A breast-feeding baby was taken from her mother's arms at a Texas detention center and the mother was handcuffed for resisting, the woman's attorney says.

The attorney, Natalia Cornelio, told CNN the woman from Honduras sobbed Tuesday as she recounted how her daughter was taken from her. The mother is awaiting prosecution for entering the United States illegally.

"The government is essentially torturing people by doing this," said Cornelio, who is with the Texas Civil Rights Project.

The Trump administration is prosecuting people who illegally cross the border and in May began separating children from their parents. Since then, about 500 children have been separated from their parents, said Miguel A. Nogueras, an assistant federal public defender in McAllen. He said the numbers were based on another public defender's unofficial count.

Some parents are being told, " 'We're going to separate your kids so they can bathe.' And that's not true," Nogueras said.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department's Southern District of Texas declined to comment about how many children had been separated from their parents or the how they were separated.

Cornelio said the Civil Rights Project is interviewing immigrants who were separated from their children while they awaited prosecution for entering the country illegally.

"All the women would start crying and would need to take a couple of minutes before being able to continue talking about it," Cornelio said.

CNN did not report further details about the baby and her mother. It was not clear when the baby was taken from her mother.