A number of reports have surfaced about the dire conditions of Texas and Arizona's immigrant detention centers. A handful of journalists were given a a controlled tour inside the facilities on Wednesday, the first time access has been made available to the public, and what they found in both facilities was unfathomable.

Reports out of south Texas describe the 4,900-square-foot facility as overcrowded and dirty, with children covering every square inch of the concrete floors. The smell of body odor and sweat lingeres in the air, as groups of children stare out the barred cell windows. There are mothers, infants, and toddlers. Young girls hold what appears to be their own children, sheltering them from the chaos of the crammed conditions.

The Brownsville facility, positioned within miles of the border between Texas and Mexico, was only meant to hold 250 undocumented immigrants while they waited out removal or court proceedings, but these days, it's housing twice as many. A harrowing number of immigrants from Central America, most of whom are children or families, have come across the border in recent months, hoping to find refuge in the United States.

What they find instead is anything but a safehaven. Freedom in the U.S. is not an option for the undocumented immigrants, but razor wire fences and filthy holding cells are. They are housed at Border Patrol holding facilities, where they'll wait with hundreds of other immigrants while the U.S. takes steps to remove them from the country.

Conditions are similar in Nogales, Arizona, according to reports. The facility in Nogales now holds about 800 children, and has been deemed a detention center for child immigrants. Photos of the inside of the Nogales facility show a number of children sleeping, flopped out on mats on the cement floor, their bodies covered in makeshift tinfoil blankets. 

Snapshots and recollections of the outside are equally disturbing. Children hang on the chainlink fence that surrounds their hold cells, their eyes red from crying. They dare not make it to the top, or their tiny hands will be met with the razor wire meant to corral them. Their mothers stare blankly, defeated from the journey. 

The conditions in these detention centers have been labeled "inhumane" by human rights activists, and the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security in response to the reports.

Those complaints come at a time when the influx of child immigrants into the United States is reaching a record high, with the number expected to top 60,000 by the year's end. Many of the children crossing into the U.S. are traveling alone, and a concerning number of them are girls. 

A number of efforts are being made to slow the tide of children crossing the border into the U.S., and Vice President Biden has made meeting with Central American leaders his top priority on his impending trip to the area.

Biden will meet with Honduran leaders on Friday to clarify the U.S. immigration policies and address the administration's interest in finding the root cause of immigration from Central American countries. He will also meet with leaders in El Salvador and Guatemala during his trip.