100 children stranded - "a widespread humanitarian crisis"

AP:

About 100 children were left stranded at schools and day care centres after their parents were rounded up by federal authorities in a raid on a factory where hundreds of illegal immigrants worked to produce supplies for the US military.

About two-thirds of the 500 employees working at leather maker Michael Bianco Inc in New Bedford, Massachusetts, were detained on Tuesday by immigration officials for possible deportation as illegal immigrants. Most of the employees were women and, as a result, many of their children were not picked up from school or day care that day.

Corinn Williams, director of the Community Economic Development Centre of Southeastern Massachusetts, estimated about 100 children were left with babysitters or caretakers.

"We're continuing to get stories today about infants that were left behind," she said yesterday. "It's been a widespread humanitarian crisis here in New Bedford."

words are failing . . .