Live updates: Texas governor says he let bars reopen too early amid surge in coronavirus cases

A federal judge in California on Friday ordered the release of migrant children being held with their parents at the country’s three family detention facilities, citing coronavirus outbreaks at two of the centers.

U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee ruled that children held for more than 20 days at the centers in Texas and Pennsylvania must be released with their parents or transferred to family sponsors by July 17. There were 124 juveniles in the centers, run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as of June 8, the order said.

Gee criticized the government for not appropriately implementing public health recommendations at its detention facilities. The centers, she wrote, “are ‘on fire’ and there is no more time for half measures.”

Not every child will necessarily be released. The absence of a suitable sponsor or a parent’s refusal to permit their child to be transferred to a sponsor are considered acceptable reasons to continue detaining a child, according to Gee’s order.

Advocates have called for entire families to be released, especially because detention centers are conducive to spreading the virus, the Associated Press reported. At least 11 people being held at the facility in Karnes City, Tex., have tested positive, Gee’s order said, while four employees at the center in Dilley, Tex., were found to have the virus and detainees’ test results are pending.

Peter Schey, an attorney representing the children, said he and the other lawyers will discuss with the government how ICE will assess each parent’s wishes and make sure children are released to family members when that is a parent’s desire.

“Some detained parents facing deportation brought their children to this country to save them from rampant violence in their home countries and would prefer to see their child released to relatives here rather than being deported with the parent to countries where children are routinely kidnapped, beaten, and killed,” Schey said in a statement.

Maria Sacchetti contributed to this report.

LONDON — Holiday-loving Britons have been given the thumbs up to vacation abroad after the British government said it would ease blanket restrictions early next month.

From July 6, the British government will scrap the 2-week quarantine rules for several European countries, meaning that much of Europe will be open to Brits who want to holiday there.

The news was splashed across the front pages of Saturday newspapers: “Fly out for sun, sea and 70% off,” said the Daily Mail. “Holiday season back on” ran a headline on the front of the Times of London.

Brits love to holiday abroad: In normal times, about 60 percent of Brits go on an overseas holiday. Of course, these are not normal times, and it remains to be seen how many people will book a vacation to sun-kissed destinations. But the hard-hit travel industry was clearly elated with the news.

“It’s incredibly welcome,” said Jonathan Smith, a spokesman for ABTA, a trade association for travel agents and tour operators. He told the BBC that they expect a “surge of bookings … although some people may be slightly reticent to travel.”

Under a “traffic light system,” countries will be given a green, amber or red rating based on coronavirus levels and other measures. Passengers coming from countries with a ‘red’ rating will have to continue to abide by the mandatory 14-day quarantine rules.

The list of countries covered by the new changes will be published next week, but British media outlets said that those on the green or amber lists would include France, Greece, Spain and Italy. There was no suggestion that the United States would be on the approved list, although its exclusion could “potentially present a tricky diplomatic dynamic” wrote the BBC’s Tom Burridge.

Across the English Channel, European diplomats are expected to approve a list of the countries they want to start welcoming from July 1. The possibility of allowing American tourists in hasn’t even figured in discussions, diplomats familiar with the discussions told The Washington Post.

Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Thursday in an interview with The Washington Post that health officials are having “intense discussions” about what’s known as “pool testing.”

It would mark the newest strategy to contain the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, which has killed at least 123,000 people and infected more than 2.4 million.

Also known as batch testing, pool testing combines samples from several people and tests them for the coronavirus all at once, cutting down on the time and supplies required. The protocol was first invented to test for syphilis during World War II and has been used in the past for outbreaks of other sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV.

“If everyone is negative, then you’re done,” Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told The Washington Post in May.

The Trump administration on Friday claimed “remarkable progress” in fighting the coronavirus pandemic, despite a surge of cases in the South and West and as several Republican governors allied with President Trump are under pressure to impose stricter public health restrictions to gain control of outbreaks in their states.

Vice President Pence held the first public briefing of the coronavirus task force in nearly two months and sought to deliver an upbeat message that was at odds with warnings from public health experts. The vice president dodged the question of whether people should wear masks in public, as his own administration recommends, and said campaign rallies that pack people together, in violation of public health guidance, will continue.

Pence offered no new strategies to combat the rapidly spreading virus and minimized record daily case counts in several states as “outbreaks in specific counties.”

“As we stand here today, all 50 states and territories across the country are opening up, and safely and responsibly,” Pence said, a point that was undermined as Florida and Texas on Friday began to scale back or reverse their reopening plans because of growing outbreaks.