Early on a Tuesday morning in March, the Harlingen, Texas, immigration courthouse is packed. It’s an unimpressive building, a small, stucco block set back from the road just down from a Motel 6 and the I-2 overpass. In the parking lot, an American flag flaps alongside the bold Texas Lone Star. Just before eight, van after van pulls up beside the flagpoles to unload their cargo: children.

A handful of adults sit quietly in the lobby, hands folded in laps, gazes cast toward the floor. More than three dozen children from the shelter vans fill the room, radiating heat and nervous chatter. One by one they step through the metal detector and snatch seats along the rows of orange plastic chairs. Each detention center has its own standard-issue dress—one group is in starched light-blue shirts and dark-blue jeans, another in primary-color cotton Henleys. The kids whisper and fidget with their packets of papers: manila envelopes stuffed with everything that matters to the court, each scrawled on the outside with a name and an alien number. The girls wear tight ponytails, and the boys—most of them are boys—have slicked their hair back and tucked their shirts neatly into their pants. They’ll need to look smart today, clean and serious and well behaved. A boy around thirteen years old stands repeatedly to smooth his red collared shirt into his jeans.

Before they transfer out of the Rio Grande Valley to their families or other trusted adults, Unaccompanied Alien Children are ordered to appear in court here in Harlingen. A paralegal for a local pro bono agency, ProBAR, enters the room, legal pad in hand, cowboy boots clicking against the floor. He introduces himself to the children as Jose Chapa. “Buenos días, jovenes,” he says to the room. He’s met some of them before. The kids fall silent and listen. Chapa, a Rio Grande Valley native in his late twenties, has a gentle, assuring demeanor as he checks in with each kid about his or her case—Are you trying to go home today? Are you about to turn eighteen?—marking up his spreadsheet of names. “When I call your name, come stand over here.” One by one they line up in a studious single file then follow him into the courtroom. The four youngest children—ages seven, eight, nine, and twelve—sit in the back, three boys and one girl, their feet dangling off the edge of the bench. The pews are filled, hip to hip.

These kids have never seen a room like this before, and they stare wide-eyed up toward the judge’s stand. Before coming here, a good number of them had never heard of a judge, or a lawyer, or a court. Most of them are from towns in Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador that might have a police officer or two, sometimes a town office or a one-room precinct. This small-time Texas courthouse is bigger and more imposing than any building many of them have ever visited.

When robed Judge Howard Achtsam walks in, all the children stand. The shelter staff have trained them to do this. Judge Achtsam addresses about a dozen first-timers at once, explaining that their cases will be reset for a later date. “You were not given permission to enter legally in the United States,” he reads from a script. “Therefore your Notice to Appear says you can be removed—that means the same as deportation—because you are not citizens or nationals.” He explains to the boys and girls their rights, which they digest, via Spanish translation, while staring straight ahead. (The handful who speak indigenous languages, and not much Spanish, follow as best they can and work to look alert.) As their names are called, they stand one by one.

The clerk passes around some papers: a Notice to Appear, sometime in late May, copied on blue paper and affixed to a list of attorneys several pages long. They’ll shove these into their folders.

“You have the privilege of being represented by an attorney but at no cost to the United States. If you cannot afford to pay for an attorney, there are a number of legal-aid organizations in this area that can represent you at no cost. You have to find an attorney as quickly as possible,” Judge Achtsam advises them. But they might as well not bother calling anyone on this list. No one aside from ProBAR will take on these children’s cases, and even then only in an emergency scenario, such as a child who is about to turn eighteen and age out of the juvenile process, or a child, fed up with detention, opting for voluntary departure—to go home. Today ProBAR is just here to help out with the logistics of court—none of the kids in this first group has an official attorney.

“Any questions?” Achtsam asks.

No one raises a hand. The cases are officially reset for the next month—by then, they may still be here in the Rio Grande Valley, or they may have been sent to live with a friend or relative where they’ll stand, eventually, in front of a different judge.

“Thank you,” Judge Achtsam says, and stands. The juvies file out.

Slowly, like birds coming back to life at dawn, the children begin to chatter again. They’re glad it’s over.

“It was scary,” one says.

“It wasn’t so bad,” another interjects.

“I thought it was going to be worse,” says a third. They’d heard what it would be like from the other kids.

As groups head out toward the vans, a huddle of kids wait for their ride back to one of the shelters. A boy named Miguel sits off to the side alone, shoulders slumped. He is seventeen and from Honduras, pale and pimply-faced with dark curly hair. Because of his family’s relative wealth back in Honduras—by the standards of poverty—a local gang kidnapped his aunt for ransom. “When my father told them they had my aunt, the police just asked for a bribe.” In the end, his family failed to come up with enough money to do any good. “They killed her. They killed her, and no one did anything.” His cousins were killed, his uncle too. He wants to go home, to get out of the U.S. immigration system’s loveless grip—but he knows the danger.

Chapa gathers a group of small children living in foster care to explain what happened in the courtroom. “Okay,” he says in the honeyed voice of a grade school teacher. He explains that they will have another court date, which is listed on the blue paper. The paper is very important, he says, and they need to keep it and bring it with them next time. A little boy, seven years old, holds his manila packet and blue paper in one hand and a ziplock snack—a packet of Oreos, some chips, and an applesauce—in another. He looks up at Chapa as he speaks, nodding along. “Call your family back home and tell them about your court date,” says Chapa. The boy clutches the papers and the snack bag. He continues to nod until Chapa stops talking.

“Understood?” Chapa asks. Understood.