Family separation

This policy was terminated in a memo issued by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. In the memo, Mayorkas said the MPP "does not adequately or sustainably enhance border management in such a way as to justify the program's extensive operational burdens and other shortfalls."

The White House and allies have recently embraced a strategy to push for reforms by highlighting popular planks of an immigration agenda that has been stalled for months.

"We're trying like hell to figure out what happened," the president said during an interview with NBC News' "Today."

Religious conservatives and law-enforcement officers who were uncomfortable with family separations may be open to immigration reform.

"Every time the van stopped to pick up another deportee, I was sure someone would come on board, point at me and say, 'Not that guy—he's a veteran.'"

Court filings by the ACLU show that 545 migrant children have still not been reunited with their parents.

"It's a sobering realization to note that this is something that is clearly a violation of international human rights law and it's happening in the United States," said Dr. Ranit Mishori.

"The full United States government has been focused on this issue, starting with the president," Ivanka Trump said.

An email dated to September 2016 further warned that the best thing that could happen was for family separations to cease.

The Trump administration's separation of babies, toddlers, children and teens is far from over and remains a moral stain on our country.

The Star Trek actor and political activist told Late Night with Seth Meyers there were parallels with what is happening on the U.S. border with his experience in World War Two.

"Again, I don't know the background of what her grandmother or relatives were," CBP Chief of Law Enforcement Operations Brian S. Hastings said.

"I hesitated a minute before I started yelling because I actually think about getting up and throwing that man a beating right there in the middle of the room," Thomas Homan said.

The Honduran boy was only eight months old when he arrived in the U.S. with his father in May 2018.

"It turns out we have more than enough (supporters) to keep us cooking," Red Hen co-owner Stephanie Wilkinson wrote.

"There are moms out there who will not get to experience this day...Mothers who don't know if they will ever get to see their children again," said activist Meena Harris.

"We want the families that are in detention and who have been separated to know we haven't forgotten them," said Jess Morales Rocketto, who chairs the immigration advocacy group Families Belong Together.

"These aren't demons, these aren't people that are monsters," Teigen said of immigrants.

"I don't know if he's had that conversation or not," a White House spokesman said of restarting family separations.

Immigration officials struggle with "huge backups to process folks into the country," Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said.

"Thank God these organizations helped us to reunite with our son," said a father who had been separated from his 6-year-old son at the southern border.

"As a country, we have to acknowledge that this is how people are being treated here and decide that we are better and we must do better," Representative Ilhan Omar tweeted on Thursday.

"I'm desperate. I want to be with my daughter already," one mother told immigration legal services organization Al Otro Lado.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen took issue with the use of the word "cages" to describe the detention facilities used for children.

"While the Trump administration claims to be doing everything it can to reunify families, ICE is detaining parents at this very moment who should be released and reunited with their kids immediately," said Sandra Cordero, director of Families Belong Together.

"Thousands of children may have been separated during an influx that began in 2017, before the accounting required by the court, and HHS has faced challenges in identifying separated children," a new government report said.

The Trump administration does not have any "constitutional duty" to provide reunited families with the "post-release care they appear to be seeking," a Justice Department attorney said.

Newsweek fact-checks the president's assertion.

The Trump administration's widely condemned family separation policy has come with a price tag that is only expected to grow.

The administration was first ordered to reunify by July 26 the 2,551 migrant children that were separated from their parents after families illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.