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By SEUNG MIN KIM | 9/7/14 9:39 PM EDT

President Barack Obama warned of a humanitarian crisis at the border. Hill Democrats privately feuded with the Obama administration over speeding up deportations. And House Republicans scrambled and delayed recess to overcome internal disputes and pass a border bill.

But for all the border-crisis drama that engulfed Washington this summer, lawmakers are returning to the Capitol this week from their five-week break having done nothing.

And all the maneuvering didn’t really matter.

The surge of young migrant children at the southern border has vanished from the forefront of Washington’s radar as other crises arose, both domestically and abroad. Furthermore, the center of the immigration debate has shifted to Obama’s decision to delay executive action that would stall deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants already here. That decision most likely wouldn’t directly affect the young minors coming over the southern border, although the influx of children helped upend the politics of immigration that led to Obama’s decision Saturday.

Meanwhile, the number of young immigrants being apprehended has plunged dramatically since June, agencies have shuffled some funds and the White House has declared the crisis at the Texas border over — for now.

“It’s evaporated because the House passed a bill,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) said of the border crisis. “The president couldn’t blame Republicans and so, lo and behold — all of a sudden — he finds the money.”

Though the White House asked for $3.7 billion in extra spending earlier this summer for the border crisis, it’s now unlikely that significant new funds are needed right away to deal with the unaccompanied minors, according to several congressional aides.

That’s a far cry from just a few weeks ago, when the Republican-led House approved a $694 million package that boosted funding for the border crisis — legislation that was headed nowhere due to Democratic objections in the Senate and the White House. Senate Democrats insisted on a $2.7 billion measure for the border, but the bill was killed on a procedural move.

The border crisis — concentrated in the Rio Grande Valley — has largely subsided for several reasons. The number of unaccompanied migrant children coming to the border has significantly dropped, from more than 10,600 apprehended in June to just over 3,000 in August.

One major culprit is the hot summer weather, which could discourage migrants from making the journey from Central America to the United States. But at the same time, the Obama administration has engaged in an aggressive public-relations offensive in Latin America to warn parents against sending their children here. And immigration courts nationwide have expedited processing cases of the migrants recently caught at the border, putting those hearings ahead of others in line.

“The system is, by and large, working,” said Kevin Appleby, the director of migration policy for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “If anything, they need to ensure that the children are receiving the appropriate due process and we’re not violating our own law or international law.”

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said recently that the border crisis was over “for now,” but he warned that the migration numbers were unpredictable and could spike again.

“Unfortunately, we haven’t gotten the kind of support in the form of resources that are necessary from the United States Congress,” Earnest said. “The president put forward a very detailed proposal for the kinds of resources that he would like to see that could be used to try to prevent those numbers from increasing again.”

Congress must now pass a short-term spending bill by the end of the month to keep funding federal agencies, and lawmakers and aides are eager to resolve that quickly and avoid a replay of last year’s 16-day government shutdown. The continuing resolution is expected to be released Tuesday and fund the government through mid-December.

After warning that federal coffers would begin to run dry starting in August, agencies began shifting money to ensure enough was available for the border crisis. For example, the Department of Homeland Security reprogrammed $405 million away from other DHS agencies to provide more money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.

Late last month, the Obama administration asked Congress for so-called anomalies within the short-term funding measure that would allow the Justice Department, Health and Human Services and the DHS to maintain current operations — requests that were largely technical, an Appropriations Committee aide said.

The dissipating crisis has also strengthened suspicions from some lawmakers, particularly conservatives, about whether additional money was ever needed to deal with the surge of unaccompanied migrant children.

“There has never been a compelling need for Congress to do anything,” Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) said. “The need has been for the president to obey the law and enforce it.”

Republicans largely blamed the border crisis on a 2012 program from the Obama administration that halted deportations for hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants. Democrats disputed that as the cause, pointing to violence in the three countries that were sending the most children — Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras — as a key reason for the surge.

Obama had been seeking to protect even more undocumented immigrants currently in the United States from deportations, but White House officials said Saturday that the president will hold off on any executive action until the end of the year, heeding calls from vulnerable Senate Democrats worried about a potential political backlash in November.

Although the border crisis has largely quieted, other lawmakers are still pressing for more action for the children who are still coming illegally to the border.

“Maybe you can downgrade that from a crisis to a problem, but it’s still a problem,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who represents the Rio Grande Valley. “We just can’t say ‘OK, let’s go, it’s done, let’s move onto something else.’ I don’t think that’s the correct way of doing this.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/border-crisis-funds-110691.html#ixzz3CjwzcI61