackle the root of immigration from Central America
• “Biden faces questions about commitment to minimum wage hike” from the Los Angeles Times
• “CEOs of Reddit and Robinhood and ‘Roaring Kitty’ slated to testify in GameStop hearing” from The Verge
• “Democrats Want To Bring Back Earmarks” from HuffPost
• “Restoring Earmarks Is Probably a Good Thing” from Bloomberg Opinion
• This billboard a listener sent in:

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