Illegal aliens captured at the border continue to be released at bus stops in Texas with orders to appear before an immigration judge at a future date.  The flood of illegals has reached levels not seen since the record year of 2014, with tens of thousands of women and unaccompanied children flowing across the border.

The government refuses to inform local authorities of this catch and release program.

Breitbart:

Bus station employees are reporting that illegal immigrants continue pour into the Texas border town of Laredo. They have seen a holding center for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) carrying between 20 and 40 undocumented women during at least five bus trips.

The local NBC affiliate, 8KGNS-TV first heard that 400 migrants were headed to the border city but it has been difficult to get a concrete number of released individuals from the agency. Officials report that these women meet certain release eligibility requirements set by the federal government.

Local officials say that federal representatives did not notify anyone in the City of Laredo, and that a similar problem was created in 2014 when there was a surge of Central Americans in the Texas border town.

What is adding to the flood of migrants crossing the border from Central America is the fact that some countries are refusing to repatriate their own.

Breitbart Texas reported in late October that illegal immigrants, mostly from Central America, were flooding across the southern border in advance of the 2016 presidential election. The numbers reported by patrol agents were at, or above, historic 2014 levels. On October 18, Breitbart Texas reported that a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report showed that the number of illegal border crossing apprehensions of Family Unit Aliens (FMUA) from Central America and Mexico hit the highest level on record–an all-time high with 77,674 crossings in FY 2016. Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) apprehensions were at 59,692, second to the 2014 historic mark of 69,970.

This is a clear case of U.S. domestic politics driving the wave of illegals crossing the border:

“Cartel connected human smugglers are telling people they need to get across the border now,” U.S. Border Patrol Agent Chris Cabrera told Breitbart Texas in his capacity as president of National Border Patrol Council Local 3307 in October. “When our agents ask the illegal immigrants who have surrendered at the border, they tell us they have been told they have to be here by a certain deadline to qualify for amnesty from Hillary Clinton, or they must come now because Donald Trump will build a wall and they won’t be able to cross.”

The cartels aren't stupid.  They know just where our vulnerable points are along the border and take full advantage of that knowledge. 

Trump can change this policy his first day in office.  It's a question of how the chief executive and the departments under his control choose to interpret immigration law.  The Obama administration chose an extraordinarily broad interpretation of the law while exercising maximum prosecutorial discretion, allowing hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens what amounts to a free ride by releasing them after giving them a date to appear before a judge. 

The courts have ruled we can't detain families with children for very long, which hugely complicates enforcement.  President Obama continued to promise throughout his tenure that the flood of illegals from Central America would not be allowed to stay, that they would be sent home.  The reality is, with the courts preventing detention, Central American nations refusing to take their people back, and ICE policies allowing illegals to go free, border towns are at the government's mercy when it comes to dealing with the problem.