Audio from a U.S. immigration detention center has been released to the public, and it is heartbreaking.

ProPublica obtained the audio from a lawyer who received it from an anonymous source at the center.

Several children can be heard screaming and crying as border patrol officers discuss the logistics of housing the kids newly separated from their parents. One coldhearted agent even joked about their sorrow.

“Well, we have an orchestra here,” he quipped. “What’s missing is a conductor.”

Six-year-old Alison Jimena Valencia Madrid was among the crying children, and was determined to reunite with her family. Alison repeatedly asked workers to contact her aunt, and even recited her phone number from memory.

“My mommy says that I’ll go with my aunt,” she said. “And that she’ll come to pick me up there as quickly as possible.”

ProPublica tracked down the aunt who says she was distraught when she received the phone call.

“It was the hardest moment in my life,” she said. “Imagine getting a call from your six-year-old niece. She’s crying and begging me to go get her. She says, ‘I promise I’ll behave, but please get me out of here. I’m all alone.’”

Sadly the aunt cannot intervene due to her own immigration status. The aunt is currently still in the process of getting asylum for herself and her own daughter.

Alison's aunt and cousin emigrated from the family’s native El Salvador two years ago to escape the same gang violence that drove Alison and her mother, Cindy, to flee. Alison's aunt says Cindy paid a smuggler $7,000 to get them to the States a month ago.

“They’re on the buses. They’re in the banks. They’re in schools. They’re in the police. There’s nowhere for normal people to feel safe,” she said of the gangs.

She’s spoken to her sister, who is being held at a detention center in Port Isabel, Texas, and keeps in touch with Alison over the phone. Alison was moved to a shelter with “a real bed” and has been informed her mother could be deported without her.

“I know she’s not an American citizen,” the aunt said. “But she’s a human being. She’s a child. How can they treat her this way?”