Christine has also stepped in to help newer foster parents who are struggling to support young migrant children who have been separated from their parents and who show more severe symptoms of trauma than older children who come alone.

Daniela, a Honduran girl who was separated from her father, went completely numb when she was told that her father had been deported while she was at Bethany's office with a support team of counselors and her foster mother.

“Her little body got stiff," Christine said. "She’s 5 years old and she wouldn’t eat. They had trouble taking her clothing off when it was time to take a bath. She couldn’t go in to bed, she just stood there."

Daniela, who has been coming to Christine's house a few hours each day for support, cried every day for two weeks in the morning and after school.

“It threw her big time when she realized she was the only one here," Christine said. "Even if they don’t have a total concept of country, they know that their parent isn’t here anymore."

Christine said the children are usually in her care for a few months. Often their parents are deported first, but with a backlog of immigration cases, it can take much longer for the children’s cases to be resolved.

Trump has previously falsely blamed Democrats and an unspecified “horrible law” for his administration's policy of prosecuting all unauthorized border crossers, which leads to family separations.

Trump said Tuesday that “crippling loopholes” in the immigration system were endangering children.

“Child smugglers exploit the loopholes and they gain illegal entry in the United States, putting countless children in danger on the perilous trek to the United States,” he said.

Trump said Tuesday that he had only two policy options: arrest all adults who cross the border illegally, separating them from their children, or release the families together with ankle monitors, which he said amounted to having open borders.

Under the Obama administration, children were usually allowed to stay with their parents in shelters while awaiting legal proceedings and eventually were released under close supervision, such as the ankle monitoring.

Trump administration officials have called on members of Congress who have spoken out against the family separations to change immigration laws. But the detention of children apart from their parents is a result of Sessions' new policy, and there is no law that requires family separation, so congressional action is not necessary to stop it.