CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico – Migrants are being flown from South Texas to El Paso only to be expelled back to Mexico by Customs Border Protection, The Dallas Morning News has learned.

The expulsions include children with their families.

The migrants, most of whom are legally seeking asylum, are flown to other cities after crossing the border in the Rio Grande Valley. Federal officials say the migrants need to be moved to ease overcrowding at processing facilities.

El Paso County officials and migrant advocates said Saturday they had been told they would receive as many as 270 migrants per day in two flights from the Rio Grande Valley.

But instead, many migrants are being sent back across the border to Ciudad Juarez under Title 42, a public health order put in use during the Trump era that allows the government to immediately expel migrants at the border because of the coronavirus pandemic.

CBP has not said how many people have been expelled from the U.S. since the flights began last week, but The News has learned that at least 50 were expelled to Juarez on Thursday alone.

Landon R. Hutchens, a CBP spokesman, blamed the overcrowding in South Texas for the expulsions, saying the agency “was also anticipating” that migrants would be sent to a shelter, “but sometimes these decisions are impacted by other things.”

Hutchens stressed that while the Biden administration has stopped the practice of expelling immigrant children who cross the border alone, the expulsions of immigrant families and single adults continues under Title 42.

Hutchens said CBP must fly them across the state to facilities where there is capacity to process the migrants before expelling them.

The shuffling of migrants across the state and their rapid expulsion underscores the challenges facing the Biden administration as it tries to adopt a more humanitarian approach to immigration and unwind controversial draconian Trump policies while insisting the border is not open.

The move has flummoxed a Mexican state official and U.S. nonprofit organizations who had prepared shelters in this city for the overflow.

“This is a game changer and very concerning,” said Ruben Garcia, executive director and founder of Annunciation House, an NGO, which had prepared to receive the migrants flown in twice a day. He said the number of migrants arriving is “not even close to what we were told would be arriving.”

Marisa Limon Garza, deputy director of Hope Border Institute in El Paso, said she met a family of four that said it had just been flown from the Rio Grande Valley on Thursday and then expelled into Juarez.

“I don’t understand their logic; I can’t square it and I don’t understand the rationale, or how the rules are being applied to some people and not to others,” Limon Garza said. “This doesn’t make sense to me.”

The family was part of a group of 54 migrants from Central America that included 15 minors, said a Chihuahua state immigration official, adding that a 5-year-old Honduran girl was transported to a hospital with fever and fatigue.

As of late Friday, the girl remained hospitalized, said Enrique Valenzuela, coordinator of the State Population Council (COESPO) in northern Chihuahua, which oversees and coordinates help for migrants waiting to cross into the U.S.

“This is the first time I know of that we received people under Title 42 that were sent here after being picked in a border far away, people who had crossed in Reynosa, McAllen, thousands of miles away and expelled here,” said Valenzuela. “This is new and definitely very disturbing, especially during a pandemic.”

He said he hasn’t been told by U.S. authorities whether it would now be standard practice to pick up migrants in far away border regions, fly them to other border cities, and then rapidly expel them.

He said shelters in Juarez are running at or near capacity.