Dana Sabraw, who is overseeing the process, says it is ‘100% the responsibility of the administration’ to ensure reunions

The federal judge overseeing the reunification of more than 2,500 migrant families separated by Donald Trump’s administration said the government’s efforts were “disappointing” – and it was its responsibility to unite them.

Hundreds of families remain separated a week after the court’s reunification deadline because the parents are no longer in the US or have been deemed ineligible for reunification by the government.

“The reality is that for every parent who is not located there will be a permanently orphaned child and that is 100% the responsibility of the administration,” said the US district judge Dana Sabraw in his San Diego court on Friday.

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Sabraw, who was appointed by George W Bush in 2003, was blunt during a status conference on Friday with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorneys who sued for family reunification and lawyers for the Trump administration.

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More than 1,900 children were reunited by the court’s 26 July deadline, but hundreds of families remain separated, including nearly 500 parents deported without their children.

Sabraw said that it was “just unacceptable” that of those parents, only 12 or 13 had been located. “I have to say that it was disappointing in the respect that there was not a plan proposed,” he said.

Sabraw’s critique was made one day after the Trump administration said in a status report to the court that the ACLU and other immigrant rights groups should take the lead on reuniting families because of their “considerable resources”.

The ACLU and other rights groups have said they are doing all they can to reunite the families but are limited by the amount of information provided by the government, which separated the families.

The ACLU attorney leading the case, Lee Gelernt, has requested more information from the government since filing the lawsuit in March. “Every day the government has sat on this information has been another day of suffering for these families,” Gelernt said in a statement.

On Friday, Sabraw ordered the US government to choose one person, or a group of people, to lead the effort to reunify children with parents who have been removed from the country or released in the US, while their children remain in US government custody.

He also ordered the government to provide more details on 30 parents it said were not eligible for reunification with their children. Immigration advocates and former US officials said they were concerned about how the government was making these determinations.