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Local officials asked the federal government to help with an estimated 2,500 undocumented migrants who were surrounding a local church that provides support and assistance. Border Patrol agents passed out fliers to migrants to encourage them to turn themselves in.
“It wasn’t about chasing people around, down the streets into churches, in a protected area,” Mr. Ortiz said. “It was a very methodical approach.”
Anthony “Scott” Good, the chief of the Border Patrol’s El Paso sector, said nongovernment organizations assisting the migrants wanted the government to encourage people to turn themselves in by promising they would not be deported.
“But we just can’t make that guarantee,” Mr. Good said.
So it was a gamble. “People had to trust that the process would work for them,” said Ruben Garcia, executive director of Annunciation House, a large shelter.
In the end, more than 900 migrants turned themselves in and the overwhelming majority were released into the country after they were processed.
Afterward, on Thursday morning, the sidewalk around a church downtown, where some 2,500 migrants had been camped out for days, was clear of all but a few dozen people. Gone were the collapsed cardboard boxes, where the migrants had slept. Gone were the overflowing trash bins. Alleyways once teeming with families were nearly empty.
Paulo Molina, 25, a Venezuelan migrant, said he had waited five hours to get to the front of the line to turn himself in to Border Patrol. On Thursday, he had a bus ticket to Washington, D.C. in hand, having been promised a job at a restaurant.
“Thank God I got the papers, and now I can be on my way,” he said.
Edgar Sandoval reported from Brownsville, Texas, and Eileen Sullivan, Todd Heisler and Miriam Jordan from El Paso.
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