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How a Texas Bus Terminal Became the Backdrop for Powerful Immigration Reporting

Migrant families at the McAllen, Tex., bus station after processing and detention.Credit...Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times

Times Insider delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how news, features and opinion come together at The New York Times.

Central Station in McAllen, Tex., a city whose southern limit is defined in part by the Rio Grande, is unremarkable, as bus stations go: metal benches in the lobby, a Subway sandwich shop. But for journalists who cover immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, it’s an important spot. “That’s the place; if you want to go to talk to immigrants that were released from detention, that’s where you go,” said Manny Fernandez, who has been the Houston bureau chief for The New York Times since 2011.

So whether readers know it or not, the station has played a role in many of the articles that have been published in recent years about the uncertain fate of would-be immigrants, and those seeking asylum from other nations, especially since Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered a “zero-tolerance policy” in April for those who cross the border illegally.

But for a story published on Friday, Times journalists focused on one day in the life of the station itself, interviewing dozens of the more than 100 migrants who found themselves there after being released (with ankle monitors to track their movements) from federal detention centers. Throughout one day this month, four government-contracted buses dropped off the migrants, who then waited in line to go inside and were later escorted by volunteers for a Catholic charity to a relief center nearby.

In all, the project took a dozen people to put together: a photographer and a photo editor; two reporters; three text editors; three graphics editors who handled the interactive digital presentation; and finally, two print designers.

The photographer Ilana Panich-Linsman took pictures, section by section, of each line and interviewed those who wanted to share their stories. Though Ms. Panich-Linsman has been a professional photojournalist since 2009 and has worked extensively at the border since moving to Texas in 2014, this was the first time she had created this kind of panoramic image. So she reached out to Hilary Swift, a frequent Times contributor who had snapped similar photos of the line for the Crotona Park pool in the Bronx three years ago.

“She said that she basically took a frame, took a step, took another frame, took a step …,” Ms. Panich-Linsman said with a laugh. “It’s very analog.” Later, back at The Times’s headquarters in New York, the graphics editors Sarah Almukhtar and Kenan Davis worked to stitch the photos together into four supersized images. “What makes this story stand out is the visual focus on the migrants, some who risked their lives to stand in line at that bus station,” Mr. Davis said. “We wanted to emphasize for readers that these are real human beings.”

Then Mr. Fernandez, Ms. Panich-Linsman and a stringer, Mitchell Ferman, conducted on-the-fly interviews in Spanish and in English, ranging in length from just a minute or two to 10 or more, with several dozen of the migrants as they waited in 105-degree heat for the next phases of their lives to begin.

Destinée-Charisse Royal, a senior staff editor in graphics, wanted to make sure the text and imagery worked together to tell a “deeply human story” when she helped edit and prepare the story for The Times’s home page and social media pages. “Everyone has stood in a line — at the bank, at a concert venue, at a grocery store,” she said. “The difference here is that these migrants are standing in line at a bus station to start new lives.”

For the journalists on the ground in Texas, the project represented a satisfying conclusion to a reporting effort filled with false starts: They had been denied access to several of the Catholic relief centers and hadn’t found the material they were looking for during several hours waiting at McAllen-Miller International Airport. It was in the airport lobby that Ms. Panich-Linsman mentioned several test shots she had taken at the bus station, when “the light goes off in my head,” Mr. Fernandez said. “Why don’t we do the story there? The line is the story. It’s different.”

For Ms. Panich-Linsman, this project was special, because it afforded an opportunity to do the kind of personal, compassionate work she prefers. “What I pride myself on and what I love to do is tell more intimate stories,” she said. “First and foremost, I want subjects to feel comfortable with what they’re sharing with us.”

From the McAllen bus station, these migrants would end up all over the United States: on both coasts, and everywhere in between.

Though the possibility of deportation exists for many of these people, Mr. Fernandez was struck by the sense of hope and relief he found in this brief, liminal moment. “I saw no one who was eager to take jobs from people or to commit crime,” he said. “I saw a whole bunch of people who were sort of like, ‘I’m at the doors of America with my child, and everything will be different now, and everything will be okay.’ ”

“You read about the phrase, ‘immigration at the border,’ ” he added. “That’s just a really general, vague, abstract way to describe a human drama of the most compelling sort.”

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: A Stop Along the Journey North. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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