A Look at the Migrant Crisis: Thousands of Kids Held in Concrete Cells

Young boys sleep in a holding cell where hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed and held at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Nogales Placement Center on Wednesday, June 18, 2014, in Nogales, Ariz. CPB provided media tours Wednesday of two locations in Brownsville, Texas, and Nogales, that have been central to processing the more than 47,000 unaccompanied children who have entered the country illegally since Oct. 1. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, Pool)

PHOENIX — The media has gotten a first hand look at the migrant crisis. 

Border Patrol stations like the ones in Brownsville and Nogales, both in Arizona, were not meant for long-term custody. Immigrants are supposed to wait there until they are processed and taken to detention centers.

However, the overwhelming flow of unaccompanied minors arriving is more than what the U.S. government can handle.

According to Fox News Latino, the sights from Wednesday tours of crowded Border Patrol stations in South Texas and Arizona involved children’s faces pressed against glass, hundreds of young boys and girls covered with aluminum foil-like blankets next to chain link fences topped with barbed wire, and a pungent smell that comes from people being in closed spaces.

Thousands of immigrants are being held in these conditions before they are transferred to other shelters around the country.

The children are mostly from Central America.

They pose a particular challenge because the law requires Customs and Border Protection to transfer them to the Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours. That agency’s network of some 100 shelters around the country has been over capacity for months and is now caring for more than 7,600 children.

Children began backing up in already overcrowded Border Patrol stations. Eventually, the Border Patrol began flying them to Arizona, where it set up a massive processing center in the border city of Nogales, where reporters were also granted access on Wednesday. From there, the children are sent to private shelters or temporary housing at barracks on military bases in California, Texas and Oklahoma.

For the full story, visit Fox News Latinos