Harrowing audio reveals desperate sobbing of children separated from their parents at US immigration centres

Harrowing audio reveals the desperate sobbing of children who have been separated from their parents in US immigration centres.

The children can be heard wailing as they call out for their parents at a US Customs and Border Protection facility.

The video comes amid fury at images showing the children, some toddlers, being held at immigration centres while their parents await prosecution for crossing the US border under President Donald Trump’s new “zero-tolerance” immigration policy.

According to ProPublica, which obtained the audio, the children are thought to be aged between four and 10. It is thought that they had been at the detention centre for 24 hours.

A border guard can be heard coldly telling the distraught children: “Well, we have an orchestra here.”

Before joking: “What’s missing is a conductor.”

It is thought that more than 2,300 children have been separated from their parents since April with over 100 of those under the age of 4.

Some are living in tents at a border facility in Texas. Photos show the interior of the centre for children.

President Trump has been forced to defend the “zero-tolerance” policy on immigration.

Mr Trump said the US would not become a “refugee holding facility”, comparing the potential outcome of a policy shift to “what’s happening in Europe.”

“The United States will not be a migrant camp, and it will not be a refugee holding facility,” he said.

“You can look at what’s happening in Europe and in other places, we cannot allow that to happen. Not on my watch.”

Melania Trump weighed in on the policy in a statement that said: “Mrs Trump hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform.”

On Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Kirsjen Nielsen said that the Department of Homeland Security is doing its job in enforcing the policy.

She said: “We have high standards. We give them meals and we give them education and we give them medical care. There are videos, there are TVs. I visited the detention centres myself.

“This is not a controversial idea.”