On a conference call with reporters, Cecilia Muñoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said the administration was moving to “push back” on “misinformation that is being deliberately planted by criminal organizations, by smuggling networks, about what people can expect if they come to the United States.”

In Guatemala, Mr. Biden met with that country’s president, Otto Pérez Molina; the president of El Salvador, Salvador Sánchez Cerén; and senior officials from Honduras and Mexico. But Mr. Biden got a taste of the disconnect the United States often has with regional leaders, who fault the failure of American immigration policy for driving children to join their parents in the United States no matter the cost. In his public remarks, Mr. Pérez Molina, while recognizing that the American Congress has to act, reiterated a request for a temporary worker program and a way for Guatemalans living in the United States illegally to be able to stay.

Mr. Biden ignored those points in his comments and emphasized the social causes of the migration.

“The United States recognizes that a key part of the solution to this problem is to address the root causes of this immigration in the first place,” he said, turning to address Mr. Pérez Molina directly several times. “Especially poverty, insecurity and the lack of the rule of law, so the people can stay and thrive in their own communities, so a parent doesn’t feel so desperate that they put their child in the hands of a criminal network and say take him, and take her to the United States.”

The Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernández, sent a top aide to the meeting but skipped it himself in order to watch Honduras play in the World Cup in Brazil. Tension with Honduras has been growing over public complaints by Mr. Hernández regarding what he sees as a lack of American will to help stem the violence from a drug war he believes American consumption habits have caused.

Mr. Hernández’s absence drew an unusually blunt rebuke from the American ambassador on a Honduran radio program. “I know he is in Brazil, and today there is a very important game, but the country has priorities for which the top leader should be present,” said the ambassador, Lisa J. Kubiske.

The new American funding includes $40 million over five years for Guatemala to improve neighborhood security programs, $25 million over five years for El Salvador to open 77 youth centers offering alternatives to joining gangs for teenagers and $18.5 million for Honduras for police training.