BROWNSVILLE — The Trump administration is staring down a rapidly approaching, court-ordered deadline to reunite parents and children separated at the border after a federal judge excoriated the government for failing to keep track of them as well as it does “property.”

Department of Homeland Security officials were mum on Wednesday about the sternly worded ruling by federal District Court Judge Dana Sabraw in California.

The order requires the government to put separated parents in touch with an estimated 2,000 children within 10 days, and reunify children under 5 with their parents within two weeks. All of the families must be reunited within a month, according to the ruling. The judge also said the government could not deport any parents without children absent a waiver.

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Sabraw wrote that the government’s so-called zero-tolerance system did not account for children with “the same efficiency and accuracy as property.”

“We hope the administration will comply,” said Lee Gelernt, the lead lawyer for the ACLU in the class-action lawsuit against the government filed on behalf of children separated from their parents at the border. The two lead plaintiffs were mothers from Congo and Brazil who were detained and separated from their children for months.

“These children are in serious danger of becoming irreparably harmed for the rest of their lives,” Gelernt said. “We can have all of the arguments we want going forward, but on this one thing, the administration ought to say were are going to do what is right for these children.”

Asked about the injunction, President Donald Trump offered no complaint, saying, “We believe the families should be together also so there’s not a lot to fight.”

At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar said the government must vet people before releasing children to them, which can take weeks.

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HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement is taking an average of 57 days to place children in its care with adult sponsors — far longer than the time now allotted by the judge. A spokesman for the agency said he did not have an updated number of the children who had been reunited as of Wednesday.

HHS referred questions Wednesday to the Justice Department, which in turn said it was up to Congress to deal with the border situation.

“Last night’s court decision makes it even more imperative that Congress finally act to give federal law enforcement the ability to simultaneously enforce the law and keep families together,” the department said in a statement. It added: “Without this action by Congress, lawlessness at the border will continue.”

More Information Conditions in shelters under review The Health and Human Services inspector general’s office says it’s launching a wide-ranging review of conditions at shelters for migrant children. The agency said Wednesday it will focus on safety and health-related concerns, as well as the training and qualifications of federal contractors who are supposed to ensure the well-being of children temporarily in federal custody. Spokeswoman Tesia Williams says the inspector general’s probe will not focus on specific allegations of mistreatment, because those are being investigated separately. HHS is caring for about 12,000 migrant children, including some 2,000 who arrived at the southwest border with a parent and were separated because of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy. Associated Press

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Lawmakers in Washington on Wednesday once again failed to pass immigration reform legislation.

DHS officials did not respond to questions about the lawsuit.

Geoffrey Hoffman, director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Houston Law Center, called the judge’s ruling “very significant.”

“This is a humanitarian disaster that needs to be put right,” Hoffman said.

Amid massive backlash, President Trump issued an executive order this month ending the policy of separating families. But attorneys for some of the parents whose children were placed in ORR custody reported they could not locate the children, even after calling a government hotline designed to help.

Carlos Garcia, a McAllen lawyer on the board of directors for the Texas Civil Rights Project, said he interviewed eight separated parents in the Port Isabel Detention Center Tuesday. One mother he is representing from Honduras has gone weeks without knowing where her 6-year-old daughter is.

“She’s been crying a lot and it’s hard for her to sleep,” he said.

She told Garcia that she fled Honduras after gang members killed some of her relatives and threatened her too. She was prosecuted for crossing the border illegally after Border Patrol agents arrested her earlier this month, placing her daughter somewhere in a federal foster care shelter.

Garcia said he hoped the Department of Homeland Security would release separated parents so they could begin finding their children themselves.

“The government is slammed with reunification because they were not prepared,” Garcia said.

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Garcia’s civil rights organization has filed an international complaint over the practice of separating families.

Anthony Romero, the executive director of the ACLU, said if the government seeks a stay or appeals to a higher court, it “would make it clear that the government is just dragging its feet on a humanitarian crisis.”

If the government fails to comply with the order, he added, the ACLU will notify the judge.

As confusion over the immediate fate of parents and children trickled out to migrants waiting on the Brownsville & Matamoros Express International Bridge, several asylum seekers said they were not deterred.

Isabel Flores fled Honduras after the tumultuous presidential elections last November threw her country into a political crisis and she faced death threats. She had been waiting on the bridge all day, and planned to sleep there as she waited to ask for asylum along with her children and grandchildren.

“No matter what happens, President Trump’s not going to keep my kids,” she said wearily. “My kids are mine, they’re not his. I have faith.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.