Screaming children heard crying for parents at US detention centre

 As the Trump administration continues to defend its new “zero tolerance” policy on immigration, audio has reportedly revealed the cries of immigrant children hours after they are separated from their families at the US border. “Mami!” one child can be heard crying in the seven-minute audio. “Papá!” another screams. “Well, we have an orchestra here,” says a man identified as a Border Patrol agent. “What’s missing is a conductor.”

The audio reportedly comes from inside a US Customs and Border Protection detention facility, where migrant children are held as their parents face prosecution for crossing the border illegally. Under the Trump administration's new zero tolerance policy, all adults caught crossing the border illegally are required to face criminal charges – a process that inevitably separates them from any children they bring with them. Nearly 2,000 children have been separated from their parents since the zero tolerance policy began in April, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). More than 100 of them were under the age of four.

The new audio captures the reactions of 10 of these children after they were separated from their families, according to ProPublica, which published the recording on Monday. The children can be heard sobbing and calling out for their parents. One girl, identified as six-year-old Alison Jimena Valenica Madrid, can be heard reciting the number of an aunt in the US and begging detention centre employees to call her. The aunt later told ProPublica that receiving the anguished call was “the hardest moment in my life”. “Imagine getting a call from your 6-year-old niece,” said the woman, who is also applying for asylum in the US. “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.’”