Rick Jervis

USA TODAY

McALLEN, Texas — In the back hall of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, women picked through tables heaped with baby clothes and diapers. Some munched on sandwiches. Others showered or napped on cots in air-conditioned tents in the parking lot.

Each time a new woman walked in, immigration documents in hand, the dozen or so church volunteers dropped what they were doing and applauded.

The women — some pregnant, most young and all of them with children — are part of a rising influx of immigrant moms who are flooding Texas' southern border with Mexico, compounding the crisis of unaccompanied minors.

"I just want a better life for my daughter," said Brenda Vasquez, 24, who came to this border town with her 4-year-old daughter, Mariana Rodriguez, from the La Libertad region of El Salvador. "I want her to have a future."

The unprecedented influx of immigrant youth overwhelming federal shelters has captured most of the headlines and roiled debate in Washington over how to solve the crisis. More than 52,000 unaccompanied minors, mostly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, have illegally crossed over this fiscal year, nearly four times the number two years ago.

But an equally alarming — and less publicized — tide of women from those same countries are crossing over each day, children in tow. They're employing the same strategies as the unaccompanied minors: crossing the Rio Grande near McAllen and turning themselves in to the nearest Border Patrol unit.

Border Patrol statistics show it's not just children crossing. The number of all immigrants — men, women and children — other than Mexicans arrested at the Southwest border has soared from 46,997 in fiscal year 2011 to nearly 150,000 last fiscal year.

CATCH AND RELEASE

Because there is only one federal family immigration shelter in operation, in Pennsylvania, women from Central America who illegally cross the border with a juvenile are arrested but then typically are released until their court hearing, said Linda Brandmiller, a San Antonio immigration attorney who represents many of the families. The moms can also be immediately deported by Border Patrol, but that, historically, is a rarer occurrence, she said.

In essence, women with children are afforded the same immigration practice as unaccompanied minors — release pending court hearing. Federal officials are scrambling to outfit a law enforcement training facility in Artesia, N.M., to house some of the overflow immigrant families.

The building crisis has enveloped several border states, agitated their governors while demanding the attention and reach of the federal government.

On Thursday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry told a U.S. House field hearing in McAllen that the government needs to get tougher on recent arrivals and provide more resources to secure the border, including deploying 1,000 National Guard troops to the border.

"Allowing (recently arrived immigrants) to remain will only encourage the next group of individuals to undertake this dangerous and life-threatening journey here," he said.

The White House recently signaled plans to get tougher with recent border-crossers and expedite deportations. President Obama has asked Congress for $2 billion and greater flexibility to deal with the families. He also called for a "surge" of judges on the border to keep on top of the hearings.

THE CHALLENGE

Detaining women with children rather than releasing them pending a court hearing poses a thorny challenge for federal officials, says Michelle Brané, director of the Migrant Rights & Justice Program of the Women's Refugee Commission. The sole immigrant family shelter, in rural Pennsylvania, houses fewer than 100 people and would be quickly overrun by the current rush of women and children, she said.

Another shelter near Waco, Texas, ceased housing immigrant families after the American Civil Liberties Union sued the federal government in 2007, alleging inhumane living conditions there, she said.

"Family detention is extremely difficult to do, if not impossible, without traumatizing children and breaking down family structure," Brané said. "We're very concerned."

For now, after initial processing, Border Patrol officials are releasing the immigrant moms and kids at a bus station in downtown McAllen, where church volunteers whisk them to the Sacred Heart church. There, the women are able to shower for the first time in several days and stock up on donated clothes and boxed lunches for the bus ride to their final destinations, said Ofelia De Los Santos, a Catholic Diocese spokeswoman.

The church sees between 150 and 200 women a day, mostly from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, she said. Clients have included pregnant women, women cradling newborns, and a 97-year-old female immigrant. They pay anywhere from $2,000 to $20,000 to get from their home country to across the Texas border.

"These women are putting their lives on the line so they can escape terrible conditions in their countries," De Los Santos said.

Some women at the church report being held for up to seven or eight days, sometimes in crowded cells with no beds or showers, said Sister Leticia Benavides, operations manager for the Catholic Diocese. "They're coming in in very bad shape," she said.

Lyllian Medina, 34, made a 16-day trek from Catacamas, Honduras, with her two daughters, ages 4 and 15. Gangs had taken over the girls' schools and students were being kidnapped, she said. They had to leave, she said.

On Thursday, she picked out new brown-and-pink running shoes for Cynthia, her 4-year-old. Later that day, a bus would take her to Atlantic City, where her sister lives. There, she plans on finding a job and starting a new life with her daughters.

Medina was released with her children to a contact in the United States under the agreement that she appears in immigration court near her final destination.

"I just want the best for them," she said.