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Since the Trump administration implemented a “zero-tolerance” immigration policy at the U.S.-Mexico border, thousands of children have been removed from their families and held in detention centres.
Now, a recording obtained by ProPublica has captured the trauma of the children in custody. In the eight-minute audio clip, 10 Central American children can be heard crying hysterically and screaming “Mami” and “Papa.”
At points, it sounds as though the kids are crying so hard they can barely breathe. A six-year-old girl from El Salvador sobs, “At least can I go with my aunt? I want my aunt to come so she can take me to her house. I have her number.”
When ProPublica called the number the little girl gave, her aunt told them getting her niece’s desperate call was the hardest moment of her life. “Imagine getting a call from your six-year-old niece. She’s crying and begging me to go get her. She says, ‘I promise I’ll behave, but please get me out of here. I’m all alone,’” reveals the aunt, as reported by The Cut.
It is excruciating to listen to.
The recording comes after a photo of a migrant child crying at the border went viral. The shot, captured by John Moore, shows a two-year-old girl screaming as a U.S. border agent searches her mother.
The heart-wrenching photo has become a symbol for Trump’s immigration policy, which has been widely condemned as “cruel” and “immoral.”
Listening to the desperate sounds of children begging for their parents, the policy could also be called “brutal,” “inhumane” and “evil.”
For more information on the growing uproar over the Trump administration’s policy, click here.
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