Texas has been caught largely unprepared for devastation of Hurricane Harvey, and as is often the case in disasters like this, most of the pain is felt by the people with the least protection and resources. In this case, more than 50 women and children were left stranded by local ICE offices at a closed bus station in San Antonio as Hurricane Harvey was making landfall. As Buzzfeed reports, the local ICE offices had been alerted that the bus stations were shut down ahead of the storm.

Since Trump took office and Jeff Sessions has been running the show, ICE has been extremely aggressive about rounding up undocumented immigrants, often targeting people who aren't criminals and even trying to enter schools and track children. So far the agency hasn't commented, but Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett told Buzzfeed that he'd been assured the families would be dropped off before the station shut down.

The women and children, like many people released from asylum processing facilities, had no money or cellphones, and few spoke English. A local church wound up taking them in and agreed to house them until buses start running again.

The asylum processing facilities outside of San Antonio are the only two of their kind in the country, built in response to the high numbers of people crossing the border from Central America seeking asylum in the U.S. Asylum seeking is a very specific legal process, and to get asylum an immigrant needs to prove that they face persecution in their home country. Normally, after an asylum seeker passes a credible fear interview with ICE, the agency drops them off at a bus station with tickets for them to join their sponsors as their case progresses. But under normal circumstances there's no hurricane bearing down, the bus station would have buses, and federal agents wouldn't just straight up desert people they're responsible for.