very orderly, very structured. every child inside has a badge around their neck that has a barcode and when they enter and exit any building on the premises, whether that s the dining hall or the school classrooms or the recreation areas, they are scanned by personnel inside to now exactly where every child is at every time. they are also given sort of uniforms, jeans and t-shirts so they re all dressed alike and they all march in orderly lines. so it is a very organized, very structured facility. there are more than 1100 children inside this facility. we re sold 70 of them have been separated from their parents at the border. the rest came across the border unaccompanied. in terms of cleanliness and being hospital able, it appears this is a clean and safe facilities. dorm rooms, each room houses 12 children, 12 children in one dorm room that share one bathroom and that is where they sleep at night.
and unusual, an unannounced visit but one that the first lady clearly wanted to get out to the world, bringing our kate bennett and our camera crew and our live equipment to show her first stop at a detention center in texas, in mcallen, texas. she had these discussions. i want to talk about this with our panel, with the federal and local officials who are running this detention center, trying to get information. one thing that was noteworthy is it sounds like the majority of the children who are there came unaccompanied, about 10%. there are 60 kids, so about five or six, were separated from their families. that s the experience that she has and she s about to get when she actually tours, which we re not seeing quite yet. it looks like there is a shot of her starting her tour. you know what, let s listen in to this.
foremost, the imagery and the import of what we just saw and the fact the first lady was and is there. it s important. most of the children there, as you noted, are not the children that were taken from their parents. they re children that have come unaccompanied across the border. we heard a lot about this, actually, during the obama administration and he received lots of criticism for how he dealt with that crisis a couple years ago. yes, it s important that she s taking the press through. it s important that she s drawing attention to this. that said, that briefing was a little bit like everything is fine. the kids come in here, they re a little upset and then they relax, i think is what one of the officials there said. we ve read accounts that that is not the case, especially with these young children who come in and do not calm down, are cat
catatonic. there could be permanent damage to what has already occurred with them. forgive me for looking at it with a bit of a skeptical eye. and these are 60 children but the age range is 5 to 17. so this is not the tender age facility of one of themve been hearing about and talking so much about. these are kids, presumably, who can community unlike some of the babies who can t and just want to be held and be held by their parents and can t. most of the kids here did strike the border unaccompanied. this is a hand-picked place to give the government an impression of what these facilities are like. we don t know what they re like. there are some in michigan, there s some in south carolina, some in texas as well. they re run by different sorts of people, and that s what this highlighted to me, again, with how little we know and how selective the government has
deterrent, was that a part of the calculation and the conversation that you had? no amount of deterrent will stop people from fleeing a burning building and that s what they re doing in central, in, they re fleeing violence, and poverty and the push factors that are driving america in the first place and we did do a matter of deterrence in 2013 when we saw an influx of kids crossing the border unaccompanied. we put families in detention, in family residential centers while they went through their immigration proceedings and we didn t separate them. so what the trump administration isn t doing that we did is also get out the message in central america using the state department and all of our resources that is a dangerous journey that you will not be allowed to stay here. that you will be put in holding centers while you go through your immigration proceedings, and what we also did was provide aid to central america. you re not going to stop