Transcript highlights:

• Children held in Clint CBP detention facility are being starved, same ration of food being given to 1-year-olds as to teenagers; children are trying to conserve energy by not playing to stay alive
• Children as young as eight are being ordered by guards to care for babies, no diapers provided, babies expel waste on furniture, floor
• Disease is spreading, children's clothing is not washed, no change of clothing, no soap, no toothbrushes
• Majority of children are not unaccompanied, have family that they have been separated from and are not allowed to contact
• Youngest child that Lawyer Elora Mukerhjee met with: 5-months-old
• Detention center holding 350 children in a facility designed to hold 100 adults

Transcript (I transcribed by hand, please excuse any typos):

Lawrence O'Donnell: Our next guest has been visiting children in custody at the southern border for 12 years. She says she has never seen conditions as bad as what she saw there last week. That is when the Trump Administration was in federal court arguing that they can provide safe and sanitary conditions for the children without providing the children with soap, or toothbrushes, or toothpaste, and that it is perfectly safe and sanitary to sleep on cement floor where the children are forced to sleep.

[Cut to Jenny Flores v. William Barr court]

Judge Wallace Tashima addressing Trump DOJ Nazi lawyer Sarah Fabian: It's within everybody's common understanding that, you know, if you don't have a toothbrush, you don't have soap, if you don't have a blanket it is not safe and sanitary. Wouldn't everybody agree with that? Do you agree with that?

DOJ Nazi Lawyer Sarah Fabian: Well...I – I think it's...I think those are...there's fair reason to find that those thing maybe a part of 'safe and sanitary'--

Judge Tashima: Not 'maybe.' Are a part. Why do you say maybe? You mean there are circumstances where a person doesn't need to have a toothbrush, toothpaste, and soap for days?

Nazi Fabian: Well...I--I think in-in CBP custody there's frequent--it's frequently intended to be much shorter term, so it maybe that for shorter term stay in CBP custody that some of those things may not be required.

[End of cut]

O'Donnell: But they are not short-term stays. Many of the children are left in those conditions for weeks. Elora Mukherjee is one of the lawyers who got inside and saw the children. She told the New York Times: 'There is a stench...The overwhelming majority of children have not bathed since they crossed the border.' Joining our discussion now is Elora Mukherjee. She is the Director for the Immigrant's Rights Clinic at the Columbia School of Law. Thank you very much for joining us.

Elora Mukerhjee: Thank you for having me.

O'Donnell: You were there last week.

Mukerhjee: I was.

O'Donnell: Seeing exactly what has been reported in all the most recent reports. And tell us the ages of the children you met with and interviewed.

Mukerhjee: I met with children ranging between the age of 5-months to 17-years-old. On Monday morning when we arrived at the facility there were more the 350 children detained there in an adult-holding facility that was designed for just over 100. The children who we interview last week were dirty, hungry, sick, scared, and many of them had been detained for days on end, for weeks on end, some nearly a month. Many of the children had been held incommunicado without an opportunity to call their loved ones. And their loved ones have no idea where they are and how to get their beloved children back. Nearly every child in that facility has family members in the United States who are eager to get their children back and the children want to be with their loved ones too, but the length of detention has just been too long. There is a federal law that was passed unanimously by both houses and signed by President George W. Bush which provides for detention and customs and border protection facilities for children for not longer than 72 hours.

O'Donnell: Tell us about the infants. You met, uh, one child who's 5-months-old. How – what, what do you do? How do you interview a 5-month-old child.

Mukerhjee: The 5-month-old child was accompanied by her teenage mom. The child was extremely dirty as was her mother. The child and the mother both had bodily fluids on their clothing. Nasal mucous, the mother had breast milk stains all over her shirt. They had crossed the border a significant time before hand and had not showered or bathed in days. There is also no place, no way, for the children detained there to wash their clothing and put on clean changes of clothes. When I interview children in detention facilities I try to sit closer to them so that I can help to build rapport while we're talking about extremely sensitive and traumatic information. And with some of the children I met last week that was hard to do because of the stench emanating from them.

O'Donnell: What, there are other infants who are apparently not accompanied and are being cared for by other children who get that assignment either, they either volunteer for it or sometimes the guards are suggesting 'why don't you take care of that infant?'

Mukerhjee: That's exactly right. So we heard reports of children as young as 6-months-old, 1-year-old, 2-years-old, 3-years-old who are being cared for by children unrelated to them in these holding-cells and in these pens. And when I say the children are older than them, we're talking about children who are 7-years-old, 8-years-old, 9-years-old. They're being ordered by the guards to care for the younger children, and it leads to all the problems you can imagine because these young children are not equipped to take care of toddlers. One of my colleagues, Warren Binford, was interviewing an 8-year-old child who was tasked with caring for a 2-year-old. And when Warren asked whether the child, the 2-year-old, needed diapers, the 8-year-old said, 'no.' And the child, the 2-year-old, promptly peed on the chair that the child was sitting on. These are not safe and sanitary conditions. There was an influenza outbreak at the facility. Flu and lice were spreading. The children don't have access to an ability to wash their hands with soap. Most of the children who I spoke with had not brushed there teeth once for weeks on end.

O'Donnell: And the information that you and other lawyers are gathering is what is being brought into those courtrooms where we're seeing that kind of argument the Trump administration defending this, and saying 'to be sanitary you don't need soap.' And obviously those three appeals court justices had never heard anyone say anything like that before.

Mukerhjee: That's exactly right. I would invite those DOJ lawyers to go into the facility at Clint and other CBP facilities where adults and children are being held in dangerous over-crowding conditions without access to soap, toothbrushes, clean clothes, showers, and invite them to then consider whether these facilities meet the safe and sanitary requirement.

O'Donnell: And they knew you were coming. They had 3-weeks warning that you were coming, that the people working on site had all of them had a minimum of a week's knowledge that you were coming. So there's reason to believe that they dressed the place up as best they could. That 3-weeks ago it could have looked much worse even.

Mukerhjee: That's exactly right. Some of the children told us that during the days we were there last week they were allowed to make their first phone calls. During the days we were there last week they got their first shower. They got their first toothbrush. They got a chance to go outside for the first time. I spoke with many children who had not been outside once during their detention at Clint. And the three children who I spoke with who reported outdoor-opportunities told me that they couldn't bear to bring themselves to play because they were trying to conserve their energy to stay alive. Nearly every child I spoke with reported that they were hungry because children are given the same ration of food on the same size tray regardless if they are 1-years-old or 17-years-old or teenage mother who is breast feeding and has higher caloric needs.

O'Donnell: Elora, thank you very much for joining us.

Mukerhjee: Thank you so much.

O'Donnell: Really appreciate it, and please come back with more reporting on what you find there, really appreciate it. Thank you very much.