ABC News: Timothy Myers ACS
)Orbelina de Leon Lopez has never recovered from losing her daughter to a Guatemalan gang.
"Two years ago, they kidnapped my daughter … she was 15 …" she told the ABC.
Then late last year another tragedy struck her family when two powerful hurricanes swept through Central America and destroyed Ms de Leon Lopez's home.
Wiping tears from her eyes, she explains why she's travelled thousands of kilometres from Guatemala to America's southern border. She wants a better life for herself and her family.
"In January they [the gang] threatened to kidnap my other daughters," she said.
"The only thing I would want is help, honestly. I love my daughters. I love them. The only thing I have to do is fight for them."
ABC News: Timothy Myers ACS
)After packing up the few belongings they had left, she made the journey north with her two girls, aged 16 and 14.
A crisis on America's border
They arrived in early March, at Mexico's northern border, but Ms de Leon Lopez and her daughters still needed help to cross into the United States.
So she gave Mexican traffickers her life savings to help them enter the country.
Four days ago, she risked her life and those of her two girls to cross the Rio Grande River at night. But they were immediately deported back.
Now she only has 100 pesos, about $6, left for her family to live on.
"They deported us without letting us speak. I asked to speak with someone, a social worker. Someone that could help me with my case," she said.
"They didn't let me talk or anything."
Ms de Leon Lopez hoped once they heard her story, they'd reconsider.
"I thought with the new President, they would support me because I'm a single mother," she said.
Ms de Leon Lopez doesn't carry much else with her besides the clothes on her back and a folder of documents.
She pulls it out to show the paperwork she needs to file an asylum seeker claim. But it didn't help her.
"We are in danger and I don't want to go back," she said.
"The only thing I ask is that my daughters study in the United States. That they become good and they serve the country."
Instead they are living on the streets of the Mexican city of Reynosa, just across the border from McAllen in Texas.
ABC News: Timothy Myers ACS
)The biggest migrant surge in 20 years
The trio are among around 300 migrants camped out in the open just under the bridge, which separates Mexico from the United States.
Aid workers handing out food and supplies say that's around 10 times the number normally gathered here, and more come every day.
US Customs and Border administration figures show the number of migrants being apprehended on the border has been increasing for the last 10 months, after experiencing a decline in April 2020 due the pandemic.
According to the Pew Research Centre, last month's arrests at the border were "far higher than the typical monthly figure in recent years, with the exception of a dramatic rise in 2019 during the administration of President Donald Trump".
ABC News: Timothy Myers ACS
)In response to more migrants attempting to cross the border, the Trump administration introduced a series of new restrictions intended to deter migrants including the "Remain in Mexico" program, which required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their claims could be heard.
Then when coronavirus hit, Mr Trump introduced Article 42, which was effectively a public health statute to indefinitely close the border to "non-essential" travel, to prevent the flow of unscreened travelers across the border. The new administration has continued to enforce the same law.
But President Joe Biden has promised more humane border policies, and has already made five executive orders on immigration while in office, including ordering a major increase in refugee admissions, allowing unaccompanied children and teenagers to cross the border, and ending the Remain in Mexico policy.
Mr Biden said he would also prioritise the processing of the thousands who signed up under the Remain in Mexico policy, which has led to thousands camping out in squalid conditions on the border.
But two months after Mr Biden ended the policy, the US has experienced its biggest surge in 20 years – on track for 2 million migrants on the southern border this year alone.
The change in administration has also coincided with worsening socio-economic conditions in Central America brought on by natural disasters.
ABC News: Timothy Myers ACS
)Two hurricanes hit Central America – including Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Belize — late last year, killing more than 200 people and displacing more than half a million people.
It has driven families, with nowhere else to go, to the border in search of a better life.
But while many say they have tried to cross; they say they have been promptly deported back to Mexico.
"I sold the little land that the hurricane left me. Now I am on the streets. I don't have anywhere to go," Vilma Rosaura Castillo said.
Many are left living on the streets
Cuddling her son and keeping a tight grip on her official documents, Ms Castillo says word that the border had opened travelled south quickly.
ABC News: Timothy Myers ACS
)"That's what he was saying in his political campaigns, that he was going to get people across, and we don't have anywhere to go," she said.
McAllen, Texas is one of several border crossings which have seen a surge in immigrants trying to cross in recent months.
Customs and Border Protection are on track to record more than 130,000 arrests for the month of March, the highest number of detentions in more than two decades.
There are now more than 10,000 unaccompanied children and teenagers in the care of the US Department of Human Services.
According to US media, US Customs and Border Patrol agents were holding more than 15,500 unaccompanied children in custody.
The influx has left American authorities scrambling to find shelter for the children and teenagers.
ABC News: Timothy Myers ACS
)Thousands are being housed in adult detention centres, beyond the 72-hour legal limit after which they are meant to be transferred to the care of health authorities, because there's simply nowhere to take them.
Mr Biden is facing heavy criticism, as Mr Trump did when in office, over the conditions in the border facilities.
But it's difficult to know what is happening inside because the media has not been allowed in. Texas congressman Henry Cuellar, who visited a government-run tent city in Donna, Texas, released photos of children huddled together and sleeping in foil blankets on mattresses on the floor.
The administration is scrambling to find alternatives, with some migrants being flown from the Rio Grande Valley to El Paso for shelter. The convention centre in Dallas is being converted into a temporary shelter.
A military base in Virginia and a California airbase run by NASA have also been considered as possible locations.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which normally deals with natural disasters, has also been deployed to build shelters to house the children.
ABC News: Timothy Myers ASC
)Traffickers telling migrants 'now is the time'
But Sister Norma Pimentel, from Catholic Charities, who has been helping immigrants for decades, says the number of migrant arrivals continues to grow day by day.
As the ABC arrives at her shelter in downtown McAllen, a group of asylum seekers arrive on her doorstep. They say they've just come from across the border in Reynosa.
More busloads of new migrants arrive. But the shelter is already full.
"We've seen a change in the past couple of weeks, a little over a month, where we have had so many families released by border patrol, coming here every day," she said.
"As the day's progress, the numbers seem to be growing higher and higher."
She said the Biden administration's reversal of the Remain in Mexico policy, officially named the Migrant Protection Program (MPP), had an impact on numbers. But the Mexican government has also been refusing to take migrants back.
"It has contributed to the fact that they're seeing the door open to somebody and they think that, 'maybe this is my opportunity to go and they'll let me in,'" she said.
"MPP has allowed some people to enter the United States legally, safely and correctly and that's what's happening.
"So other people are coming to the United States. They have hope, they think, 'maybe this is my day, with the new administration, maybe I will have an opportunity to enter the United States.'"
Sister Pimentel does not blame the new President for taking a more humane approach to immigration.
ABC News: Timothy Myers
)"Nothing has changed. The only thing that's different is MPP, not all of them are entering, some of them, their cases are being reviewed. That's what has changed," she said.
"That is what the traffickers are telling them. They say, 'the new President is more kind, the new President is going to let you in.' Of course they're getting that message from the traffickers, not from the administration."
While Customs and Border Protection have said they are on track to detain the highest number of illegal immigrants in two decades, Sister Pimentel says she was receiving more each day in 2019.
On Monday White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration would be announcing the opening of more temporary facilities in coming days and weeks.
Mr Biden has also named Vice President Kamala Harris to lead efforts to try to stem the flow of migration to the United States. Senior administration officials said her focus will be on working with leaders in the region to make it safer for people to remain in their home countries.
Last week, the Biden administration announced it would supply 2.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Mexico.
While senior officials in both governments refused to call it a quid pro quo, Mexico is said to have pledged to take more migrants back – including those from Central American families.
Mexico has moved to restrict travel across its southern border, deploying 9,000 troops, to prevent the flow of traffic.
