Trump signs executive order to keep families together

WASHINGTON (AP) — Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar says his agency will start reuniting detained immigrant children with their parents – but he's making no specific commitment on how quickly that can be accomplished.

"We need to get the children out of our care as expeditiously as possible," Azar said today on the Washington Post's Health 202 webcast.

HHS says it is caring for about 11,800 migrant children, but the majority arrived at the U.S. border without parents or another adult. It says about 2,300 were separated from their parents under the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy.

Azar says his agency is in touch with the parents, but some parents whose children were taken away say they have had trouble reaching their kids through a special phone number provided by the government.

Meanwhile, a liberal advocacy group says Trump's decision to reverse his administration's policy of separating children from their parents at the border doesn't go far enough.

The Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center says the administration still plans to treat families like criminals by holding them in detention facilities.

3:16 p.m.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump today signed an executive order to keep families together at border, but says "zero-tolerance" prosecution policy will continue.