Flow of Child Immigrants at Border Slowing for Now

Washington: The flood of children crossing the Mexican border illegally and without their parents has slowed down in recent weeks, two senior Obama administration officials said.

Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas have found fewer than 500 children crossing the border illegally this week, the officials said on Friday. Last month, agents arrested as many as 2,000 child immigrants a week.

The Obama administration has been struggling to deal with a flood of more than 57,000 children traveling alone since Oct. 1. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said earlier this month that as many as 90,000 unaccompanied child immigrants could be apprehended by the end of the budget year in September. Most of the children are from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

The volume of child immigrants has significantly taxed resources at the Homeland Security and Health and Human Services departments in recent months and prompted President Barack Obama to ask Congress to approve an emergency $3.7 billion spending bill to deal with the situation he has called an "urgent humanitarian crisis."

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to publicly discuss the latest trends in border arrests, said on Friday it's too soon to know what has led to drop in border arrests. They said illegal border crossings along the Mexican border tend to slow during the summer.

Customs and Border Protection has launched a public relations campaign to warn would-be immigrants and their families in Central America that the trip to the US border is dangerous and immigrant children will face deportation after they are apprehended. But since the trip through Mexico can take weeks or even months, recent border crossers are unlikely to have seen much of the campaign.

Obama is scheduled to host a White House meeting with the presidents of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala next week to discuss the problem.