Joel Rose

President Trump's immigration crackdown has not come cheap.

Take the cost of deportation: Immigration and Customs Enforcement has its own airline operation to fly deportees back home. So far this fiscal year, it's $107 million over budget.

The Trump administration says it wants to move to a "merit-based" immigration system — one that gives priority to immigrants who speak English and are highly educated.

But critics say that rhetoric is at odds with the administration's actions.

"Show me any policy that's come out so far that has actually made it easier for highly skilled immigrants," says Doug Rand, who worked in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Barack Obama.

The Trump administration's push to deport more immigrants in the country illegally has hit a legal speed bump.

For years, immigration authorities have been skipping one simple step in the process: When they served notices to appear in court, they routinely left the court date blank. Now, because of that omission and a recent Supreme Court decision, tens of thousands of deportation cases could be delayed, or tossed out altogether.

Updated at 3:51 p.m. ET

The American Civil Liberties Union says it reached an agreement overnight with the Trump administration regarding the future of families separated at the Southwest border.

If approved by the court, the agreement would allow many of the parents to apply for asylum, according to the ACLU, even if they had already been issued deportation orders. The agreement would also open the door for parents who have already been deported without their children to return to the U.S. to pursue asylum claims, but only in "rare and unusual" cases.

Updated at 3:45 p.m. ET

The Trump administration is proposing to lift court-imposed limits on how long it can hold children in immigration detention.

A federal judge in Texas declined to issue a preliminary injunction in a case over the future of DACA — but he says the six-year-old program is likely unlawful.

The decision is a setback for Texas and nine other states that are suing to terminate DACA. The Obama-era program protects approximately 600,000 immigrants from deportation and allows them to work legally, even though they were brought to the country illegally as children.

The death of a toddler is renewing concerns about the quality of medical care that immigrant families receive in federal detention centers.

Eighteen-month-old Mariee Juárez died after being detained along with her mother Yazmin Juárez at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. Her mother says Mariee was a happy, healthy child when they arrived at the U.S. border in March to seek asylum.

Then they were sent to Dilley. Six weeks after being discharged, her mother says, Mariee died of a treatable respiratory infection that began during her detention.

Omolara Uwemedimo says it's hard to imagine what her parents, who immigrated to New York from Nigeria decades ago, would have done if they had had to choose between food stamps and getting their green cards.

Her parents worked factory jobs back then, but when her mother got pregnant with her, Uwemedimo says, the doctor put her on bed rest.

"She actually used food stamps when she was pregnant," Uwemedimo said. "And she says that pretty much saved them in terms of not having to move out of their apartment because of the fact that they had that help."

In the summer of 1968, Jared Kass was working at a camp for high school students in Massachusetts. He decided to teach the kids in his dorm a game that he'd learned at Amherst College, where he was a student.

"I remember I was just running and leaping for a pass of the Frisbee," said Kass, who's now a professor of psychology at Lesley University in Boston. "And I jumped up in the air. And I had one of those moments of just sheer synchrony where the disc just made it right into my hand at the perfect moment."

Updated Aug. 8 at 5:24 p.m. ET

Immigration lawyers are challenging the Trump administration's crackdown on asylum-seekers in court.

Under a sweeping new policy announced in June by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the administration says domestic abuse and gang violence should "generally" not be considered grounds for asylum claims.

For weeks, the Trump administration has faced scorching criticism for separating migrant families at the border, and detaining immigrant children in inhumane conditions.

On Tuesday, the administration pushed back.

Matthew Albence, a top official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, even compared family detention centers to "summer camps."

"We have officers in these facilities," he said. "I think the best way to describe them is to be more like a summer camp.

Updated at 9:05 p.m. ET

The federal judge who ordered the reunification of thousands of migrant families says the Trump administration deserves "great credit" for its efforts.

But Judge Dana Sabraw also faulted the administration for "losing" hundreds of parents, leaving a significant number of families separated a day after the court-imposed deadline to reunite them.

In May, Lourdes walked across the bridge from Mexico to El Paso, Texas, and requested asylum. The first step is an interview with an asylum officer.

"I told him that I have the evidence on me," Lourdes said, through an interpreter. She told the asylum officer about the scar on her arm, and the four missing fingers on her left hand — all evidence, she says, of a brutal attack by a gang in her native Honduras.

But the asylum officer rejected her claim.

"I don't know what happened," Lourdes said. "I don't know how I failed."

A federal judge in California has temporarily halted the deportation of immigrant families that have been reunited after being separated by the Trump administration.

The order was issued Monday by Judge Dana Sabraw, the same judge who previously ordered the government to reunite the families.

It comes as the Trump administration is scrambling to reunite roughly 2,550 immigrant children with their parents by the court-imposed deadline of July 26. What will happen to those families after reunification isn't clear.

Many of President Trump's immigration policies are deeply unpopular, including recent efforts to deter illegal immigration by separating migrant families at the border, according to a new NPR-Ipsos poll.

But Americans are polarized in their attitudes about immigrants and the U.S. system for admitting them, the polls shows, with Republicans much more likely to support the president's policies, including the travel ban, the border wall, and changes to legal immigration.

When it comes to immigration policy, American opinions often break down along party lines, with most Republicans supporting President Trump's views and Democrats vigorously opposed.

But according to a new NPR-Ipsos poll, there is an even better predictor of how you feel about immigration: where you get your TV news.

A week ago, Yeni Gonzalez was in an immigration detention center in Arizona more than 2,000 miles from her children.

On Tuesday, the 29-year-old stood outside the social services agency in New York City where she had just seen her kids for the first time in 45 days, clutching a blue and white lollipop in her hand.

"I feel very happy because I just saw my children, and my daughter gave me that lollipop," Gonzalez said in Spanish.