U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Monday released footage of an immigration detention center in McAllen, Texas, where children have been separated from their parents as part of the Trump administration's zero tolerance policy at the border. The footage was released a day after members of the media and several Democratic lawmakers were taken on a tour of the processing facility near the U.S.-Mexico border. Reporters were not allowed to bring cameras into the facility or interview anyone. ADVERTISEMENT The video shows dozens of children standing or sitting in cages made from metal fencing inside the old 55,000-square foot warehouse, which has been converted into a holding facility. Some people were shown lying down, using foil-like sheets as blankets. Border Patrol said nearly 200 people in the facility were unaccompanied minors while 500 were "family units" of parents and children, according to CBS News. Many of the adults who have crossed the border illegally could be charged and jailed, splitting them up from their children. BREAKING: Border Patrol @CBP just gave us this video of the detention facility we toured yesterday in McAllen, Texas. We weren't allowed to bring in cameras, or interview anyone. To be clear: this is government handout video. pic.twitter.com/Zjy80qIZFZ — David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) June 18, 2018 The video comes as many Democratic and Republican lawmakers voice outrage over the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" immigration policy that was announced in April, where adults apprehended outside an official port of entry are prosecuted away from their children. Rep. David Cicilline David CicillineMedia safe harbor bill won't actually help local news Cheney calls Greene's comments on House mask policy 'evil lunacy' Greene under fire for comparing mask policy to the Holocaust MORE (D-R.I.) tweeted on Sunday that officials told him 1,147 children have been separated from parents at the facility in McAllen. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen Kirstjen Michele NielsenLeft-leaning group to track which companies hire former top Trump aides Rosenstein: Zero tolerance immigration policy 'never should have been proposed or implemented' House Republican condemns anti-Trump celebrities during impeachment hearing MORE has defended Trump's policy at the U.S.-Mexico border, and on Monday argued that illegal actions have consequences. She also argued that Americans should not believe the media in regards to their coverage of the policy, while President Trump Donald TrumpTrump lashes out after grand jury seated for New York criminal probe Schumer tees up vote on Jan. 6 commission bill Senators struggle to save Jan. 6 commission MORE has also doubled-down on the policy. The Associated Press reported on Friday that about 2,000 children were separated from their parents from mid-April to the end of May.<doc-sep>Immigrant children walk in a line outside the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children, a former Job Corps site that now houses them, on Wednesday, June 20, 2018, in Homestead, Fla. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson) Secretary of State Mike Pompeo listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Thursday, June 21, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) US President Donald Trump walks to board Marine One as he departs for North Dakota at the White House in Washington, DC, on June 27, 2018. Why Democrats call for ICE to be abolished (CNN) — Chain link fences, mattresses on the floor and families queuing to be processed – and oftentimes separated. These are the photos of the processing detention center in McAllen, Texas, that the Customs and Border Protection agency wants you to see. More than 1,100 immigrants – including children – were being held at McAllen when reporters were allowed in Sunday. Dozens of protesters stood outside the center as reporters and democratic lawmakers arrived to learn more about the facility where the Department of Homeland Security is processing and detaining immigrants accused of illegally crossing the border. The lawmakers came to south Texas, they say, to learn more about the agency’s processing of undocumented immigrants entering the United States, including a Trump administration policy to refer all people who cross the border illegally for criminal prosecution on top of immigration proceedings. As a result of enforcing that policy, families who cross illegally have been separated from their children because those accompanying the children are put into the criminal justice system. Though media was able to tour the facility Sunday, they were barred from taking any pictures or video. CBP cited privacy concerns as the reason. The agency released a handful of government images for publication – showing McAllen through the lens of those controlling it. US Customs and Border Patrol Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, who first visited the South Texas border on June 3, described his second visit as more coordinated for Customs and Border Protection officials who gave the tour. “We did see the children who were held inside here,” he told CNN’s Ana Cabrera in an interview. “In wire-mesh, chain linked cages that are about 30x30, a lot of young folks put into them. I must say though, far fewer than I was here two weeks ago. “I was told that buses full (of children) were taken away before I arrived. That was one of my concerns, that essentially, when you have to give lengthy notice, you end up a little bit of a show rather than seeing what’s really going on in these centers.” US Customs and Border Patrol The warehouse-like facility has holding pens made from chain-link fences on the inside separating the immigrants. Mattresses with thermal blankets were strewn on the floors. US Customs and Border Patrol Federal officials said the immigrants were only being processed and wouldn’t be here longer than three days, but lawmakers reported they’d been told by immigrants within the facility that they had been there for seven. US Customs and Border Patrol Customs and Border Protection provided CNN with a document titled “Next Steps for Families” during the walk-through. The document lists several steps for those in the government’s custody and includes several actions for people to take under the question “how do I locate my children,” including telephoning agency call centers and hotlines or emailing them. CNN’s Dianne Gallagher reported that families are brought through the warehouse and separated by the adults’ gender, and that one woman approached CNN, crying and expressing fear about what would happen next. US Customs and Border Patrol The group of lawmakers included Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Texas Reps. Filemon Vela, Vicente Gonzalez, and Sheila Jackson Lee, Vermont Rep. Peter Welch, Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline, and Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan. Speaking after visiting McAllen several Democrats expressed anger at the family separations and called on the Trump administration to change its policy. “When you have a mother tell you directly that she’s in fear that she will never see her child again, and when the United Nations Human Rights Commission indicate to the Trump administration that you are violating human rights, then you know that what we are saying today is President Trump, cease and desist,” Jackson Lee said. CNN’s Daniella Diaz and Eli Watkins contributed to this report.<doc-sep>Young migrant children, fighting through tears, can be heard crying "Mami" and "Papa" in an eight-minute audio clip first obtained by ProPublica. The children are believed to be between 4 and 10 years of age, and they're crying because their parents have been detained elsewhere after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, according to an activist who provided the recording. "Well, we have an orchestra here -- what's missing is a conductor," said a male voice on the recording, someone believed to be a U.S. Border Patrol agent. One of the children heard on the recording is a 6-year-old girl from El Salvador begging a consulate official to let her call her aunt. She repeats the digits and announces, through tears: "My mommy says that I'll go with my aunt, and that she'll come to pick me up there as quickly as possible." ProPublica caught up with the U.S.-based aunt -- herself seeking asylum in the country -- who confirmed that the little girl's family paid $7,000 to a guide to smuggle them into Mexico and then the U.S. The call she received from her niece rendered her powerless, she told ProPublica. "Imagine getting a call from your 6-year-old niece," she said. "She's crying and begging me to go get her. She says, 'I promise I'll behave, but please get me out of here. I'm all alone.'" ProPublica reported that the girl and the rest of the wailing children heard on the audio hadn't been at the facility a full 24 hours "so their distress at having been separated from their parents was still raw." And while some officials were doling out snacks, the outlet claimed that many children "were inconsolable." The recording was captured last week and given to Jennifer Harbury, a civil rights attorney who confirmed its authenticity to ABC News. She told ProPublica the person who made the recording was a client of hers who asked to remain anonymous because that person feared retribution. That person "heard the children's weeping and crying, and was devastated by it." Harbury told ABC News' Marcus Moore on Monday when she first heard the recording, "I was horrified. My first reaction is to start crying. And my second reaction is to think, this is obscene what we are doing to people." She added, "You cannot listen to that tape without understanding how totally devastating it is and traumatic and harmful it is to those children. I've said it before and I will say it again, it is child abuse -- not physical, it's psychological. But it is child abuse." Government statistics indicate that, so far, nearly 2,000 children were separated from their families over a six-week period in April and May. Melania Trump's spokeswoman issued a statement after several days of images of crying children appearing on television and online saying that the first lady "hates to see children separated from their families," and the president said on Friday: "I hate the children being taken away" before blaming those actions on Democrats and "their law." There is no such law. "To a select few in the media, Congress and the advocacy community, I'd like to start with a message for you: This department will no longer stand by and watch you attack law enforcement for enforcing the laws passed by Congress," Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said on Monday at the National Sheriffs' Association in New Orleans. "We will not apologize for the job we do, for the job law enforcement does and for the job the American people expect us to do." Those comments came a day after she said on Twitter: "We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period." Attorney General Jeff Sessions has justified the fracturing of families by quoting The Bible. "I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, 'To obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for His purposes,'" he said last week. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders didn't directly defend Sessions' quoting of the Bible, but suggested it's religiously prudent to enforce the law. "I can say that it is very biblical to enforce the law. That is actually repeated a number of times throughout the Bible," Sanders said. "It's a moral policy to follow and enforce the law." The president on Monday took a hardline on the border crisis during an announcement of a Space Force. "The United States," he said, "will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility."<doc-sep>
Children sit grouped together with sheets of foil intended to serve as blankets inside cages at a detention facility in Texas that holds families arrested at the southern United States border. Video footage released by the U.S. Border Patrol Monday shows dozens of people being led into the cages and people lying side-by-side underneath foil sheets in the facility, located in an old warehouse in McAllen, Texas. In one shot, women sit on a bench up against the chain-link fencing that makes up the cages. Children are seen sitting in groups and a baby can be heard crying in the background. Border Patrol officials released the video after allowing a brief visit from reporters to the facility on Sunday in response to criticism of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of separating migrant children from parents who are arrested while trying to cross into the U.S. In this photo provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, people who've been taken into custody related to cases of illegal entry into the United States, sit in one of the cages at a facility in McAllen, Texas US CUSTOMS AND BORDER PATROL/HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock An undated handout photo made available on 18 June 2018 by the US Customs and Border Patrol showing people inside a United States Border Patrol Processing Center, in McAllen, Texas US CUSTOMS AND BORDER PATROL/HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock Under the policy, Homeland Security officials refer cases of illegal entry into the U.S. for prosecution. About 2,000 children were separated from their parents between April 19 and May 31 after Attorney General Jess Sessions implemented the policy, the Associated Press reports. Several of the adults in the footage could be arrested and charged with illegal entry – resulting in agents separating them from their children. The McAllen facility holds more than 1,100 people and is divided into sections for unaccompanied children, parents with children and adults who are on their own, the AP reports. According to the Border Patrol, there are about 200 children at the facility who were picked up by border patrol after crossing the border without a parent or guardian. Parents and children made up an additional 500 people. Write to Mahita Gajanan at mahita.gajanan@time.com.