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The Trump administration said Tuesday it is on track to reunite the majority of separated migrant families ahead of a July 26 court deadline, but workers are still sorting through case files to determine whether hundreds of parents were deported without their children. Government attorneys told U.S. District Court Judge Dana M. Sabraw, who mandated the reunifications last month and has overseen the process, that the government has given 1,012 parents their children back so far, out of 2,551 who were separated. Hundreds more families are due to be reunited by the judge’s Thursday deadline, the attorneys said, which Sabraw praised as “a remarkable achievement.” (Miroff, 7/24)

Sabraw called the efforts a remarkable achievement and said Commander Jonathan White, who works in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services, should be commended. “He’s done Yeoman’s work in accomplishing that,” he said. Justice Department lawyer Sarah Fabian said the government has identified 914 parents who are ineligible for reunification, but she could not tell Sabraw how many parents have been removed from the country with their children versus without. (Wheeler, 7/24)

Two by two, they came through the double doors of the shuttered retirement home: mothers tightly clutching their children, fathers holding fast to small hands. They had been among the more than 2,500 parents stripped of their children and imprisoned after illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. But now, after outrage and protests and a class-action lawsuit, the Trump administration was being forced to reunite the families ahead of a court-ordered deadline Thursday. (Miller, 7/24)

Equity Forward, an abortion-rights group, placed what it claimed was a “heavy six-figure” television buy via an affiliate that attacks Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar for comments made during an interview on July 10 with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. The group, as part of its HHS Watch project, has increasingly highlighted the department’s role in the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy of separating children from families seeking asylum at the U.S. border. (Kessler, 7/25)

Some school districts are preparing for more immigrant students than usual this fall due to children who were separated from their parents at the border and others who came alone and are settling in their areas. Alberto Carvalho, superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida, wrote Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in June about not being told that 1,000 children were being housed at a shelter in his area. It isn’t clear if the children were separated from parents or came unaccompanied, or both. (Hobbs, 7/25)

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen says it's the Trump administration's "intention" to meet a Thursday court-imposed deadline to reunite migrant families separated at the border. Nielsen told Fox News' Bret Baier in an interview on Tuesday evening that the Department of Homeland Security is "on track" to meet the deadline. (Birnbaum, 7/24)