It could take up to two years for the U.S. to reunite families separated at the border

The Trump administration says it may need up to two years to find potentially thousands of children who were separated from their parents at the southern border when the White House was operating under a "zero tolerance" policy, prosecuting all those who crossed the border illegally before a judge put an end to the practice last year.

In a court filing on Friday, the Department of Justice said that it will take at least one year to review about 47,000 cases of unaccompanied minors taken into government custody between July 1, 2017 and June 25, 2018. But the task is expected to be difficult, especially because the children are no longer in government custody. Per The Associated Press, the government will prioritize locating and reuniting children who are not currently living with relatives.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued to reunite families separated at the border, criticized the government's timeline.

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"The government was able to quickly gather resources to tear these children away from their families and now they need to gather the resources to fix the damage," Lee Galernt, the ACLU's lead attorney, said.