SAN PEDRO SULA Honduras (Reuters) - The United States deported a group of Honduran children on Monday in the first flight since President Barack Obama pledged to speed up the process of sending back illegal immigrant children from Central America.

Fleeing violence and poverty, record numbers of children from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala have crossed into the United States over the past year, testing U.S. border facilities and sparking intense debate about how to solve the problem.

Monday’s charter flight from New Mexico to San Pedro Sula, the city with the highest murder rate in the world, deported 17 Honduran adult women, as well as 12 girls and nine boys, aged between 18 months and 15 years, the Honduran government said.

Leaving the airport and looking happy, the children slowly got onto a bus, playing with balloons they had been given.

During the eight months ending June 15, some 52,000 children were detained at the U.S. border with Mexico, most of them from Central America. That was double the previous year’s tally and tens of thousands more are believed to have slipped through.

The flight departed as Obama faces increasing pressure to address the surge of unaccompanied minors.

Immigrant advocates have called on the president to address the humanitarian needs of the migrants. Republicans in Congress have blamed the crisis on Obama’s immigration policies and have called on him to secure the border.

Obama’s administration has stressed that Central American children who cross the border illegally will be sent home, and last week said it would speed up the deportation process.

Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala have suffered from gang violence and the predations of Mexican drug cartels using the region as a staging post for their trafficking operations.

Honduran President Juan Hernandez, in an interview published on Monday, blamed U.S. drug policy for sparking violence and ramping up migration to the United States. [ID:nL2N0PP0OQ] His wife urged the United States to do more to help.

“The countries consuming drugs need to support (us) and take joint responsibility because if there wasn’t demand, there wouldn’t be production and we wouldn’t be living like we are,” Ana Hernandez said as she awaited the children at the airport.

Obama’s administration projects that without government action, more than 150,000 unaccompanied children under the age of 18 could flee the three nations next year.

The proposed actions will test Obama’s ability to negotiate effectively with Republican lawmakers who have blocked much of his agenda ahead of a November election when they hope to capture the U.S. Senate from his Democratic Party.