U.S. Department of Homeland Security

After 15 years, Claudia Cifuentes reunited with her children. She returned to the U-S from Guatemala through a family reunification process after being deported in 20-08 when her children were still underage.

Potential candidates to replace Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman are already stepping forward after Wyman, a Republican, announced she will resign next month to take an election security position with the Biden administration. Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, will appoint Wyman's replacement. That could spell the end of a nearly six decades Republican lock on the secretary of state's office.

The U.S. government had 4,276 unaccompanied migrant children in custody as of Sunday, according to a Department of Homeland Security document obtained by NPR. The children are spending an average of 117 hours in detention facilities, far longer than the 72 hours allowed by law.

The Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin on Wednesday warning of a continued threat from domestic violent extremists. The bulletin did not cite any specific threat but described "a heightened threat environment across the United States, which DHS believes will persist in the weeks following the successful Presidential Inauguration."

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton requested a temporary restraining order against the Department of Homeland Security last Friday. A federal judge granted the request Tuesday, suspending President Biden's 100-day deportation ban.

The group behind the suspected Russian attack into U.S. government agencies and private companies was able to hack into Microsoft's internal systems and access some of the company's source code, the tech giant said in a blog post on Thursday.

The list of affected agencies is growing by the day. The full extent of the damage is still not clear, and U.S. authorities have provided few details.

Hackers invaded computer systems at the departments of Treasury and Commerce starting in the spring, according to reports.

It's the latest court ruling against the Trump administration's attempts to terminate the Obama-era program that protects young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

The agency said the U.S. system was prepared to handle the process of questioning the outcome of an election.