McAllen, Texas, immigration processing center is largest in US

For some, agents said, processing comes not with one of the 10 permanent processing agents but with virtual ones — video chats with agents in El Paso, En Centro or Corpus Christi — an effort to provide support for a system they say is understaffed.

Only four social workers were on hand to care for the hundreds of children, a backup system when Border Patrol agents are not prepared or qualified to deal with the challenges that come with caring for a child.

Some children who arrived with parents now find themselves alone in the facility before they are picked up and taken into the custody of the HHS, which cares for unaccompanied migrant children. Others arrived on their own.

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Padilla, the Border Patrol chief, said agents in the Rio Grande Valley have allowed families with children under 5 to stay together in most cases.

An advocate who spent several hours in the facility Friday told The Associated Press she was deeply troubled by what she found.

Michelle Brané, director of migrant rights at the Women's Refugee Commission, met with a 16-year-old girl who had been taking care of a young girl for three days.

"She had to teach other kids in the cell to change her diaper," the AP quoted Brané as saying. "She was so traumatized that she wasn't talking. She was just curled up in a little ball."

A total of 1,129 migrants were detained in the 77,000-square-foot facility known as Ursula on Sunday.U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Trump has repeatedly blamed Democrats opposed to his immigration reform proposal, falsely crediting an anti-trafficking law that passed unanimously in 2008 under President George W. Bush for the separations.

The detention of children apart from their parents is a result of the policy mandated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and there is no law that requires family separation. As such, congressional action is not necessary to stop it. Sessions has said the intent is to eventually prosecute everyone who crosses the border illegally.

Last week, Sessions gave a full-throated defense of the policy leading to family separations, saying having children does not give migrants immunity from prosecution and citing the Bible as justification.

"Noncitizens who cross our borders unlawfully, between our ports of entry, with children are not an exception," the attorney general said. "They are the ones who broke the law, they are the ones who endangered their own children on their trek."

Jacob Soboroff reported from McAllen, Texas, and Julia Ainsley from Washington.

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