Charities attack Trump’s claim government is trying to reunite immigrant children and parents

Observers say two-thirds of the parents have already been deported to Central America

Charities have attacked Donald Trump’s claims the government is trying to reunite 545 children with the parents they were separated from as part of a zero-tolerance crackdown on immigration.

The president said during his final debate with Joe Biden that the administration was “working very hard” to get the remaining children back to their families.

The youngsters were among several thousand taken away from their families by the government when they crossed the southern border illegally and the parents were jailed.

Advocacy groups say that the White House is only now offering them help to reunite the children because of the “backlash” to the scandal.

A federal judge ordered the children be returned to their families in 2018 but the groups say since then they have had to do most of the work.

Before the debate government lawyers in a federal lawsuit on behalf of the families said they “could certainly be of some assistance” in helping track down the parents.

"There have never been serious specific offers to help in concrete ways in the past," Lee Gelernt of the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project, told NBC News.

Observers say that an estimated two-thirds of the parents who have not been reunited with their children have already been deported back to Cental American countries.

A White House spokesman reiterated that the president had signed the executive order that ended family separations in 2018.

“Multiple agencies of the United States government have been working with attorneys for these individuals from the beginning to help identify, provide contact information for, and reunite these families, and extensive efforts will continue to complete this mission,” said White House deputy press secretary Brian Morgenstern.

The family separations, which had happened under the Obama administration, for instance when it was believed the children were at risk from the adult they were travelling with or their guardian was suspected of criminal activity, intensified when Mr Trump’s then-attorney general Jeff Sessions ordered a “zero tolerance” policy to illegal crossings at the southern border.

This resulted in the children being taken away from the parents while the adults awaited federal criminal prosecution.