With two months left until President-elect Donald Trump takes office, a group of House Democrats is asking President Joe Biden to use his clemency authority. 

In a letter, Reps. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass.; Jim Clyburn, D-S.C.; Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; and Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa., asked Biden to pardon or commute the sentences of thousands of individuals held in federal prisons before his term ends.

“President Biden can use clemency as a tool to put thousands of people on a pathway to healing and reunification with their families,” Pressley said during a news conference in Washington on Wednesday. The daughter of an incarcerated parent, Pressley said the president “was elected with a mandate to lead with compassion and change lives for the better.”

The representatives are requesting clemency for four groups: elderly and chronically ill individuals who do not pose a threat to public safety, people with sentencing disparities who haven’t benefited from new laws that lack retroactive clauses, women who are in prison for defending themselves against abusers or who were coerced into criminal activities by their partners, and 40 men on federal death row so they can avoid execution.

The group cited Biden’s pardon last December of thousands of individuals who had been convicted of using or possessing marijuana on federal lands, and his pardon in June this year of thousands of former U.S. service members convicted of violating a since-repealed military ban on gay sex.

About 2 million Americans are currently in U.S. prisons and jails, “hundreds of thousands of whom do not pose a significant threat to public safety who are being subjected to extraordinarily long and punitive sentences,” Scanlon said. “Biden has already exercised clemency. We’re trying to seek action when we have someone in office who understands the consequences and understands how to do it ethically.”