White House seeks $3.7bn in extra funding to address child migrant crisis

Fast-track deportations and ankle bracelets will be deployed under a larger-than-expected White House plan to deal with an immigration crisis prompted by the arrival of more than 52,000 children at the southern US border since last October, trafficked into Texas from Central America.

The White House plan unveiled on Tuesday seeks $3.7bn in extra funding from Congress to pay for a “surge” of enforcement officials to handle the backlog, nearly double the $2bn anticipated when the administration first announced plans to seek extra help last month.

Senior administration officials, speaking to reporters on background, refused to put a target on how long they hoped it would now take to process cases, but revealed that those entering the country recently would be dealt with first in an effort to deal with a backlog blamed for encouraging more families to risk the hazardous journey through Mexico for El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

The extra money includes $116m to pay for the cost of transporting many unaccompanied children back to these countries, something the White House has been stressing is likely in most cases, as it seeks to counter perceptions that they are allowed to remain.

As expected, it is also seeking a change in human trafficking laws passed under president George W Bush to allow the speedy return of children from countries that are not immediate neighbours of the US.

A further $300m will be spent in Central America to support repatriation efforts, border control and help improve local security conditions which are blamed for driving many families to risk putting their children in the hands of smugglers.

The bulk of the money, some $1.8bn, will be spent by the Department of Health and Human Services on providing care for unaccompanied children while they await detention, although "detention alternatives" such as ankle bracelets will be increased. Officials did not respond to Guardian requests for clarification of what age children would be eligible for such electronic tracking devices.

But only $29m is earmarked under the plan for enhanced border security on the ground at the US border in Texas, something that Republicans say is a vital first step, but Obama insists is not the root cause of the crisis because many immigrants actively seek to hand themselves in.

Earlier, the president agreed to meet critics of his immigration policy during a trip to Texas this week, bowing to pressure for him to address an issue that is threatening to overwhelm his immigration reform efforts.

After an exchange of letters with Texas governor Rick Perry, the White House has invited Perry to join a roundtable discussion with “local faith leaders and elected officials” in Dallas on Wednesday.

Perry initially refused an offer to meet Obama at the airport during his visit to Austin, demanding a more substantive meeting, which prompted White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett to make the offer of the Dallas roundtable, according to letters obtained by the American Statesman newspaper.

The Texas governor, rumoured to be considering a second presidential run, has been leading criticism of the administration's handling of the crisis, calling last week for national guard troops to strengthen security on the border.

On Monday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the administration would be sending additional resources to the border “in the form of immigration judges, ICE lawyers, asylum officials and others that can help us more rapidly and efficiently process the immigration cases that are currently backlogged as it relates to a surge that we've seen at the south-west border.”

In increasingly tough language, Earnest also said many of the children seeking asylum in the US were likely to be turned back once their claims are processed.

“It is fair to say that it’s unlikely that most of the kids who go through this process will not qualify. It’s unlikely that most of the kids who go through this process will qualify for humanitarian relief, which is to say that most of them will not have a legal basis – will not be found through that court process to have a legal basis to remain in this country,” said Earnest.