“It was a whirlwind government handoff as improvised and clandestine as their separation. Jimena was bundled out of a shelter in Phoenix on Thursday evening, loaded onto an airplane at supper time and flown three hours to Houston, where she kept herself awake all night in a passenger lounge in Terminal A with crayons and coloring books. Meanwhile her mother, Cindy Madrid, fresh out of a detention facility in south Texas, got word about the government’s plans too late to catch a flight, and barreled with her lawyer six hours down the highway to reach the little girl.” Watch the 6-year-old Salvadoran girl heard on a secret recording out of a border patrol detention facility finally being reunited with her mom. (This story is from ProPublica, the outlet that released the audio in the first place. Real news. Real results.)

+ “The main obstacle to reuniting families has been the fact that, when the government initially separated them, there was no plan for keeping track of where the parents or children ended up.” Where the media left off, activists took over. Jonathan Blitzer on the activist effort to find the children that the government took from their parents.

+ AP: “Detaining immigrant children has morphed into a surging industry in the US that now reaps $1 billion annually — a tenfold increase over the past decade.”