"Trump administration officials have been sending babies and other young children forcibly separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border to at least three 'tender age' shelters in South Texas," The Associated Press reported Tuesday night, and "the government also plans to open a fourth shelter to house hundreds of young migrant children in Houston, where city leaders denounced the move Tuesday." The Houston facility would "house up to 240 children in a warehouse previously used for people displaced by Hurricane Harvey," AP says, continuing:

Lawyers and medical providers who have visited the Rio Grande Valley shelters described play rooms of crying preschool-age children in crisis. ... Decades after the nation's child welfare system ended the use of orphanages over concerns about the lasting trauma to children, the administration is standing up new institutions to hold Central American toddlers that the government separated from their parents. [The Associated Press]

On MSNBC Tuesday night, host Rachel Maddow broke down in tears trying to read the article.

Rachel Maddow breaking down on live television is all of us. pic.twitter.com/KBa9ewcG48 — Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) June 20, 2018

Later on MSNBC, Lawrence O'Donnell spoke with immigrant advocates and Catholic officials in South Texas, who described the detention facilities as "jails" and explained the challenges ahead for the young children reclassified as "unaccompanied alien children” after they are taken from their parents — as 2,342 have been since May, federal officials said Tuesday.

Health and Human Services official Steven Wagner defended the "specialized facilities that are devoted to providing care to children with special needs and tender age children," and AP says "doctors and lawyers who have visited the shelters said the facilities were fine, clean, and safe, but the kids — who have no idea where their parents are — were hysterical, crying and acting out." Read more at The Associated Press. Peter Weber