HOUSTON • The young migrants and asylum seekers swim across the Rio Grande and clamber into the dense brush of Texas. Many are teens who left Central America on their own; others were sent along by parents from refugee camps in Mexico. They are as young as 10.

Under U.S. law they would normally be allowed to live with relatives while their cases wind through immigration courts.

Instead the Trump administration is quickly expelling them under an emergency declaration citing the coronavirus pandemic, with 600 minors expelled in April alone.

The expulsions are the latest administration measure aimed at preventing the entry of migrant children, following other programs such as the since-rescinded “zero tolerance” policy that resulted in thousands of family separations.

Border agencies say they have to restrict asylum claims and border crossings during the pandemic to prevent the virus’ spread. Migrants’ advocates call that a pretext to dispense with federal protections for children.

In interviews, two recently expelled teens said border agents told them they wouldn’t be allowed to request asylum.

They were placed in cells, fingerprinted and given a medical exam.

Then, after four days, they were flown back to their home country of Guatemala. The AP is withholding the teens’ last names to protect their privacy.

Brenda, 16, left Guatemala in hopes of reaching the U.S. to eventually work and help her family. Her father works on a farm, but it’s not enough.

“We barely eat,” she said.

Her family borrowed $13,000 to pay a smuggler and months later she crossed illegally.

Authorities later took her into custody in April at a Texas stash house, she said.

“I did ask to talk to my brother because he wanted to get a lawyer, because he wanted to fight for my case,” she said.

“But they told me they were not letting people talk to anyone. No matter how much I fought, they were not letting anyone stay.”

She is now under quarantine at her family’s home.

Similarly, Osvaldo, 17, said agents wouldn’t let him call his father.

He was held with other children in a cold room and issued a foil blanket as well as a new mask and pair of gloves each of the four days he was in custody.

Someone took his temperature before he was deported, but he wasn’t tested for the coronavirus until he was back in Guatemala. Osvaldo was given no immigration paperwork, just the medical report from his examination.

“I thought they would help me or let me fight my case,” Osvaldo said, “but no.”

A 10-year-old boy and his mother, whom the AP is not identifying because she fears retribution for speaking publicly, spent months at a squalid camp in Matamoros, Mexico, across from Brownsville, Texas, waiting for their immigration court dates under the Trump administration program known as “Remain in Mexico.”

Guatemalans deported from the U.S., wave from a bus last week after arriving at La Aurora airport in Guatemala City. U.S. border agencies quickly expelled about 600 child migrants in April after federal agencies began prohibiting asylum claims because of the conronavirus.

the associated press