The government is refusing to release new stats on kids from separated families

Originally published by CNN

How many immigrant families have been reunited since a judge ordered the US government to halt most family separations at the border?

And how many kids from separated immigrant families are still in government custody?
We don't know, because officials aren't saying.
It's been a week since they released a tally of how many kids from separated families remain in government custody.
And officials have repeatedly declined to respond to questions about how many families have been reunited.

Deadlines are looming; the government has less than a month to reunite the families it separated. Here's the latest:
It's been

7 days

since the government has released stats on separated kids in custody

On June 20, the Department of Health and Human Services said there were 2,053 children from separated families in its care. On June 26, the agency said there were 2,047 such children.
Why haven't officials released updated figures since then? According to HHS, it's because the number of immigrant children in the agency's care is always in flux -- and because they are working with other agencies to cross-check the numbers they have.

Federal officials have released updated statements revealing the total number of immigrant children in their care -- a figure that includes children who crossed the border alone and children who were separated from their families after crossing. But since June 26, they've refused to specify how many kids from separated families remain in custody.
Here's why that particular statistic matters: It's the only figure officials have provided that gives us any indication of whether reunions are happening.
This isn't a perfect equation; we don't know whether the children released from HHS custody were reunited with parents -- only that they're no longer in one of the agency's shelters. The government has not answered questions about the circumstances of their release.
But without a response to questions about how many reunions have occurred -- or at least an updated figure on the number of kids from separated families who remain in custody -- the public has no way to track whether families are being reunited or how quickly it's occurring. All we have are anecdotal examples of a few scattered reunions at airports.
The latest information we have was provided to CNN by a US government source: a map showing that the 2,047 separated unaccompanied minors who were in custody of the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement as of June 25 were scattered across 16 states.