MSNBC host Rachel Maddow broke down in tears on-air while reporting breaking news that the Trump administration has been operating ‘tender age’ shelters for immigrant babies and toddlers forcibly separated from their parents.
Maddow teared up on Tuesday night near the end of her program as she read a report from the Associated Press that revealed young children were being held in three facilities in Texas.
She repeatedly tried to read a description of the shelters but was forced to abruptly end her show minutes earlier then planned.
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow broke down in tears while reporting news that the Trump administration has been operating ‘tender ‘age’ shelters for immigrant babies and toddlers
‘This is incredible… I think I’m going to have to hand this off, sorry,’ an emotional Maddow said as she passed the news to the next host Lawrence O’Donnell.
Maddow took to Twitter after the show to apologize and share the script she was meant to have read.
‘Ugh, I’m sorry. If nothing else, it is my job to actually be able to speak while I’m on TV. What I was trying to do – when I suddenly couldn’t say/do anything – was read this lede…,’ she said.
“If nothing else, it is my job to actually be able to speak while I’m on TV. I apologize for losing it there for a moment. Not the way I intended that to go, not by a mile.”
The AP reported that Trump administration officials have been sending babies and other young children forcibly separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border to at least three “tender age” shelters in South Texas.
Maddow took to Twitter after the show to apologize and share the script she was meant to have read
Maddow repeatedly tried to read a description of the shelters but was forced to abruptly end her show minutes earlier then planned
Lawyers and medical providers who have visited the Rio Grande Valley shelters described play rooms of crying preschool-age children in crisis.
The government also plans to open a fourth shelter to house hundreds of young migrant children in Houston.
The three centers – in Combes, Raymondville and Brownsville – have been rapidly repurposed to serve needs of children including some under 5.
The fourth center would house up to 240 children in a warehouse previously used for people displaced by Hurricane Harvey, Mayor Sylvester Turner said.
Turner said he met with officials from Austin-based Southwest Key Programs, the contractor that operates some of the child shelters, to ask them to reconsider their plans.
The AP reported that Trump administration officials have been sending babies and other young children forcibly separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border to at least three “tender age” shelters in South Texas
Lawyers and medical providers who have visited the Rio Grande Valley shelters described play rooms of crying preschool-age children in crisis
On a practical level, the zero tolerance policy has overwhelmed the federal agency charged with caring for the new influx of children who tend to be much younger than teens who typically have been traveling to the U.S. alone. Indeed some recent detainees are infants, taken from their mothers.
Doctors and lawyers who have visited the shelters said the facilities were fine, clean and safe, but the kids – who have no idea where their parents are – were hysterical, crying and acting out.
Since the White House announced its zero tolerance policy in early May, more than 2,300 children have been taken from their parents at the US-Mexico border, resulting in a new influx of young children requiring government care.
The government has faced withering critiques over images of some of the children in cages inside US Border Patrol processing stations.