Video: Democrat Lawmakers Demand Entry to Ice Detention Center for Father's Day Visit

Democratic lawmakers descended on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility on Sunday June 17, banging on the glass as they demanded to know why people were being held there.

Footage taken at the ICE migrant center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, by CNN shows the group of seven members of Congress asking to be allowed into the facility to speak with five men who were being detained in the center on Father's Day.

After banging on the glass and asking to speak with a supervisor, the lawmakers were eventually permitted to go into the facility after more than an hour and a half. They were not allowed to bring their phones or film inside the facility, CNN reported.

The lawmakers, Reps. Jerrold Nadler, Frank Pallone Jr., Bill Pascrell, Hakeem Jeffries, Adriano Espaillat, Carolyn Maloney and Albio Sires, had come to meet with the five men to highlight the separation of parents from their children on Father's Day.

"It was heart-wrenching in there. I came here when I was 11," Sires told the New York Post, explaining he had come to the U.S. from Cuba as a child. "It is a different country than when I came here. What I saw in there was inhumane," he said of the facility.

Their visit took place amid an increasing backlash against the Trump administration's policy of separating parents from their children at the U.S. southern border if they are found to be crossing illegally.

Father's Day highlighted the issue further, upon the news that numerous parents had been separated from their own children.

On Twitter, singer John Legend slammed House Speaker Paul Ryan after the latter shared a Father's Day message on Twitter, with Legend replying: "Seriously, f*** you. Reunite the families at the border and we can talk about Father's Day."