An emotional TV host broke down live on-air as she reported on Trump's 'tender age' shelters for lone migrant babies and toddlers. Rachel Maddow choked up and began crying while delivering breaking news about three of the shelters in the US.
She struggled to read out how distraught young kids forcibly separated from their parents have been sent to the South Texas facilities. Moved to tears, she asked a producer to display a graphic, before apologising and ending her segment on her MSNBC show early. She later tweeted about her breakdown, writing: "Ugh, I'm sorry. If nothing else, it is my job to actually be able to speak while I'm on TVShe also wrote: "Again, I apologize for losing it there for a moment."Not the way I intended that to go, not by a mile."Rachel shared the script that she was trying to read on-air, revealing that Trump administration officials have been sending young children separated from their mums and dads at the border to the shelters. Among the youngsters are babies. The report said visitors to the three 'tender age' facilities have described playrooms of crying preschool-age children in 'crisis'.The shelters are located in Combes, Raymondville and Brownsville. The US government also plans to open the fourth shelter for children in Houston, according to the city's mayor, who has spoken out against it.
Taking to Twitter last week, Mayor Sylvester Turner wrote: "I did not give my blessing to the idea of a non-profit coming to Houston and operating a shelter for these 'unaccompanied minors' taken into custody on the border. # KeepFamiliesTogetherAct In fact @ HoustonTX wanted to lease it for a homeless shelter."He added: "You can’t hurt them to try to make some grander statement, to say ‘if you get here we are going to strip your kids away.’"That’s not who we are."I don’t want a facility in the city housing these kids that have been separated. And I’m making my message loud and clear."The family separations are the result of the Trump administration's new 'zero tolerance' policy that arrests all adults who are caught trying to enter the US illegally, including those seeking asylum. Under the controversial practice, confused and upset migrant children are being forcibly taken from their parents. While their mums and dads are sent to federal jails, some youngsters are put in cages. There, they wait alongside other unaccompanied kids, surrounded by metal fences and forced to sleep on concrete floors under foil sheets. According to journalists allowed inside one facility, the lights are kept on at all hours of the day and there are portable toilets. Other youngsters separated from their families are reportedly sent to 'tent cities', which are equipped with toys, crayons and books. A senior doctor who visited one of the shelters said that staff were not allowed to comfort them, even when in obvious distress. Rules are said to prohibit physical contact, leaving employees unable to pick up screaming infants, the Independent reports. One particularly "heartbreaking" separation case is that of a little girl with Down's syndrome who was split from her mum at the border. The 10-year-old was accompanied by her mother and 10-year-old brother as they tried to enter the US, according to a Mexican official. The children were sent to an immigration centre in McAllen, Texas, according to Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Secretary Luis Videgaray. Their mum, meanwhile, was taken to Brownsville. The girl's father is a US resident, and Mr Videgaray said: "We are working to release the girl so she can reunite with her father."On Friday, U.S. officials said nearly 2,000 children were separated from adults at the border between mid-April and the end of May. It is thought more than 10,000 migrant youngsters - also including kids who arrived at the border without a relative - are now in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services. Shelters are said to have been pushed to capacity. Earlier this week, harrowing audio footage emerged, capturing children wailing for their parents as a Border Patrol agent taunts them. The youngsters, described as Central American children separated from their parents last week, scream "Mami" and "Papá" over and over again in the footage, which was obtained by nonprofit ProPublica.The guard's voice then booms over the sound of their sobs: "Well, we have an orchestra here. What’s missing is a conductor."Yesterday, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions dismissed claims that the detention facilities for children were like Nazi concentration camps. Speaking to Fox News host Laura Ingraham, Mr Sessions argued that the Nazis had been "keeping the Jews from leaving the country."Today, a young mum who was allowed to keep her baby girl with her described the upsetting scenes inside one detention centre. Ani Gabriella, 21, from Honduras, entered the US from Mexico last week and has since been released pending an immigration court date. Fortunately, she says she was able to keep her two-month-old daughter with her - apparently, because of the infant's very young reflecting on her detention, she told Sky News: "I feel sad because there are lots of mothers inside crying for their babies. I did not sleep for five days because I was afraid they would take my baby away."In the US Border Patrol’s South Texas Rio Grande Valley sector, more than 1,170 children have been taken away from their parents. Many of the youngsters have been brought to the Central Processing Station in McAllen, Texas, since the policy was announced on May 7, Border Patrol sector chief Manuel Padilla told NBC.
The immigration facility, known as Ursula, is now home to around 500 children separated from their families. Children of all ages, from toddlers to teens, are crammed into wire cages, up to 20 at a time, according to witnesses who visited the site. An advocate who was allowed inside Ursula told how a teenage girl had been teaching other children how to change the nappies of the toddlers they are being held in a cage with. Michelle Brane, director of migrant rights at the Women’s Refugee Commission, said the 16-year-old had been taking care of a girl, believed to be two years old, for three days."She had to teach other kids in the cell to change her diaper," Ms Brane told reporters.
She added that the child, who it later emerged was aged four and spoke no Spanish, only K’iche, a language indigenous to Guatemala, was eventually reunited with her aunt. Ms Brane said "She was so traumatised that she wasn’t talking. She was just curled up in a little ball yesterday, the US President told Republican lawmakers he would back either of the immigration bills making their way through the House of Representatives, as the outcry grew over the separations. Representative Mark Meadows said Trump told Republican members of the House at a meeting on Capitol Hill that they needed to get something done on immigration "right away."In the meeting, Trump said separating families was "certainly not an attractive thing and does look bad,'' added Representative Tom Cole.