US Rep. Joaquin Castro recalled being haunted when he walked into an “infant’s room” at Casa Presidente, a south Texas facility housing children separated from their families at the border, on Monday.

The youngest of the four children in the room was 8-month-old Roger, who had been in the shelter in Brownsville — located right on the US–Mexico border — for more than a month. Leah, a 1-year-old girl who had been separated from her mother and grandmother at the border, was also there.

"It's haunting because you walk into a room with several babies, and their parents are nowhere to be found,” Castro, a Democrat from Texas, told BuzzFeed News on Wednesday. “And being a parent of a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old, I know how devastating that must be for the child and the parent."

Casa Presidente houses children from the ages of “0 to 12,” Castro said. The kids were made to wake up at 6 a.m. on weekdays and 7 a.m. on weekends.

“They have a very regimented daily routine. It’s not a military school, so that’s kind of odd,” he added.

A lot of the children were dressed in the same kind of clothes and shoes that were bought in bulk, Castro said, and some of the infants were wearing the same patterned shirt. The walls of the “spartan” shelter were brightened up with children’s decorations.



Castro recalled seeing rows and rows of phones for children to communicate with their families, but no one was using them.

Three young women were caring for the infants, most of whom were boys. Castro said he recalled seeing only one or two girls at the shelter, which did not have the cages that children were kept in at immigration processing centers.

“It was just heartbreaking. They look at you with big eyes,” US Rep. Ben Ray Luján, a Democrat from New Mexico who was part of the group of lawmakers visiting Casa Presidente, told San Antonio Express-News.

The Trump’s administration's "zero tolerance" policy for migrants crossing the border illegally has resulted in more than 2,300 children being separated from their families since May. On Wednesday, Trump signed a hurriedly drafted executive order addressing the issue, but it was not immediately clear what it will do to halt border separations in the short-term. Also, already-separated families will not be reunited.

Among these separated children are babies, toddlers, and children below the age of 13, who have been taken away from their parents and placed in what the administration has referred to as “tender age” shelters.

However, there is confusion among federal agencies about how to define “tender age” children. During a press briefing on Tuesday, a Customs and Border Patrol official said it included children under the age of five, while a Department of Health and Human Services official defined it as children under the age of 13. A CBP spokesperson later confirmed their definition to BuzzFeed News, but did not address the confusion. HHS did not respond to a request for comment.