A chaotic scene of sickness and filth is unfolding in an overcrowded border station in Clint, Tex., where hundreds of young people who have recently crossed the border are being held, according to lawyers who visited the facility this week. Some of the children have been there for nearly a month.

Children as young as 7 and 8, many of them wearing clothes caked with snot and tears, are caring for infants they’ve just met, the lawyers said. Toddlers without diapers are relieving themselves in their pants. Teenage mothers are wearing clothes stained with breast milk.

Most of the young detainees have not been able to shower or wash their clothes since they arrived at the facility, those who visited said. They have no access to toothbrushes, toothpaste or soap.

“There is a stench,” said Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, one of the lawyers who visited the facility. “The overwhelming majority of children have not bathed since they crossed the border.”

LOS ANGELES — Asylum-seeking migrants locked up inside an Arizona Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center with one of the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases say they were forced to clean the facility and are "begging" for protection from the virus, according to a letter obtained exclusively by NBC News.

"This is a life or death situation," said a translation of their message, dated May 18, and sent to the Florence Immigrants & Refugees Rights Project, a legal advocacy group that has filed a lawsuit on behalf of migrants in the facility.

The migrants appealed for help to the advocacy group from inside one of 24 “tanks” in the La Palma Correctional Center outside of Phoenix, which is operated for ICE by the for-profit company CoreCivic. Most of the 'tanks' hold 120 individuals each, although six hold only 60. CoreCivic told NBC News that no unit currently holds more than 100 detainees.

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Two migrants described being asked to clean the trash from the nurses' office, where sick patients were treated. One said he was asked to clean the feces-covered cell of a mentally ill detainee without gloves.

Other allegations include guards not wearing adequate equipment to prevent infection as they passed from one cell to another and "no measures for social distancing" while immigrants lined up for food.