New York’s mayor said he was shocked that at least 239 minors arrived incognito after being separated from parents on the Mexican border.

While Donald Trump signed the end of a policy of separation of families at the border that provoked outrage in the United States and abroad, Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio went into a a reception center for migrant children in Harlem, where a television crew had filmed the previous night some girls arriving secretly, apparently separated from their parents at the border.

The segregated minors included a nine-month-old baby and traumatized children, many with lice, bedbugs or contagious diseases.

Mr De Blasio emerged from the reception centre saying he was "shocked to learn" how many children separated from their parents had been sent to New York, explaining that this single center in Harlem had received 239 children without the knowledge of city authorities.

"How is it possible that none of us knew that there (were) 239 kids right here in our city?" he said. "How is the federal government holding back that information from the people of this city and holding back the help that these kids could need?"

"The mental health issues alone, they made clear to us, are very real; very painful," De Blasio stressed.

The Cayuga Center, which has classrooms in a six-story building across the street from an elevated train line, has a federal contract to place unaccompanied immigrant children in short-term foster care. Officials at the center did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

Mr De Blasio said the staff there told him it has taken in about 350 children since President Donald Trump’s administration implemented its "zero tolerance" policy this spring calling for the criminal prosecution of all adults caught crossing the border illegally.

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He is off to join other US mayors Thursday in Texas to visit a childcare center and denounce the migration policy of the Trump administration.