Inside a ‘tender age’ shelter for young immigrants.

The shelters were intended for children under the age of 12, referred to as “tender age” detainees, who are entering the detention system in ever-larger numbers under the Trump administration’s practice of separating children from parents who enter the country illegally.

Many are toddlers and babies and require special care, and their numbers have been rising since last month, when the government enforced a “zero tolerance” policy on people crossing the border. Since then, estimates suggest that more than 2,400 children under the age of 12 have been separated from their parents.

But on Wednesday, faced with the intense criticism over the shelters and the separation of families, President Donald Trump retreated, signing an executive order that would detain parents and children together. For now, it seems the separations will stop, but it remains unclear what will happen going forward. A Health and Human Services official said that children already separated will not be immediately reunited with their parents while the adults remain in custody during their immigration proceedings..

The executive order came just hours after reports that three centers in southern Texas — in Brownsville, Combes and Raymondville — were being outfitted to accommodate younger children.

A person inside a shelter in Brownsville, Texas, took a series of pictures and supplied them to the New York Times. The facility, which houses babies and toddlers, is operated by Southwest Key Programs, the same nonprofit group that operates a shelter at a former Walmart.

One image showed a toddler girl who is about 12 months old, playing on a colorful mat decorated with the letters of the alphabet and drawings of animals. The workers and others standing around the little girl wear blue hospital-style bootees to keep the wooden floor clean.

The girl was separated from her relatives for about a month as part of the family-separation policy, according to the person who took the photo, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to release an image.

Rep. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., toured the Brownsville center Monday with other Democratic lawmakers. The delegation said 80 migrant children were in the shelter, 40 of whom were separated from their families. The rest were unaccompanied by a parent or guardian when they were apprehended crossing the border.

He described a colorful infants room, with two cribs, two high chairs and a rubber playmat. Two little boys were wearing the same orange-striped shirt.

He said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston held a boy, who was 8 or 9 months old and had been separated from his family by the government. “A little boy reached out to Sheila and just held on,” Luján said.