Durbin Tours Shelter Where Border Kids Are Being Housed

(CBS) – U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin has visited a Chicago shelter housing immigrant children who have escaped gang violence, domestic abuse and human trafficking in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Durbin, along with with Ashley Huebner, an official with the National Immigrant Justice Center, visited kids being detained in the Chicago area under the care of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Some 429 children are being housed in the region.

"We don't want any harm to come to these children. We want history to judge America as a country that cares and a country that did its best facing a humanitarian crisis," Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, told reporters Monday.

Durbin's visit to an undisclosed shelter follows a hearing on President Obama's $3.7 billion emergency spending request to deal with the growing border crisis.

Half of the  money would be spent to improve border control and the rest to deal with the children who made it to the U.S.

Democrats argue deporting children is equivalent to a death sentence.