Rachel Maddow breaks down in tears over Trump’s ‘tender age’ shelters for babies and young children separated from parents

 

On Tuesday night, the eponymous host of Rachel Maddow Show became overcome with emotion as she tried to announce a shocking update to Trump’s controversial immigration policy. After reading a story from the Associated Press, called “Youngest Migrants Held in ‘Tender Age’ Shelters.” Maddow struggled with finding the words to report the horrifying news with her MSNBC viewers.

“The AP has just broken some new news. This has just come out from the Associated Press, this is incredible,” she began.

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“Trump administration officials have been sending babies and other young children—,” Maddow said before stopping for a brief pause to gather herself.

“Hold on… to at least three…”

“Put up the graphic of this,” she asked but was soon overcome with emotions.

“I think I’m gonna have to hand this off,” she said as Lawrence O’Donnell took over.

Maddow apologized on Twitter, but truly everyone felt her sentiment. She tweeted out the script of text she was trying to report.

“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:

“Trump administration officials have been sending babies and other young children forcibly separated from their parents to at least three “tender age” shelters in South Texas… Lawyers and medical providers who have visited the “tender age” shelters described play rooms of crying preschool-age children in crisis… “Decades after the nation’s child welfare system ended the use of orphanages over concerns about the lasting trauma to children, the administration is standing up new institutions to hold Central American toddlers that the government separated from their parents…”

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The Trump administration announced a “zero tolerance” policy that seeks to criminally charge those who cross (or attempt to cross) the U.S. border without documentation.

As a result of that policy being enforced, nearly 2,000 migrant children have been separated from their detained parents and are being held in “temporary shelters,” which many critics have been quite accurately referred to as “prison camps.”

“The thought that they are going to be putting such little kids in an institutional setting? I mean it is hard for me to even wrap my mind around it,” said Kay Bellor, vice president for programs at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.

“Toddlers are being detained.”

Just call it the United States of Disgrace.

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