By Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Thos. Kaplan & Robert Pear @ NYTimes.com, June 16

WASHINGTON — Seventeen states sued President Trump on Tuesday for his administration’s practice of separating immigrant parents from their children, saying that the tactic is causing “devastating harm,” even as a top official said the government was struggling to reunite families fractured by the policy [....]

The states, including Washington, California and New York and joined by the District of Columbia, branded the forcible separation of immigrant families unconstitutional, “cruel and unlawful,” calling it a violation of the principles of due process and equal protection. They requested that the court halt it and immediately compel the government to reunite parents with their children.

Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services, told senators on Tuesday that his department — which is charged with taking custody of undocumented unaccompanied minors — was having trouble figuring out how to care for the children it was holding who had been separated from their parents.

Some of them, he said, were in federal custody even though their parents had been sent back to Central America after trying to enter the United States illegally.

“As to any parent who’s deported, the child has independent rights,” Mr. Azar said during a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, where his plan to discuss prescription drug pricing was upended by a grilling over the separated families. “We often do find, when a parent is deported, that they ask the child to remain separate and remain in this country.”

Mr. Azar said his department is holding 2,047 separated children, only six fewer than it held last week [....]