Federal agencies are scrambling to deploy an infusion of billions of dollars in border aid, amid a bitter political fight over the plight of Central American asylum seekers and fresh legal scrutiny that the money alone is unlikely to quell.

The rapid influx of funds from a just-passed $4.6 billion congressional aid package will place new demands on agencies that have said that thousands of migrants a day have strained their infrastructure to a breaking point. The agencies will have to rapidly scale up facilities in the face of persistent logistical obstacles.

At least one court will be gauging their progress, after U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee in Los Angeles on Friday ordered an independent monitor to “facilitate the prompt remediation of the conditions at issue” in a suit filed by immigrant-rights attorneys Wednesday, claiming the government is holding children in unhealthy and unsafe conditions along the southwest border. The suit came after those attorneys went public last week with their findings interviewing migrant children.

The debate has also been fueled by a searing photograph of a Salvadoran father and daughter who drowned in the Rio Grande trying to get across. Another facet is President Trump, who had threatened to launch a wave of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids if Congress didn’t act and to impose new tariffs on Mexico if arrivals at the southern border with the U.S. don’t drop.

Those issues expose a deeper philosophical rift. Immigrant-advocacy groups and Democrats contend that the U.S. has a moral and legal obligation to welcome Central American families fleeing poverty and violence. Mr. Trump and his administration argue that it is better to try to deter them from making a dangerous journey, including changing laws to force them to seek asylum closer to home.


Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan said Friday that preliminary figures for unauthorized crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border suggested a 25% decrease from May to June. He disclosed the estimate in a press conference praising the new funding, which he said his department would move to apply very quickly.

Acting U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan attending a news conference on Thursday in Guatemala City, Guatemala. Photo: luis echeverria/Reuters

He also said that the June reduction alone wasn’t acceptable and required further action, including a change in law that allows the U.S. to detain families together for 21 days or longer and an adjustment of the standards needed to lodge an initial asylum claim.

“While the funding will help us make an impact immediately on the border, it will only seek to mitigate the crisis. It’s not going to address the fundamental drivers,” Mr. McAleenan said. “The time to address the fundamental drivers of this crisis is now.”

Mr. McAleenan said his agency would get $1.5 billion for additional temporary facilities, transportation, medical care, food and other operations for the care, custody and processing of migrants. He said that DHS and the Department of Health and Human Services had been working to set up contracts for temporary facilities before the money came in, to which they could rapidly apply the new funding.


The bill that passed Thursday gives HHS about $2.9 billion for the care of children who enter the U.S. unaccompanied. It will focus the new resources on facilities to house teenage boys, in particular, Mr. McAleenan said.

Facilities at the border have largely been designed to hold single adults for hours, rather than families for days. Such cinder-block cells lack beds or showers and generally have only a small bench and toilet and sink. Space is limited in those permanent facilities and varies from station to station.

The Border Patrol has been standing up tents along the border to ease crowding in outdated stations. One such facility in Yuma, Ariz., has space for 500 people. They will sleep on mats—made in Mexico—in the air-conditioned structures.

Unaccompanied children are supposed to be removed from CBP custody within 72 hours and turned over to HHS. Agency officials say that money and capacity have been an issue, but so are requirements to create space for the particular ages and genders of children arriving.


Immigrant-advocacy groups said the administration had the ability to meet legal and humanitarian requirements even without extra funding, if it had been willing to reprioritize its money currently spent on detention and enforcement and drop policies that they argue have exacerbated the crisis.

Threatened with tariffs from the U.S., Mexico recently agreed to enforce its border with Guatemala. The country now has less than a month to contain surging migration from Central America. WSJ’s Santiago Perez travels to southern Mexico to see the effects of increased border enforcement. Photo Illustration: Drew Evans/ Video: Jake Nicol/​WSJ

Educational and recreational provision at longer-term shelters for children drew particular outrage from advocates, who accused the administration of contravening a court order in a bid to drive political momentum. They also said that the administration has added to its caseload by frightening away relatives who might otherwise come forward to take care of the children.

An HHS spokeswoman said Friday that the passage of the legislation meant the Office of Refugee Resettlement would now resume funding to providers to pay for education, legal, recreation and other services at shelters for unaccompanied alien children.

—Alejandro Lazo contributed to this article.


Write to Louise Radnofsky at louise.radnofsky@wsj.com and Alicia A. Caldwell at Alicia.Caldwell@wsj.com