大象传媒

Last weekend an 11 month old baby was found by US border patrol agents with a group of children on the Mexico-US border. The baby was in the care of 4 other youngsters all under the age of 7 years old. Scrawled on its nappy was a telephone number for relatives inside the US.

It's just one of a number of cases in recent months when children have been found alone in difficult conditions on the border - apparently abandoned by smugglers or parents who want to increase their chance of being given asylum.

So once children like these enter the US, what happens to them?

Olivia Pena from the Young Centre in Texas runs a team of social workers and lawyers who work inside child detention centres, and accompany the children when they go to court. They are among the very few people allowed inside such facilities.

"With time they open up... they start telling you about their struggle: how they can't sleep at night, how they keep thinking about their families back home, their families here, how they have nightmares, how they worry about what's going to happen next."

(Photo: A girl steps over other children in a pod in the Donna Department of Homeland Security holding facility. Credit: AFP)

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