Lawmakers on the Rules Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives spent Wednesday evening working on two immigration bills set to go to the house floor Thursday. The Rules Committee is the first step to getting the bills there.
There is a conservative bill and a more moderate one, which addresses family separation for detainees.
Dallas Congressman Pete Sessions chairs the Rules Committee, and was vocal in the meeting. He said policy to address children at the border should be included in both pieces of legislation.
Negotiations to get the necessary votes to get a bill passed could continue into early Thursday morning.
This comes after President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday to hault separating families.
So far 2,300 children have been removed from their families and placed in at least 17 states.
For those families, immigration attorneys across the country have started to speculate about what reunification would look like and how long it would take.
Dallas-based attorney Pallavi Ahluwalia said the past few weeks have been like none she has experienced in her 15-year career, making it difficult to predict what comes next.
Some have said it could take anywhere from two weeks to a month to make contact with a child's parent, especially for the youngest in detention.
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Ahluwalia admitted she feared some may never be reunited, but she's hopeful the system will work.
"If they were taken away from them, I have hope that the system can track everything and get them back to where the parents want them. Unfortunately that's again still behind the bars, but at least to get them together," Ahluwalia said.
While there were some reports following President Trump's executive order Wednesday that children who've already been seperated won't immediately be reunited, those statements were later walked back.
NBC 5's Allie Spillyards contributed to this report.
