The Trump administration has six months to identify as many as thousands of children who were separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border.
U.S. District Court Judge Dana Sabraw said Thursday he would consider an extension, but he wanted to hold the government to a date after administration officials opposed any deadline.
“It is important for all government actors to have a timeframe, a deadline,” the Southern District of California judge said, according to the Associated Press. “You tend to stand on it.”
The administration said it could take as long as two years to reunite the separated children with their parents.
Sabraw, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, halted the separation of families in June 2018 and ordered children being held by the government to be reunited with their families within 30 days. Almost 3,000 children had been separated from their families when the order was issued and most have been reunited since then.
However, in January, the Health and Human Services Department’s inspector general said thousands more children could have been separated since mid-2017. The Trump administration will review about 47,000 cases of children in the government’s custody from July 2017 to June 2018.
