In normal times, migrants are returned to Mexico under bilateral agreements that limit deportations to daytime hours and the largest crossings. Not so during the pandemic.

Roma, a town of 10,000 people with historic buildings and boarded-up storefronts in the Rio Grande Valley, is the latest epicenter of illegal crossings.

Amid a dramatic rise in migrant children and families arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum, many are kept at outdoor intake sites and overcrowded detention facilities well past a 72-hour court-imposed limit.

A Texas representative says he released the photos because the president’s administration has been refusing media access to the detention center for weeks.