The Real Refugee Crisis.

It's not over in Iraq or Syria, it's here at home.

The Rio Grande Valley has become ground zero for an unprecedented surge in families and unaccompanied children flooding across the Southwest border, creating what the Obama administration is calling a humanitarian crisis as border officials struggle to accommodate new detainees. Largely from Central America, they are now arriving at a rate of more than 35,000 a month.
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The number of children and teenagers traveling alone from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador is expected to reach up to 90,000 across the Southwest border by the end of the year, along with a surge of families with children seeking safe passage into the U.S.

"This is the hottest spot in the nation for crossings," said Hidalgo County Precinct 3 Constable Lazaro "Larry" Gallardo, a valley native who said he had never seen a migration wave of such a scale during his 14 years in office. "Something's got to be done because the numbers are just too high."

Detentions along this stretch of the river have gone from up to 50 immigrants a week to as many as 300. On Tuesday night, constables captured 100, on Monday nearly 200. Authorities are comparing the onslaught of homeless detainees to the displacements brought by Hurricane Katrina.
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One woman walking up the park riverbank this week with a boy made no attempt to flee when Sgt. Dan Broyles, a Hidalgo County deputy constable, approached. She toted two purses, as if headed to the mall — a stark contrast to migrants of years past, who girded themselves with survival gear to endure harsh treks through the desert.
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"We can stay temporarily and get money, and if we have to go, we go," she said with tears in her eyes before Border Patrol agents loaded them into a van headed for a station already overcrowded with migrants.

Moments later, a Guatemalan woman walked up to Broyles out of the darkness, with her 15-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter. The boy carried his sister, who wore a frilly green dress and patent leather shoes.

They had been hiding in the marsh, which was filled with tarantulas and lizards. Signs nearby warned of snakes. Their 15-day journey, she said, had begun after her husband abandoned her, and his brother kicked them out of the family home. Now her jeans, studded with pink rhinestones, were covered in mud and she was crying with relief.

Border facilities in Texas and Arizona have quickly become overloaded. The McAllen Border Patrol station near here, which has space to detain 250 immigrants, instead houses 1,500 daily, according to Border Patrol Agent Chris Cabrera, vice president of the agents' union's local chapter. Other smaller stations in the valley are housing twice or three times their capacity, he said.

Emergency shelters have been opened at military bases in Texas, Oklahoma and California — and at another facility in Arizona — but immigrant advocates and border agents have described the initial intake facilities on the border as badly overcrowded and ill-equipped to handle the onslaught.
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President Obama has directed federal agencies to address the widening crisis in the Rio Grande Valley, with new stopgap measures announced almost daily. Yet another temporary detention center is scheduled to open in McAllen, Texas, in a 55,000-square-foot warehouse, Cabrera said.

In Arizona, state officials have rushed provisions, such as vaccines and other medical supplies, to a federal holding facility in Nogales that is being used to hold children who were caught crossing unaccompanied into the Rio Grande Valley.
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At 11:26 p.m. Wednesday, nearly half an hour after Sgt. Broyles' shift ended, a woman and three boys approached his truck out of the dark.

Belkin Rivera Hernandez, 24, said she'd heard television reports that single mothers would receive permission to stay in the U.S., and decided to try to cross with her son and two other boys from Honduras, hoping to meet her mother in Virginia.

"The situation in Honduras is only getting worse," she said as Broyles handed her a chilled bottle of water, part of a supply deputies buy themselves for the migrants.

Border Patrol agents arrived and loaded the family into a van with half a dozen other women and children.