The US House of Representatives on Friday approved 694 million US dollars in emergency funding for tackling the child migrant crisis after a late-night session.

The lawmakers voted 223-189 to pass the package, and many of them had to break the vacation mode and returned to the Capital for the matter even as the five-week summer break already started on the day.

However, the just-approved emergency funding is just a fraction of the 3.7 billion dollars requested by President Barack Obama to handle the crisis.

Earlier in the day, Obama urged House members to craft a workable bill to the border issue before leaving Washington for summer recess.

He threatened that if the Congress fails to pass additional funding to deal with the influx of child migrants and families from Central America, he will have to act on his own.

"I'm going to have to act alone because we don't have enough resources," he said.

Since October, more than 57,000 unaccompanied minors have been apprehended crossing illegally into the United States through the southwest border. The vast majority of them are from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

The Democrats and Republicans are quarrelling over the issue. While Democrats argue the massive influx of unaccompanied minors is largely due to bad conditions in their homelands, Republicans say Obama administration policies and lax enforcement are the primary pull factor.