U.S. officials have been overwhelmed by the arrival of mostly unaccompanied and predominately Central American children who have illegally crossed into the United States.
The unprecedented flow of an estimated 47,000 children from October 2013 to May 2014 has been fueled by misinformation that the U.S. is no longer enforcing its immigration laws and is handing out permits that will allow them to stay.
White House officials say the border situation "is the result of a deliberate misinformation campaign" by criminal organizations and smuggling networks in Central America.
Analysts say poverty and lack of economic opportunity also explain why parents in violence-torn countries like El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras send their children alone on the long journey across Mexico so they can cross into the U.S.
Hundreds of the undocumented immigrant children are being held in detention centers near the Texas border and many more have been sent to a special center established in Arizona.
The Obama administration has announced hundreds of millions of dollars to be sent to Central American countries for various programs, including repatriation assistance for deportees.
Normally, Mexican citizens who are caught crossing the border illegally are returned fairly quickly and people from other countries are processed through the immigration court system. By law, however, children cannot be sent back alone and must be processed through the Office of Refugee Resettlement or put in the care of family members residing in the United States.
That normal flow of administrative processing is in a logjam now because so many children are in custody.
The Associated Press news service reported this week about a botched plan to house some of the children in a shuttered college campus in a tiny farming town in southern Virginia.
The residents of Lawrenceville, Virginia complained to federal officials this week that they were informed just days before hundreds of the Central American children were scheduled to arrive to be housed in the dormitories on the campus of St. Paul's College.
In a statement Friday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, citing residents' concerns in Lawrenceville, said it would look elsewhere to "house these vulnerable children."
St. Paul's closed a year ago. It was founded after the American Civil War to educate black men and women in the then-segregated southern region of the U.S.
