WASHINGTON — House Republicans announced Tuesday they will recommend dispatching the National Guard to South Texas and speeding Central American youths back home as their response to the immigration crisis that’s engulfing the border and testing Washington’s ability to respond.

The recommendations, to come from a working group established by House Speaker John Boehner, will set up a clash with leading Democrats who oppose changing U.S. law to eliminate automatic immigration hearings for Central American kids and return them more quickly to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, where some areas are overrun by brutal gangs.

Additional Images

Deborah Pfaff joins other protesters near the entrance to a juvenile facility in Oracle, Ariz., where federal officials delayed a bus of Central American children from arriving. Pfaff was one of dozens of protesters on both sides of the immigration debate who showed up in the town near Tucson on Tuesday following reports that 40 children would arrive. The Associated Press

With Democrats and the White House under growing pressure from immigration advocates to hold firm against the Republican approach, a solution for the growing crisis of tens of thousands of unaccompanied children showing up at the U.S.-Mexico border is looking increasingly elusive with three weeks left before Congress leaves Washington for an annual August recess.

“It’s a critical situation and if we don’t deal with it urgently but well, done right, we’re facing a crisis of just huge proportions,” said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., who traveled to Honduras and Guatemala over the weekend with members of the House Republican working group including its leader, Rep. Kay Granger of Texas.

Granger, Diaz-Balart and others said their proposals would include sending the National Guard to help overwhelmed Border Patrol agents, increasing immigration judges, adding assistance to Central American nations and changing a 2008 trafficking victims law that guarantees hearings for Central American youths. The law has the practical result of letting the young people stay in the country for years as their cases move through backlogged immigration courts.

At the same time Republicans are working to significantly pare down President  Obama’s $3.7 billion emergency spending request for the border, hoping to act quickly on a smaller spending bill along with the package of policy changes.

“What I will not do is vote for a blank check for the president for something that will not solve the problem,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who has written a bill along with fellow Texan Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat, to make some of the same changes the House working group is proposing.

Granger said the average immigration case takes 18 months to five years to go through the court process, even as more than 57,000 unaccompanied children have arrived at the border since October. “That’s just not acceptable so we’ve got to change that,” she said.

With Republicans refusing to support a border spending bill without major policy changes attached, and Democrats refusing to support one with them, any final outcome was unclear with midterm elections nearing.

Meanwhile the children keep coming, with 90,000 expected by the end of the fiscal year. They flee violence, but also are drawn by rumors that once here, they can stay.

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