At times in this era, we've been faced with questions that get to the very core of what this nation is and what it pretends to be. Is it one that bans people of a certain faith from coming here? Is it one that slashes taxes on the rich and corporations while gutting services for the least advantaged? Is it one that tears up international agreements on a whim, believing power is its own justification? And now, is it one that tears kids away from their parents and throws them in a facility similar to a jail?

That last question was dragged to the forefront earlier this month, when Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon tried to visit one of the detention facilities for migrant minors near our southern border and was denied entry. The Democrat subsequently was allowed in to tour a facility in Brownsville, Texas—a converted Wal-Mart—and described it as a "dog kennel." But Merkley was not exactly an objective observer, and there was a crying need for journalists to have access and report what they saw.

We got that last night from NBC's Jacob Soboroff:

This content is imported from Third party. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

The most telling detail is that Soboroff likens the facility to the jails he's been to, not a group or foster home. The kids, some as young as ten, are kept inside 22 hours a day. They get one unstructured hour in the fresh air. Lights are out at 9 p.m. every night.

These kids are "incarcerated," although, according to Soboroff's reporting, officials there say they've never had an MS-13 gang member. The rooms are overcrowded, and many boys share a small space with four others. The cafeteria is "not a school cafeteria," Soboroff said. "Hundreds called to eat at a time on rotating shifts." The vibe of the place is not lost on the people that work there, and certainly not on the kids:

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Moments after we walked in a shelter employee asked us to smile at hundreds of detained migrant kids in line for a meal because “they feel like animals in a cage being looked at.” — Jacob Soboroff (@jacobsoboroff) June 13, 2018

Oh, and there's this:

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Just finished tour, don’t even know where to start.



One of the first things you notice when you walk into the shelter — no joke — a mural of Trump with the quote “sometimes losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.”



Presidential murals everywhere. But that one is 1st. — Jacob Soboroff (@jacobsoboroff) June 13, 2018

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Starting to get some handout photos from our tour with @HHSGov.



Here’s the Trump mural I mentioned to @chrislhayes inside the shelter for incarcerated child migrants.



Also their beds and the towels they shower with. pic.twitter.com/EPEQ1VGAAF — Jacob Soboroff (@jacobsoboroff) June 14, 2018

Life lessons from the Supreme Leader—whose policies, in some cases, put these kids here.

To that point, most of the nearly 1,500 boys in the facility came to the border unaccompanied, often fleeing gang violence in places like Honduras. This problem first reached national attention under the Obama administration, which began housing unaccompanied minors in facilities like this before trying to find them sponsor homes—preferably with relatives. Also, the facility Soboroff visited is a licensed nonprofit with professional care workers, although there's been controversy over how financially lucrative this business can be for the nonprofit, Southwest Key, and its executives. It's also important to note the tour of this facility was undeniably stage-managed, and that all the photos we're seeing were taken and released by the Department of Health and Human Services—not exactly a disinterested party.

The problem now is that the new Trump administration "zero-tolerance" policy, where all migrants are prosecuted rather than simply sent back, means more and more children are being separated from their parents. That has contributed to the overcrowding, both in facilities like Brownsville and in the group homes where some kids would be placed. The Trump administration's plan to deal with this is to build "tent cities" on federal and military property, where there would be no licenses necessary and few professional caregivers.

Already, we've heard stories like this one, from CNN, about the horrors of tearing a child away from her mother at the border:

The undocumented immigrant from Honduras sobbed as she told an attorney Tuesday how federal authorities took her daughter while she breastfed the child in a detention center, where she was awaiting prosecution for entering the country illegally.

When the woman resisted, she was handcuffed, Natalia Cornelio, the attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, recalled from her interview with the woman, who had been detained under the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy to refer anyone caught crossing the border illegally for federal prosecution.

That same CNN report holds that some 500 children have already been separated from their parents. The numbers, and stories of horror, will only grow. And now it looks like we will house those children, to whom we have done possibly the most traumatizing thing possible, in tent camps on military bases and remote federal properties. That last part ought to sound familiar in the worst of ways.

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Here are some photos of the boys in the cafeteria.



This is not a school cafeteria.



Hundreds called to eat at a time on rotating shifts.



When I told @chrislhayes it felt like a prison or jail, I was thinking about this. pic.twitter.com/feZI46SPAc — Jacob Soboroff (@jacobsoboroff) June 14, 2018

Once again, we're faced with a fundamental question about the moral character of the nation. Is the United States a place where official government policy dictates the children of migrants, many of whom come here seeking asylum to escape the chaos and violence ravaging their home countries, must be torn from their parents' arms and sent to a detention facility that resembles a jail?

Last night, hundreds of children lay in their tiny beds in a cramped room in a giant warehouse. They saw the sun and the fresh air for just two hours that day. It may have been some time since they last spoke to their parents, and they had no idea when or if they'd see them again. They don't know how long they'll be there, or where they'll be sent when they're allowed to leave. They are surrounded by strangers, in a strange country where they do not speak the language and they may not have even wanted to go themselves. And the United States—its government and, we must admit to ourselves, its citizens—ensured that all this happened.

There are new stains on the moral fabric of this nation every day. You have to wonder when the quilt will simply have changed color permanently.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io