El Paso, December 28 (RHC)-- In El Paso, Texas, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers released hundreds of migrants at a downtown bus station, bringing the number of people released this week to more than 1,000. 

Local nonprofits that assist the migrants said this time they were given some advance warning of the drop-offs, unlike over the Christmas holiday when ICE stranded hundreds of people in the cold -- including young children -- with no warning and no plans for accommodations. 

Immigration activists say the drop-offs were part of the Trump administration’s deliberate strategy of sowing chaos at the border as a deterrent to asylum seekers.  

This comes as a new ProPublica investigation found pervasive sexual assaults at detention centers for immigrant children, with both staff and other residents sometimes acting as predators.  In one case, a youth care worker in Arizona who was convicted of molesting seven boys spent months working at a detention center without a full background check.