Nearly 2,900 immigrant children, most of them from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, have been released to sponsors in Harris County in the first seven months of the year, according to federal statistics.

The figures, released this week by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, provide the first glance yet into where they are being placed. The unprecedented arrival of roughly 63,000 mostly Central American children on the Texas border since October has created a crisis for the White House and Congress. The Obama administration has asked Congress for $3.7 billion in emergency funds to help process the cases and care for the children, but lawmakers left for summer recess without deciding how to deal with the issue. Though the arrivals have steadily dropped in July and August, the total amount is still more than nine times as many as were apprehended in 2011.

Harris County led the nation in the greatest amount of children resettled here, 2,866, followed by Los Angeles County, where 1,993 children were released to adult sponsors. In all, 37,477 children were released to sponsors between Jan. 1 and July 31 and 5,280 children were placed in Texas.

When children who are not accompanied by parents or legal guardians and are not from contiguous countries to the United States are apprehended by immigration authorities, federal law mandates that they are transferred to ORR’s custody, which provides shelter and care for them until they are placed with an appropriate adult guardian while they await their immigration hearings.