Separation policy April 17, 2021 On his first day in office, Joe Biden sent draft legislation to Congress to provide a path to citizenship for most of the 10.5 to 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US. He also issued several executive orders to remedy injustices around immigration, including asylum and family separation. But the new administration has not yet been able to ramp up capabilities fast enough to handle the backlog of long-suffering families and unaccompanied children at the border, or to rebuild or repair much of what Trump dismantled. And some of Biden’s positive proposals seem to be stalling because of depleted reserves of political capital.