All eligible kids under 5 reunited, says govt

Trump administration said Thursday that it had reunified all the migrant children under the age of 5 it determined were eligible to be returned to their parents, part of a court order to reunite the children who were separated from their families at the border.

Officials said 57 of the 103 children had been reunited with their families as of Thursday morning. An additional 46 children remain in government custody because they have been found ineligible to be returned to their families for various reasons.

The government said that 22 of the children could not be placed back with their parents due to safety concerns — because the parents had criminal records or because the federal government determined that the child was not related to the person they were with at the border. Two dozen children could not be returned because the parent was deported or was in jail for other offences.

The reunifications came after a federal judge pressed for faster action on Tuesday, when the government said it would miss a court’s deadline of returning at least half of children under 5 to a parent by that day.

Judge Dana M Sabraw of the US district court of San Diego said that deadline and a second set for July 26 to reunite nearly 3,000 more children were “firm deadlines, not aspirational goals.”NYT