A total of 364 of the more than 2,500 children separated from their parents in a US-Mexico border crackdown on illegal immigration have been reunited, officials disclosed in court late on Thursday, days before a reunification deadline.

The government has six more days to comply with the reunification order by the US district judge Dana Sabraw, who summoned the government attorneys to appear in his San Diego courtroom on Friday to account for progress. Lawyers for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement had reported in a court filing late on Thursday that less than a fifth of the families with children aged five and older had been reunited since Sabraw’s order was issued more than three weeks ago.It was unclear from the status report, filed as part of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit challenging parent-child separations at the border, exactly how many more reunifications were likely before the 26 July deadline.

Nearly 850 parents have been interviewed and cleared for reunification so far but another 229 parents have been deemed ineligible because of criminal records, or because they “waived” reunification or for other reasons, the report said. The rest are pending review.(theguardian)…[+]