The Handmaid's Tale - Will I ever see you again?

The Handmaid's Tale: 2x10 The Last Ritual.

Trump administration officials have been sending babies and other young children forcibly separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border to at least three “tender age” shelters in south Texas, it has emerged.

Lawyers and medical providers who have visited the Rio Grande Valley shelters described play rooms of crying pre-school aged children in emotional crisis. The Associated Press learned that the government also plans to open a fourth shelter to house hundreds of young migrant children in Houston, where city leaders denounced the move on Tuesday.

Since the White House announced its zero tolerance policy in early May, more than 2,300 children have been taken from their parents at the US-Mexico border, resulting in a new influx of young children requiring government care. The government has faced withering critiques over images of some of the children in cages inside US Border Patrol processing stations.

Decades after the nation’s child welfare system ended the use of orphanages over concerns about the lasting trauma to children, the administration is starting up new institutions to hold Central American toddlers that the government separated from their parents.

“The thought that they are going to be putting such little kids in an institutional setting? I mean it is hard for me to even wrap my mind around it,” said Kay Bellor, vice president for programs at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which provides foster care and other child welfare services to migrant children. “Toddlers are being detained.” 

The Guardian: Babies and toddlers sent to 'tender age' shelters under Trump separations, June 20, 2018