Biden's immigration reform offers more protection to children. But it will be difficult for Congress to pass it

By Julia Ainsley- NBC News

President Joe Biden's immigration reform will include

new protections for children

migrating from Central America, including a return to a Barack Obama-era program that allows minors to apply for refugee or asylum status in the United States from their home countries. origin.

In August 2017, the Donald Trump Administration stopped allowing children to seek asylum from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, a key feature of the Central American Minors program initiated by Obama.

Other details of the legislation revealed Thursday include

hiring more immigration judges

to handle asylum cases, offering "humane alternatives" to immigration detention, and changing the term

alien

(foreigner in Spanish) to the term

noncitizen

(non-citizen). ) in immigration law.

[Biden proposes removing the word 'alien' from immigration law to refer to the undocumented]

The bill will also include an accelerated path to citizenship, allowing young immigrants known as dreamers, certain farm workers, and immigrants under Temporary Protected Status to be immediately eligible for 

green cards

and, three years later, the citizenship.

A Honduran who tried to reach the United States feeds his little girl while the migrants are returned by the Guatemalan authorities, in El Florido between Guatemala and Honduras, in Chiquimula, Guatemala, January 19, 2021.REUTERS / Luis Echeverria

All other undocumented immigrants who are in the United States since January 1 will be eligible for a

green card

in five years and citizenship in eight years under the legislative proposal, a member of the Democratic senator's staff told the media on Thursday. New Jersey Robert Menendez.

Addressing immigration, an issue known to stir political divisions, as his first major legislative proposal could prove difficult for the new president.

Menendez said he had

"no illusion"

that passing the legislation was nothing more than

"a Herculean task."

[Shouts for help and blows: 128 migrants who were traveling crammed into a truck were rescued]

Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who proposed immigration restrictions under the Trump Administration, called Biden's proposal an "amnesty plan" that

"dismantles existing law enforcement"

for illegal immigration.

The bill needs

60 votes

to pass in the Senate, and with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tiebreaker, Menendez said he would need to bring in at least nine Republicans.

Other pieces of legislation, detailed in the call by Menéndez, who will introduce the bill, include allowing

children to have legal assistance

when they present their asylum cases in immigration courts.

"We will no longer force children to present their own arguments," Menéndez said, "we will assist them to do so."

There are 666 migrant children still separated from their families: more than what was known to date

Nov. 10, 202000: 28

Menendez said the bill will also increase training and the basic standard of care for children in the custody of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ).

Under the Trump Administration,

at least seven children died in the custody of CBP or ICE,

or shortly after being released.

Government officials said at the time that they were ill-equipped to handle the influx of families arriving at the southern border and that many of the children came into their custody with serious illnesses.