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Manuel Martinez, who fled Honduras because gangs were trying to recruit his 12-year-old son, was ready to be separated from his child after paying a smuggler to cross the Rio Grande by boat and be stopped by the US Border Patrol.
His worst fears never came true.
Martinez pled guilty to illegal entry Wednesday – the day that President Donald Trump ordered the end of the separation of families – and, while he was not kept under the same roof as his son, they were detained in the same complex. They were reunited on Saturday, after five days apart, and were released in the United States, a tracking device on Martinez's ankle, while he is pursuing asylum.
"I was very worried even though we were never really separated," he told McAllen's Greyhound station, as he and his son were about to get on a bus for join Atlanta to a friend.
The McAllen station, a hub in the busiest American corridor for illegal crossings, looks a lot like what it was before the administration began to apply a "zero tolerance" policy early May to continue every illegal entry. The policy resulted in the separation of more than 2,300 children before Trump changed course in the face of an international outcry and said families would stay together.
On a typical day, more than 100 asylum seekers are released from McAllen's detention facilities, clutching their belongings in clear plastic bags bearing the DHS logos, said Norma Pimentel, Catholic Executive Director. Charities of Rio Grande Valley.
They are led by volunteers at the charity's head office a few blocks away to shower, eat and rest – although the first order of volunteers is to distribute laces because they are confiscated from immigrants in detention to prevent suicides.
"Every day is like that, it never ends," said Pimentel as children played with toys on the floor while adults sitting in ankle monitors sat in rows of plastic chairs. Federal authorities have for years used electronic surveillance devices to track released immigrants while they wait for other court proceedings.
Yet, McAllen, a city of 130,000 inhabitants in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, is only an overview of the situation along the border, where Trump's reversal on family separation has sown chaos and uncertainty.
It is unclear how many asylum seekers still enter the country, how many are detained as family and how many are released. We do not know how long it will take for all parents and guardians to be reunited with their children.
Homeland Security said Saturday night that 522 young people have been reunited since they've been separated under the zero tolerance policy and that it has established a process to make sure that members of the family know where their children are and can communicate with them.
He said more than 2,000 children are separated but the government knows where they are and works to reunite them with their families.
Trump expressed frustration over the crisis in a tweet on Sunday, saying border workers should not be allowed a day in court.
"We can not allow all these people to invade our country," the president wrote. "When someone enters, we must immediately, without judges or trials, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery of immigration and law and the law. ;order."
Federal authorities are preparing a special reunification center in a remote detention center in Port Isabel, about 88 kilometers east of McAllen.
About 70 families arrived at McAllen's Catholic Charities shelter late Saturday afternoon, and almost all disappeared the next day, boarding buses across the United States.
Pimentel said most of Saturday 's arrivals were not criminally charged but she did not believe it meant a change in Trump' s administration policy to prosecute each illegal entry.
Authorities have decided to detain more people, even asylum seekers, but are constrained by the lack of space for detention, especially for families. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has approximately 3,300 beds in three family detention centers in Texas and Pennsylvania.
"They have a limit as to how much they can handle, and that may be a determining factor in how many are released that day," Pimentel said.
Patricia Lozano, 27, said she fled Honduras to find a better-paying job and better support her three children, aged 6, 8 and 9. She has not been charged and has never been separated from her children.
She made a grueling bus trip for a month through Mexico when she learned that families were separated, but she decided to try her luck.
"I was already traveling," she said while waiting for a bus to Los Angeles to join her family. "Everything went well while walking with God."
Abel, a 40-year-old coffee farmer from Jutiapa, Guatemala, has sought asylum at the US border for himself and his 17-year-old son, Hugo. They were detained on Thursday, separated in the same detention center for two days, then reunited and released on Saturday.
He said that he left his homeland because the gangs were forcing his son to join their ranks. He asked that their last names not be used because he did not want to endanger his wife and five daughters at home.
Abel said the word is that families can be separated at the border.
But "the need always makes you take risks," he said. He added of Trump: "The president says that it will stop, but people keep coming."
Associated Press writer Colleen Long in Washington contributed to this report.
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