On June 20, German, 16, stands for a portrait after talking about his time in detention in the United States, spent in the same youth facilities facing serious public scrutiny right now.

REYNOSA, Mexico — The constant sound of emergency blankets rustling. Zero natural light. Four-year-old children wailing throughout the night. Getting woken up with a kick to the ribs.

A group of Mexican teens who were put in a US detention facility near the border earlier this month described the conditions inside to BuzzFeed News. The five of them are temporarily living in a government-run shelter in Mexico, along with dozens of others.

The boys, ages 14 to 17, made their way into the US separately, either alone or with an uncle or cousin. None know where exactly they had been held, but each of them said that they crossed the Rio Grande and walked briefly north through Texas before getting caught by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents. They said they were put in an “ice-cold” room for a few hours and then taken to a large warehouse with no windows.

The detention centers are at the heart of the Trump administration’s latest crisis, pitting the president against members of his own party and drawing international condemnation from heads of state and human rights groups. US authorities have separated more than 2,300 children from their parents during the last six weeks as part of a “zero tolerance" policy against immigrants. Most are fleeing life-threatening violence in Honduras and El Salvador in Central America.

In an audio recording from inside a detention facility, released by ProPublica, children can be heard crying. And in photographs released by CBP, minors are seen sitting idly inside large cages. But federal officials have forbidden reporters from interviewing children inside the facilities during the few visits they’ve allowed the press.

Now, recently deported minors who were kept in detention in the US are talking about their experience.

Víctor, 14, said that when he was detained, the agent said he wanted to let him go but his colleagues were watching. “I have a lot of appreciation for Mexicans,” Víctor recalled the agent saying. The boy, from the State of Mexico, said he got three meals a day and was able to make a call, to his aunt, though it did not go through. Víctor was there for two days and two nights before being deported to Reynosa, a high-crime city across the border from Hidalgo, Texas. (The boys’ surnames have all been withheld out of fear for their safety.)

Others had a far more hostile experience.