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A difficult situation for migrant children in government custody could grow more challenging if the largest provider in the overburdened shelter system were to lose its grants. The provider, Southwest Key Programs, faces mounting pressure after a video of staff members abusing children surfaced last month and the Justice Department opened an investigation into its finances. State and federal officials have cracked down on suspected malfeasance at shelters in the past year, closing multiple facilities, including two run by Southwest Key, and moving children elsewhere. (Barker and Kulish, 1/5)

At a migrant shelter near the Mexican border, three girls from Guatemala — sisters aged 10, 9 and 6 — coughed and sniffled. One of them clung to both a teddy bear and a large bottle of Pedialyte, to soothe her dehydration and flu. The girls’ mother, Nelcy, 28, said her daughters got sick not during their long journey to the border in the back of a pickup truck, but during the 12 days they spent at two crowded government detention facilities before arriving at the privately run shelter in Texas. “It was very cold, especially for the children,” said Nelcy, who would only be identified by her first name. “My children got sick. They gave us aluminum blankets, but it wasn’t enough.” (Fernandez, Dickerson and Villegas, 1/4)

Thousands of migrant families were separated at the border by the Trump administration last year. One of the HHS officials involved in putting them back together: Chris Meekins — a Trump appointee who normally helped oversee emergency preparedness, but was tapped as part of HHS' broader response. (1/7)

A controversial, government-contracted shelter for migrant children in the West Texas desert will shut down later this month, a result of sweeping changes to the rules that govern the custody of youngsters. Nationwide, the number of children in the government's care has stopped growing and begun to fall. In the last two weeks, some 2,200 child migrants — mostly teenage boys from Central America — have been discharged from shelters and allowed to join family already in the U.S. (Burnett, 1/4)

Authorities failed to monitor a mentally ill detainee as often as they were required before he hanged himself with a pair of socks in an immigration detention center in southwest Georgia last year, according to documents obtained through Georgia’s Open Records Act. This is not the first time this has happened at Stewart Detention Center, a sprawling federal complex located just outside the city of Lumpkin. (Redmon, 1/4)

A U.S. court on Friday ruled in favor of a Trump administration policy barring certain transgender people from serving in the U.S. armed forces, handing the president his first legal victory on the issue after several defeats. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned a decision by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., that blocked the policy, saying it likely violates the constitutional rights of transgender recruits and service members. (1/4)