The Trump administration acknowledged Thursday that 559 migrant children remain separated from their parents — even though the government had a court-ordered July 26 deadline to reunite all families shattered by the “zero tolerance” policy.

Government attorneys provided the new figure in a status update to federal California Judge Dana Sabraw ahead of a conference call scheduled for Friday.

The 559 kids still separated from their loved ones are between 5 and 17 years old, according to the administration. A total of 2,551 minors in that age group were ripped from their families at the southern border between April and June because of the widely reviled policy.

Of the 559 children, 386 remain separated because their family members are not in the U.S.; 51 because contact has yet to be made with family members; 87 because “red flags” came up during the family members’ background checks; 88 because the parents are facing separate prosecution; 163 because family members “indicated desire against reunification;” and 20 because “further review” has shown the government didn’t actually separate them from their parents, according to the administration.


Sabraw ruled in June that all separated migrant children under age 5 had to be reunited with their parents by July 6, and all others by July 26 after the American Civil Liberties Union successfully sued the administration over the family-shattering practice. The administration failed to meet both deadlines. Nearly 3,000 children in total were separated from their parents because of zero tolerance.

Despite blowing both deadlines, the Trump administration’s Thursday status update touted “significant interagency efforts” between the Justice Department, the State Department, the Homeland Security Department and the Health and Human Services Department.

The administration said it’s still finalizing reunification plans for the 386 children who remain separated because their parents are outside of the U.S. Many of those parents are likely outside the country because the government deported them without their kids.

In a reply to the government’s status update, the ACLU announced it has contracted four private organizations to assist in the reunification process because the government is taking an “unnecessarily long time” to carry out a number of tasks, including issuing voluntary departure orders for children wishing to be reunited with loved ones who have already been deported.


The Trump administration stoked international outrage after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced zero tolerance in April. The policy pledged to criminally prosecute all illegal entries, as opposed to previous administrations, which typically referred such cases for civil proceedings, negating the need for family separations.

For weeks, Trump insisted he couldn’t do anything to stop his own administration’s hawkish policy, instead falsely blaming it on Democrats.

Finally, on June 20, Trump signed an executive order allowing detained migrant families to remain together in custody.

But Trump’s executive order didn’t reunify the families who had already been fractured.


“The reality is,” Judge Sabraw said during a hearing last week, “for every parent who is not located, there will be a permanently orphaned child, and that is 100% the responsibility of the administration.”