Families with young children protest the separation of immigrant families with a sit-in at the Hart Senate Office Building, Thursday, July 26, 2018, on Capitol Hill in Washington. The Trump administration... (Associated Press) 
 
 Families with young children protest the separation of immigrant families with a sit-in at the Hart Senate Office Building, Thursday, July 26, 2018, on Capitol Hill in Washington. The Trump administration faces a court-imposed deadline Thursday to reunite thousands of children and parents who were forcibly... (Associated Press) 
 
 SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Trump administration said Thursday that more than 1,800 children separated at the U.S.-Mexico border have been reunited with parents and sponsors but hundreds remain apart, signaling a potentially arduous task ahead as it deals with the fallout of its "zero tolerance" policy on people entering the U.S. illegally. 
 
 There have been 1,442 children 5 and older reunified with their parents in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody and 378 others who were released "in other appropriate circumstances," including to other sponsors, the Justice Department said in a court filing. 
 
 Still, more than 700 parents were deemed not eligible or currently not eligible, many of whom may have been deported. Of those, 431 children have parents outside the United States. 
 
 More than 2,500 children were separated from their parents at the border in the past several months amid a zero tolerance policy that criminally prosecuted anyone caught crossing illegally. 
 
 Some children who had not seen their parents in weeks or months seemed slow to accept that they would not be abandoned again. One father who was reunited last week said his young daughter did not believe that he would not leave her a second time. 
 
 "I think that some of the children very quickly attach. Others, there's a distance. There's this caution, this lack of certitude, and part of it is not understanding what happened," said Ruben Garcia, director of the Annunciation House, an immigrant-assistance center in El Paso that has received about 25 families each day this week. 
 
 Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who represents the separated families, said before the latest figures were announced that the government should not be congratulating itself for meeting its "self-defined" deadline. 
 
 "The government shouldn't be proud of the work they're doing on reunification," he said. "It should just be, 'We created this cruel, inhumane policy ... now we're trying to fix it in every way we can and make these families whole." 
 
 The Department of Homeland Security's internal watchdog said it would review the separation of families, along with the conditions at Border Protection facilities where migrant children are held, in response to scores of congressional requests to do so. 
 
 For the last two weeks, children have been arriving steadily at ICE locations in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico to be reunited with parents. Faith-based and other groups have provided meals, clothing, legal advice and plane and bus tickets. The families are generally released, and parents are typically given ankle-monitoring bracelets and court dates to appear before an immigration judge. 
 
 But confusion and fear lingers. Jose Dolores Munoz, 36, from El Salvador, was reunited with his 7-year-old daughter last Friday, nearly two months after they were separated. His daughter cries when he leaves the house because she thinks he's not coming back. 
 
 "She is afraid," Munoz said in Spanish. "Yesterday I left her crying, she is telling me, 'You are not coming back. You are lying. You are leaving me.'" 
 
 U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego commended the government Tuesday for its recent efforts, calling it "a remarkable achievement." 
 
 "It is the reality of a policy that was in place that resulted in large numbers of families being separated without forethought as to reunification and keeping track of people," said Sabraw, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush. 
 
 Lourdes de Leon, who turned herself in to immigration authorities, was deported to her native Guatemala on June 7 but her 6-year-old son, Leo, remained in the U.S. 
 
 De Leon said Guatemalan consular officials told her signing a deportation order would be the easiest way to reunite with Leo. 
 
 "He is in a shelter in New York," de Leon said. "My baby already had his hearing with a judge who signed his deportation eight days ago. But I still do not know when they are going to return him to me." 
 
 Immigration attorneys said they had advocates on the ground in Central America to help parents who were deported without their children. And Gelernt said the ACLU would go looking for all of the parents to determine whether they intentionally left without their children. 
 
 "I think it's going to be really hard detective work," he said. "And hopefully we're going to find them." 
 
 Both sides were due back in court Friday, when the judge was going to decide whether to ban deportations of families for seven days after they are reunified so that parents could have time to discuss their options. 
 
 Late last month, Sabraw ordered a nationwide halt to family separations, which President Donald Trump effectively did on his own June 20 following an international outcry. Sabraw issued a 14- day deadline to reunite children under 5 with their parents and 30 days for children 5 and older. 
 
 On Friday, family attorneys would begin turning their attention to those who weren't reunited — parents who had a criminal record, parents who were no longer in the U.S. and children who were handed over to other sponsors, Gelernt said. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Long reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Astrid Galvan in El Paso, Texas, Alan Fram in Washington and Sonia Perez D. in Guatemala City contributed to this report. ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The moment a migrant mother is reunited with her son 
 
 Some 711 migrant children taken from their parents at the US-Mexico border have not yet been returned to them, despite a court-ordered deadline. 
 
 US government lawyers said the children were not eligible to be reunited with their parents. 
 
 The reasons given included a lack of confirmed family ties, or a parent having a criminal record or a communicable disease. 
 
 In 431 cases the parents were no longer in the US, a court filing said. 
 
 US officials separated more than 2,500 children from undocumented adults at the border with Mexico earlier this year, in a "zero tolerance" crackdown on illegal immigration. 
 
 But it was suspended by President Donald Trump last month after a fierce backlash. 
 
 The Trump administration says it has reunited more than 1,800 migrant children with family members. Its lawyers argue that it met the legal deadline, as the 711 remaining children are not "eligible" to be given back. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Fox v MSNBC on immigration: How the news divides America 
 
 What do we know about the children? 
 
 The majority of the children were reunified with their parents in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, and 378 others were released in "appropriate circumstances". 
 
 This covers those reunited with parents who were already out of government custody, those sent to another relative or family friend, and those who are now over the age of 18. 
 
 Of the 711 deemed ineligible, 120 children's parents had "waived reunification", the government said on Thursday evening. 
 
 Dozens more remain separated because of "adult red flag", referring to situations in which the child might be at risk. 
 
 Why have the families been reunited? 
 
 A court order imposed a deadline on the Trump administration to release all children aged between five and 17. 
 
 San Diego federal judge Dana Sabraw ruled last month that all the detained minors separated under the policy should be brought back to their families by 26 July. 
 
 "By the court deadline this evening we are on track to reunite all eligible parents within ICE custody," said Chris Meekins of the Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Trump supporters talk family separations and border security 
 
 But the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has sued the government over the policy, said US officials had only met "a self-defined deadline". 
 
 ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt told reporters: "The government shouldn't be proud of the work they're doing in separation. This is a disaster that they created." 
 
 What about the ineligible children? 
 
 The court filing says hundreds of children are ineligible to be reunited because their parents have left the country. 
 
 The ACLU said it would try to trace the missing parents, but a former acting director of ICE, the agency that rounds up undocumented migrants, said he fears many families will never be reunited. 
 
 "There is a very high likelihood that those parents are not going to see their children again," John Sandweg told CBS News. 
 
 Image copyright Reuters 
 
 How did we get here? 
 
 The Trump administration earlier this month reunited more than 100 migrant children under five years old with their parents, though it missed a court-ordered deadline to do so. 
 
 It said 57 of these youngsters were back with their families, though 46 others were deemed ineligible because of safety concerns, parental deportations, or other issues. 
 
 US President Donald Trump halted the family separations in late June after pictures of locked-up children and audio of them crying in distress triggered uproar. 
 
 But the reunions process has proved chaotic, with some children transported to see their parents only to end up back in their shelters after discovering their loved ones were not at the location. 
 
 The families were held after entering the US illegally, while others claimed asylum at border crossings, citing violence in their home countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. 
 
 The children were being sent to various care facilities across the country, while the adults were held in detention centres or prisons.
– The Trump administration said Thursday that more than 1,800 children separated at the US-Mexico border have been reunited with parents and sponsors but hundreds remain apart, signaling a potentially arduous task ahead as it deals with the fallout of its "zero tolerance" policy on people entering the US illegally, per the AP. There have been 1,442 children five and older reunified with their parents in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody and 378 others who were released "in other appropriate circumstances," including to other sponsors, the Justice Department says in a court filing. Still, more than 700 parents were deemed not eligible or currently not eligible, many of whom may have been deported. Among the 711 ineligible parents, 120 "waived reunification" with children and dozens of others were considered "adult red flags" that might endanger children, officials say, per the BBC. More than 2,500 children were separated from their parents at the border in the past several months amid a zero tolerance policy that criminally prosecuted anyone caught crossing illegally. Some children who had not seen their parents in weeks or months seemed slow to accept that they would not be abandoned again. "The government shouldn't be proud of the work they're doing on reunification," says an ACLU lawyer. "It should just be, 'We created this cruel, inhumane policy ... now we're trying to fix it in every way we can and make these families whole." Click for the full story.