MCALLEN, Tex. — Border Patrol detention centers in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley have soared well past their capacity in recent days, prompting mass releases of migrants onto the streets as local leaders scramble to house and feed hundreds of new arrivals daily.

“They’re as stressed as we are,” Jim Darling, mayor of the South Texas border city of McAllen, said of Border Patrol officials. The officials have released more than 2,200 people from government processing facilities in the Rio Grande Valley since Monday, setting aside once again the Trump administration’s vow to end what it calls “catch and release” of those who cross the border without authorization.

“We’re trying to determine how many sites we have to have. The last thing we want is people walking our streets and having to sleep in doorways,” Mr. Darling said.

The primary migrant-services facility in the region, a former nursing home in McAllen now used by Catholic Charities as an immigrant respite center, is already reaching capacity, with nearly every inch of the low-slung red-brick building occupied.

The air was thick with the smell of sweat Tuesday evening, with dozens of people waiting for assistance at the front of the building. Two government buses pulled up outside to drop off even more: 54 in one bus and 57 in the second. On Wednesday, migrants slept on blue padded mats on the floors of small crowded rooms as they waited for rides to the downtown bus station.

In El Paso, the sudden release of about 150 migrants on Tuesday set in motion a flurry to try to accommodate them. A network of shelters run by the nonprofit Annunciation House had no more space, so city officials converted a public park into a staging area, until space for the migrants was found at local hotels.

Unauthorized border crossings have spiked in recent months, with more than 76,000 migrants apprehended on the southwest border in February, an 11-year high. Processing facilities in El Paso and in the Rio Grande Valley region in South Texas have swelled with migrant families in recent days. Early Tuesday, Border Patrol agents at the border fence in El Paso apprehended a group of 194 men, women and children traveling together. About five minutes later, agents in another part of the city took in a second group of 252 migrants.

Last week, agents in the McAllen area encountered a group of nearly 300 migrants walking toward a river levee, the largest such group seen this year. In a single 24-hour period, agents in that region had apprehended more than 1,000 migrants, most of them voluntarily turning themselves in and seeking protection under asylum laws.

The unusually large numbers are what caused agents in the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector this week to release some migrant families at an early stage, the agency said. The releases bypassed the usual procedure in which newly arrived migrants are handed over after initial processing to another federal agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which may detain them or release them with some requirement that they will show up for future court appearances.

Instead, migrants traveling in families are being released directly by Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol’s parent agency, after being given papers instructing them to show up at a later date in immigration court. Local officials were told that Border Patrol facilities in the area were over capacity by about 2,100 migrants.

The Border Patrol said in a statement that the recent increase in apprehensions led to a “limited availability of space” at the agency’s facilities in the Rio Grande Valley sector. Out of concern for the safety of officers and migrants, the agency said it had begun to release families after giving them a notice to appear in immigration court.

“R.G.V. Sector will continue to coordinate with state and local stakeholders and nongovernmental organizations while these temporary measures are in place,” the agency said.

The recent releases resembled a similar series of unannounced mass releases of migrants late last year in El Paso and San Diego. This time, however, federal immigration agencies appeared to be coordinating more closely with local officials, who in December had been caught off guard.

The mass release in McAllen has caused a ripple effect along the Texas border. Officials in Brownsville, 60 miles east of McAllen, were told by Border Patrol officials to expect releases there in the coming days as well. It appeared that the Border Patrol intended to ease pressure on the McAllen shelter network by putting migrants on buses and dropping them off in Brownsville.

Tony Martinez, the mayor of Brownsville, said the city was prepared to open the downtown bus station for 24 hours to accommodate migrants. After their release, many migrants board buses to join their relatives already living elsewhere in the United States.

“At this particular point, we are having meetings on a daily basis so that we can monitor the numbers,” Mr. Martinez said.

The scramble comes as Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary, was scheduled to visit McAllen on Thursday. Some immigrant advocates and elected officials were skeptical of the timing of the releases, suggesting they were part of a Trump administration effort to justify the president’s descriptions of a border in crisis and his declaration of a national emergency. Border Patrol officials deny such claims.

Representative Vicente Gonzalez, a Texas Democrat whose district includes McAllen, criticized the mass release of migrants “without processing, without proper plans for housing and with no course of reasonable action” and questioned the administration’s motives.

“President Trump, Secretary Nielsen, and the entire administration have been presented with the truth — there is no crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border,” he said in the statement. “Their response? Create one.”

The nonprofit Texas Civil Rights Project, which has been conducting legal interviews with migrants released from Border Patrol custody in the Rio Grande Valley, said it appeared that the government was deliberately releasing them hundreds at a time. Some of those released recently reported that they had been detained for up to eight days, the group said. Normally, Customs and Border Protection holds newly detained migrants for about 72 hours.

Also raising suspicion was a recent drop in the number of migrants prosecuted for illegal border crossings at the federal courthouse in McAllen. Prosecutions during January and February ranged from about 400 to 700 per week. But the number of migrants brought to the courthouse dropped sharply last week, with only 176 prosecuted, and 88 had been charged during the first three days of this week, even though overall apprehensions remained high.

“Families should never be detained, but this practice must be met with skepticism,” Astrid Dominguez of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Border Rights Center said in a statement.

On Tuesday, Sister Norma Pimentel, the executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, posted an urgent plea for assistance on Facebook, asking for volunteers in both McAllen and Brownsville, as well chicken and vegetables to make soup, and cereal and bananas for breakfast.

Sister Pimentel later stood outside the respite center in a light rain to help newly arrived migrants off a bus. The respite center received more than 800 migrants on Monday, another 800 on Tuesday and more than 600 by Wednesday afternoon. Sister Pimentel said she was told by Border Patrol to expect up to 800 a day for an unspecified amount of time. In recent months, the most that Catholic Charities had assisted in one day was about 400.

“It’s not typical at all,” she said amid a crowd of migrants in the front lobby. “We were not expecting this. The numbers are very high. They just simply said they’re apprehending big numbers and they’re over capacity, and they need to create the space for those that are just arriving.”

She said city officials had identified two additional sites that can be used to house migrants if the numbers warrant. If those are not enough, the group plans to charter buses to Houston and possibly San Antonio, she said.

As crowded as the respite center was, the conditions in the Border Patrol facilities were even more congested, some migrants who had just been released said.

“There were so many people,” said Albertina, a 29-year-old Honduran mother who had just left the central processing center in McAllen. Albertina, who asked to be identified only by her first name, stood in line at the respite center holding her infant daughter, and said she was going to take a bus to join her family in Tennessee.

A 45-year-old man from Honduras who identified himself as David said he had arrived with his 15-year-old son at a Border Patrol facility on Saturday. It was packed, he said.

“Two thousand?” he called out to a friend. “What do you think?”

“Yes, must have been,” the friend said.

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