From the New York Times, I'm Michael Babaro. This is the Daily.

Today, federal courts have ruled that once inside the U.S., migrant children must be housed in safe and sanitary conditions.

So what explains the conditions at a border patrol station in Clint, Texas?

It's Monday, July 1st.

Caitlin, tell us how you first heard about this detention center in Clint, Texas.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from a source, an immigration lawyer who I work with, who told me that she and a group of her colleagues were going to a facility in Texas, where hundreds of immigrant children were being housed, and she was going to interview the kids about the conditions there.

So immediately my ears per cut because these facilities almost no one can get in. Journalists are often turned away. Lawmakers are turned away. It's really hard to get access and figure out what it actually looks like on the inside.

So of course, I say, okay, well, let's keep talking. And can you let me know what you find when you get there? But she said no. She said, the interviews I'm about to do are confidential. I'm not going to be able to share with you what I see.

Caitlin Dickerson covers immigration for the times fast forward a few days. And she and the lawyers that she traveled to Texas with were so horrified by what they found in Texas that they changed their minds.

They decided to violate intentionally an agreement to keep the interviews they done confidential. They didn't disclose the personal details of anybody they talked to, but they summarized for us what the children said.

And what exactly did this lawyer see that made her feel compelled to violate this agreement and talk to you.

So just to give you a little background, this is somebody who's been working in immigration detention for 12 years. She regularly represents victims of torture and abuse people who are seeking asylum. She's seen a lot as what I'm saying.

And she said this was the worst detention facility she'd ever seen in her career. She said there was a stench. Everybody being housed there was a minor.

The kids that she interviewed 60 in total among the group. They were still wearing the same clothes they had on when they'd crossed the border. And some of them had crossed the border weeks earlier.

So she actually saw kids who had shirts that were stained with mucus and with vomit and teenage mothers who had breast milk, crushed it on to their shirts. She saw toddlers who hadn't been potty trained, but they weren't put in diapers.

So they were going to the bathroom in their pants. The children said they had no access to soap, even to wash their hands after they use the bathrooms.

They were also hungry. Every single child they interviewed said they weren't getting enough to eat. So regardless of their age and the youngest child they talked to was five months old.

The oldest was 17. They were all getting the same three small meals a day. And so a lot of kids said they were waking up in the middle of the night with hunger pains.

They were sleeping on concrete floors at night and the lights were being left on 24 seven. So they were sleep deprived to the other thing they saw was children as young as eight years old taking care of infants. They didn't know.

So there are a lot of kids, a lot of babies in this facility. Some of them are there with their teenage mothers, but others were separated from adults who they crossed the border with and delivered to this facility by themselves.

So one of the children they talked to described a situation where a guard came into a room with a two-year-old baby and said who wants to take care of this baby?

How did these kids end up in this facility? Why are they there?

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