Ryan Parry In Nogales, Arizona - The shocking photos show child immigrants crammed inside cages and tiny rooms at a US Government border facility - further highlighting the humanitarian crisis along America's border with Mexico.
The images were taken at a holding centre in Texas which can no longer accommodate large numbers of children and mothers travelling alone with their kids, forcing the federal government to open more facilities.
Congressman Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat, took the photos on his camera phone to highlight the terrible conditions children are being kept in. In one snap, taken during a tour of the Customs and Border Protection facility in South Texas, a large group of immigrants are locked in a wire mesh cage. Up to 40 people a time - most appearing dirty and dejected - can be seen in filling rooms only large enough for ten.
This comes as the MailOnline learns that overworked border patrol officers struggling to cope with the huge influx are separating diseased child immigrants with make-shift quarantine methods - yellow evidence tape.
Don Ray, the Executive Director of the Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition, said border guards were simply running a strip of tape down the centre of the detention facility to separate the children. ‘The diseased kids sit on one side and the healthy children on the other,’ he said. 'Hardly the best way to go about things'.
Mr Ray went on to describe the relocation of immigrants as akin to the displacement of people following Hurricane Katrina. 'You can’t have an influx of people like that without having an impact,’ he said.
More than 400 children a day are flooding illegally in to the US and the tide of border crossings by unaccompanied children mostly from Central America is not expected to end anytime soon.
It emerged that despite the influx Vice President Joe Biden believes more, not fewer, immigrants should come to America. Speaking to a National Association of Manufacturers’ crowd this week he called for a 'constant, unrelenting stream' of new immigrants - 'not dribbling (but) significant flows,' to bolster the national economy, The Hill reported. ‘We need it badly from a purely - purely economic point of view,’ Mr Biden said, The Hill reported. Later, on Twitter, he wrote: ‘The final thing we need to do together is pass immigration reform … We need it badly. -VP at manufacturing summit.'
His comments come as border patrol agents are appealing to the federal government to help with the thousands of illegal children pouring across the border.
On Thursday, the MailOnline saw lines of children being corralled by staff at a makeshift border patrol warehouse in Nogales, Arizona being used as a central hub to process the flood of immigrants.
There were serious concerns for the health of the 1,100 children being held at the Nogales facility after MailOnline learned paramedics were called out three times in a day. We witnessed a teenage girl being wheeled out of the make-shift detention warehouse on a stretcher and loaded in to a Nogales Fire Department ambulance.
A spokesperson for the Nogales FD said: 'We were dispatched to a 911 call at the Border Patrol station to attend to a female minor who was feeling sick.
'Depending on the evaluation of the paramedic we will make a decision as to whether the patient will require a higher level of medical care. If so we will transport the patient to a local medical hospital.'The spokesperson confirmed that the call out was their third of the day to the Border Patrol facility and the eighth since June 1.
More than 160,000 immigrants have been apprehended in Texas' Valley sector in the first eight months of this fiscal year, eclipsing the total for all of last year. This figure includes more than 33,000 unaccompanied children. It’s believed as many as 90,000 unaccompanied children will cross the Mexican border illegally this year in total - up from an average 6,500 over years past. As many as 1,100 children are currently at the holding centre in Nogales.
The children are sleeping in plastic cots but about 2,000 mattresses have reportedly been ordered, and medical supplies and other basics are being shipped.
Conditions are slowly improving, with shower facilities being added and donations of clothing being collected for the children.
Vendors are being contracted to provide the children with nutritional meals, while the Federal Emergency Management Agency will provide counselling and recreational activities.
Unaccompanied children and partial families from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala make up the majority of those crossing the border.–Daily Mail