President Barack Obama will on Friday use a summit with the leaders of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala at the White House to urge Congress to authorise an emergency package of resources to tackle the surge in child migrants arriving at the border.



House Republicans and Senate Democrats have proposed competing plans for responding to the uptick in mostly unaccompanied children who have been crossing from Mexico into the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. There is mounting concern that a compromise might not be reached before both chambers go into summer recess at the end of next week.



More than 57,000 children fleeing the violence and poverty in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, have been detained by border agents since last October, a major escalation compared to recent years. However, preliminary data released by the Obama administration earlier this week revealed that around just 150 children are now being apprehended at the border daily – less than half the 355 minors who were being detained, on average, in June.



The administration believes a concerted public relations drive aimed at discouraging families in Central America from sending their children may account for the reduction.



However, officials have said they do not know whether the recent decline will be part of a longer-term trend, and they believe urgent fixes are needed to handle the thousands of children who have already arrived, overwhelming border authorities. The administration also wants to intensify its efforts aimed at discouraging Central American children from making the perilous journey to the US.



One plan, which the New York Times reported is being actively considered by the administration, would enable minors in Honduras – the source of most unaccompanied child migrants, many of whom are fleeing gang violence – to apply for refugee status in their home country.



Potentially, the plan could offer thousands of young Hondurans a sanctioned route to the US, with a receiving station in the capital, Tegucigalpa, that would screen asylum applications. The White House declined to confirm whether the plan was indeed being considered.



However, the Arizona congressman David Schweikert, one of the most vocal Republican critics of the administration's handling of the border issue, told the Guardian he was open to the idea. “I’m not hostile to it," he said of the plan, but said he would be concerned that existing legal standards for granting asylum should not be watered down.



The draft of the plan cited in the Times report noted that 64.7 percent of the unaccompanied minors who applied for asylum this year got it, which suggests that immigration officials mostly believed applicants' claims of imminent danger to their lives in Central America – the legal threshold for refugee status.



Schweikert said by that measure a "stunning amount" of Honduran refugees could gain access to the country, and stressed the administration should avoid giving special treatment to its Central American neighbours.



The White House has requested $3.7bn (£2.2bn) from Congress in emergency spending to expand detention facilities, pay for more immigration judges and intensify its “deterrence strategy” in the region. Neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to grant the full sum, which was considered the opening salvo in a prolonged negotiation.



A working group set up by the Republican House Speaker, John Boehner, proposed granting the administration an additional $1.5bn, as part of a package that includes dispatching National Guard troops to the border and amending a 2008 anti-trafficking law, passed under George W Bush, which critics say significantly slows deportation of children to Central America.



Senate Democrats, in contrast, introduced legislation authored by Barbara Mikulski, the chairwoman of the appropriations committee, to grant the administration $2.7bn. However, it is the Republican-proposed reform of the anti-trafficking law, which would effectively allow the administration to fast-track deportations of Central American children, as now occurs with Mexicans, that is facing the fiercest resistance from Democrats.



Under existing rules, children from countries that do not have a direct border with the US – including El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala – must first be screened by a US border control agent, who cannot hold them for more than 72 hours before they are transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which resettles them while they wait for their case to be heard.



Democrats argue that suspending those special protections enshrined in the anti-trafficking law would deny children due legal process and enable the forced, mass removal of thousands of desperate children, without sufficient regard for the risks that might await them in their countries of origin.



Meanwhile, the White House has found itself in the unusual position of siding with Republicans over the issue of the anti-trafficking law, having made clear it wants the law changed so the secretary for homeland security, Jeh Johnson, has the discretion to expedite removals.



Another complication is that both Republican and Democratic leaders are struggling to rally support in their own ranks. In the Senate, the Democratic bill includes provisions unrelated to the border crisis – such as support for Israel and funds for tackling wildfires – to help attract support from across the aisle. But some leading Democrats, including Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, have signalled the legislation does not have their support.



Similarly, conservatives in the House of Representatives have voiced a reluctance to pass any immigration bill that would increase the resources available to the Obama administration. Boehner has scheduled a meeting on Friday morning to determine whether the Republican proposal has sufficient support within his own party to pass.



The Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz, who holds considerable sway over Tea Party-aligned congressmen in the House, has reportedly urged them to block their own party’s legislation.



Schweikert is one of the leading Republican proponents of sending the National Guard to the south-west border to handle the crisis and has introduced legislation that would dispatch some 10,000 reservists, primarily to take over child support services and enable border patrol agents to refocus their efforts on protecting the border.



His plan would be the equivalent of 66 military reservists for every child currently arriving on the border each day.



The White House has resisted the calls to send in the National Guard but on Thursday a team from the Pentagon and the Department for Homeland Security spent a day on the border assessing whether such a move was necessary.



El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, which are lobbying for more funds from Washington to alleviate the endemic social disorder that is pushing children to flee, have offered their full cooperation with the US. The presidents of Honduras and Guatemala met with both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill on Thursday, in preparation for Friday's summit.



Asked earlier this week about the prospects for an agreement, John McCain, one of Arizona’s Republican senators, was not optimistic. “We're going to be at an impasse and we will have earned even greater disdain from the American people than we already have,” he said.