White House sending team to Texas-Mexico border

WASHINGTON (KTRK) -- Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and senior officials from the White House, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Departments of Defense, Justice, and Health and Human Services, will travel to Texas today.

The group will visit U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities and Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland to view the ongoing government-wide response to the influx of unaccompanied children across the Southwest border.

In recent months, more than 47,000 unaccompanied minors from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have entered illegally. It has overwhelmed boarder patrol and state resources to care and house them while they go through the immigration process. Some of those kids have been shipped to other states.

Johnson along with other officials will take tours of the detention centers. The announcement comes one day after Texas Governor Rick Perry and other top Republican leaders announced the state would spend an extra $1.3 million a week ramping up patrols along the border with Mexico.

This humanitarian disaster has turned political lots of finger pointing. Governor Rick Perry is lashing out at the federal government and demanding help, saying this is their responsibility.

"It's a complicated problem down there. Not just the immigration but the crime as well. And it is a federal responsibility, but Texas has a responsibility to keep our citizen safe and that's what we're trying to do," said Texas Speaker of the House Joe Straus.

So far, the White House has not released a schedule of when the Texas tour will start.

ABC-13 reporter Foti Kallergis is in San Antonio waiting for Secretary Johnson's arrival and will have the latest on Eyewitness News this morning.