EL PASO — They came in pairs, by the dozens, hundreds. In one group, as many as 400 immigrants crossed the border here in a single, massive group.

Many are families. And some would soon sleep for the first time on U.S. soil — but out in the open, under the stars, because federal agents are having a difficult time processing them and getting them to shelter.

“What we’re seeing is something I haven’t seen in at least 10 years,” said Joe Romero, a veteran U.S. Border Patrol agent.

And yet, when asked whether he was witnessing an emergency on the border, Romero paused and kept his eyes on the road. He and his partner drove slowly Wednesday in the shadow of a fence, long stretches of it lined with migrants waiting to be transported to begin the process of seeking asylum.

The migrants stood restless, exhausted, most with children, stuck between the Rio Grande where the U.S. begins and a fence that runs along the river yards away from it, designed to keep them out.

Some agents now call the fence a wall, a term that conveniently fits the White House narrative. President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency to fund construction of a real wall. Border apprehensions are rising rapidly, especially the number of families from Central America heading to the U.S. to seek asylum. But overall apprehensions are still the lowest they have been in years.

“I’m not going to say this is an emergency,” Romero finally said, breaking the silence. “But it is a much bigger challenge and it puts a strain on manpower. Our goal is to adapt and conquer.”

The Border Patrol expected to take more than 1,000 migrants into custody along this strip Wednesday and Thursday, a record number in the El Paso sector. And that’s just people who arrive along the 10-mile stretch between El Paso’s Chihuahuita neighborhood and the Ysleta area, in the city’s Lower Valley.

1 / 4Migrants who crossed the border and turned themselves in to the border patrol were being held along the border fence in an area known as El Paso's Lower Valley in the Ysleta area. More than 700 were detained between El Paso and the Lower Valley on the day this photo was taken, March 6, 2019. (Alfredo Corchado / The Dallas Morning News) 2 / 4Migrants who crossed the border and turned themselves in to the border patrol were being held along the fence in an area known as El Paso's Lower Valley in the Ysleta area on March 6, 2019. They stand idle, anxious, on U.S. soil, in between the so-called wall and the Rio Grande, waiting for transportation. Many waited for hours.(Alfredo Corchado / The Dallas Morning News) 3 / 4Migrants who crossed the border and turned themselves in to the border patrol were being held along the fence in an area known as El Paso's Lower Valley in the Ysleta area. They cross the Rio Grande and wait along the fence for U.S. authorities to take them for processing. Most plan to make asylum claims.(Alfredo Corchado / The Dallas Morning News) 4 / 4Migrants who crossed the border and turned themselves in to the border patrol were being held along the fence in an area known as El Paso's Lower Valley in the Ysleta area on March 6, 2019.(Alfredo Corchado / The Dallas Morning News)

If not a national emergency, the situation is at least a humanitarian crisis. As of dawn Thursday, some of the same people who were detained on the strip of land were still waiting to be processed in the same spot, their shadows looming behind the steel wire mesh fence as overwhelmed agents coped with transporting them to processing centers. It’s unclear how many may have been stuck overnight, but it’s clear that some were.

“It’s not an easy process,” said Ramiro Cordero, Border Patrol spokesman. “We’re doing this little by little, as buses can take 40 people and we have to be careful about not mixing unaccompanied minors with adults. We do the best we can under a difficult situation.”

Volunteers from the Hope Institute, including its executive director, spent Wednesday evening by the fence handing out granola bars, three cases of potato chips and water bottles through a small window-like hole in the fence. Catholic nuns brought trays of sandwiches and more water. Some blessed the migrants and put ash on their foreheads, as temperatures fell and winds picked up on Ash Wednesday.

Back in Washington, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen echoed Trump’s claim that the surge of migrants, many from Guatemala, is not a manufactured crisis, but a real crisis on the border, big enough to be declared a national emergency. She estimated about 1 million people will be apprehended by the end of fiscal 2019.

“We face a crisis — a real, serious and sustained crisis at our borders,” she said at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing.

Critics insist the only crisis is the one Trump has created through new immigration restrictions, such as his metering system that requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while U.S. officials slowly process their cases. This policy, facing a court challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union, pushed entire families away from ports of entry to remote, rugged areas where they crossed to turn themselves in.

4. Trump’s policy of pushing migrants to rural, desolate areas (because ports of entry are blocked to to those LEGALLY seeking asylum) is making the work of Border Patrol agents in outlying areas far more difficult and migrants’ passage more dangerous — that’s a man made problem — Rep. Veronica Escobar (@RepEscobar) March 8, 2019

More recently, massive groups have been steered by their smugglers to places closer to El Paso to cross. Once they are on U.S. soil, they can legally request asylum. A U.S. intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity said this past week that the large-scale migrant-smuggling operations near remote Antelope Wells, N.M. — where hundreds of migrants and their families were turning themselves in after crossing the border — had moved closer to Texas because criminal groups were becoming fearful that too much U.S. law enforcement attention, for now, was threatening their drug-trafficking business. The situation remains fluid, the official said.

The Border Patrol’s El Paso sector, which includes all of New Mexico, has seen a 430 percent increase in “apprehensions” of families and children this fiscal year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Some days, the sector records the highest apprehension numbers, although the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas leads the nation in overall apprehensions, followed by El Paso and then the San Diego sector.

“I don’t see these numbers falling, but increasing,” said Romero, the Border Patrol agent.

1 / 2Joe Romero, a border patrol agent, talks to mothers from Guatemala who are saying their children are hungry and tired. Romero tells them there are so many of them that they have to be patient until buses arrive.(Alfredo Corchado / The Dallas Morning News) 2 / 2Joe Romero, a border patrol agent, points to sealed holes along the wire mesh fence that smugglers use pliers to cut, allowing migrants to enter the United States. Daily, workers travel the border to patch them up.(Alfredo Corchado / The Dallas Morning News)

And so it went this past week, just as a cold front moved on in the early days of March, ushering in bright sunshine and new challenges for Romero and fellow agents.

Romero said “these coordinated” efforts to send migrants across are used by smugglers as distracting tactics to also smuggle across “something more nefarious, like drugs, or some big criminal leader. That’s what worries me.”

The migrants themselves, “Those people don’t scare me,” he said.

Among the group detained Wednesday along the fence: an unaccompanied 2-year-old child. Authorities were working with international groups to locate the parents.

Two of the new arrivals were sex offenders and one a U.S. citizen, a "self-proclaimed prison gang member" who was arrested by agents and turned over to U.S. Marshals.

Most of the migrants interviewed said they were from Guatemala. Some gave accounts consistent with previous reporting in Guatemala: Smugglers promised to get them to the U.S. border in record time. But they needed to make the journey now, because Trump is mercurial and may shut down the border any day, change immigration policy that allows them to seek asylum, or force people to stay in Mexico until called to apply for asylum under a tacit agreement with the administration of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Remaining in Mexico is the last thing migrants want to do — waiting, for example, in Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso. It's a city where drug violence is once again exploding and the murder rate is on the rise. Last Sunday, Juarez police commander Adrian Matsumoto Dorame was gunned down.

“Juarez is just as dangerous as Honduras,” said migrant Fanny Jozare Medrano, 25. She said she was running away from gang violence in Honduras and headed for Virginia, where relatives awaited her.

Some migrants said it took them anywhere from a week to more than a month to make the journey north. Some had waited at a shelter or gym in Juarez for days. Others went straight to the Rio Grande, with the help of “guides.”

Some mothers sounded worried. Their babies were hungry. They had been there since 5 a.m. and now it was near noon. Romero said they were doing all they could.

Siomara Gonzalez, 19, stood with her 12-year-old brother Cristobal, tired but happy, she said. She had achieved their dream. They could see the U.S. through the fence, across a highway. They were headed for Maryland, they said, running away from abusive parents and gangs trying to recruit them.

“From the moment we left Guatemala, this was our goal, to be here in the United States and start anew, help my brother become something better,” said Gonzalez.

Eneas Constanza, 25, from Peten, Guatemala, was headed for Alabama. His overnight talk with a cousin in Alabama had given him a sense of urgency.

“I understand there was a bad tornado,” he said. “And there’s plenty of work.” He crossed with his 5-year-old daughter.

Meanwhile, Romero, 49, kept his eyes on the rugged dirt road, as radio chatter, once busy with alerts, was mostly silent. It would pick up again before sunset, he assured.

He pointed across the Rio Grande to Mexico, where smugglers sit and watch patiently, sometimes alongside migrants, directing when and where they should run into or simply walk across the border to turn themselves in.

Romero said one smuggler even sits on a sofa directing human traffic.

Does Romero need more support? Money, boots on the ground?

“What we have now works,” he said. “The fence is part of the tools that we need, along with technology, boots on the ground, all are force multipliers to help us be effective and efficient. Can we use more help? Always.”