(Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's campaign announced that he would create a task force on his first day in office that would work to reunite the migrant children that the Trump administration separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexican border.
In 2018, President Donald Trump instituted a “zero tolerance” approach to immigration which meant that families detained after crossing the U.S. border illegally were separated. Children were taken to separate facilities or sent to foster homes or other institutional care.
The administration didn't keep careful track of where the parents went after separation and now the parents of 545 of the children cannot be located.
“What happened? Their kids were ripped from their arms and separated and now they cannot find over 500 sets of those parents and those kids are alone. Nowhere to go. It's criminal,” Biden said in last week's debate.
Trump responded that the children are “so well taken care of,” and noted that the Obama administration, when Biden was vice president, had a child-separation policy, but it was much more limited than that of the current president.
Biden's idea for a task force was announced in a new ad released on Thursday that will begin running in the battleground states of Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Nevada.
Both Biden and Trump are campaigning Thursday in Florida.
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