TEXAS — Two tours, one issue.

Lawmakers are traveling to Texas on Friday to tour facilities used to house migrant children amid the surge in border crossings by at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Republican Texas senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn will lead a delegation of 17 GOP senators on a tour of a US Customs and Border Protection facility located in Donna, Texas. 

Earlier this week, the Biden administration released photos and video from inside the facility. The photos released by Customs and Border Protection show children – most wearing masks – sleeping on mats with silver emergency blankets in crowded, sectioned-off areas of the Donna, Texas, facility. Other images show them standing in line for food and receiving health checks, while some pictures show storage of things like food and linens.

Axios on Monday first published a series of photos taken inside the Donna facility, the largest Border Patrol detention center. The photos were released by Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat from the border city of Laredo.

Cuellar said he released the photos in part because the administration has refused media access to the Donna tent. He said he also wanted to draw attention to the extreme challenges that border agents face in watching so many children, sometimes for a week or longer despite the Border Patrol's three-day limit on detaining minors.

“We ought to take care of those kids like they’re our own kids,” Cuellar said.

Meanwhile, about four hours northwest of Donna, in Carrizo Springs, Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) is set to lead a delegation of six U.S. House members on a tour of a Health and Human Services facility. Castro said included in the tour will be Reps. Pete Aguilar, Ilhan Omar, Barbara Lee, Jimmy Panetta, Jennifer Wexton, and Rashida Tlaib.

There are news conferences scheduled following both tours, but cameras as not being permitted in the facilities.

At his first presidential press conference Thursday, President Biden blamed seasonal spikes and the Trump administration’s lack of preparation for the overwhelming number of migrants crossing the border in recent weeks, though he also defended his speedy rollback of the previous administration’s restrictions, including one that turned away unaccompanied minors who reach the U.S.

“I guess I should be flattered people are coming because I'm the nice guy,” he said.

“The idea that I'm going to say – which I would never do – that an unaccompanied child ends up at the border [and] we're just gonna let them starve to death and stand the other side,” President Biden said in his first formal press conference. “No previous administration’s done it either, except Trump. I'm not going to do it.”

The majority of migrants are being turned back at the border under a public health order put in place last year under President Trump, citing the pandemic. Biden has kept the order in place, except for unaccompanied children, which has overwhelmed border agents and other officials working to care for the children. More than 16,000 were in government care as of Wednesday night.

“We’re building back up the capacity that should have been maintained and built upon, that Trump dismantled. It’s going to take time,” the president said.

But Biden also said that families should continue to be turned away. Some have been released into the U.S. in recent weeks since Mexico can’t accept all of them.

“They should all be going back,” he said.

Claiming asylum at the border due to a credible fear is a legal way to enter the U.S., but amid an overwhelming number of people, the Biden administration has said it hopes to reduce the need through changes in the asylum process and through long term solutions within Central American countries.

Biden also promised a solution at the border “very shortly,” which he said will include an effort to get more kids out of border detention centers, though it’s unclear how the solution will go beyond adding shelter capacity. He also said that he told his immigration advisors to “focus on the most vulnerable immediately.”

In the meantime, his administration is working on changes to the asylum system to decrease the number who claim their fear at the U.S.-Mexico border itself, the president has said previously.

Long term, the administration is working with Central American countries — Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico — to address the root causes of migration.

On Wednesday, the president tapped Vice President Kamala Harris as the point person on those discussions. U.S. officials also traveled to Mexico and Guatemala this week.

“I can't guarantee you we're gonna solve everything,” President Biden said Thursday. “But I can guarantee we can make everything better. We can make it better.”

Spectrum News 1 has crews in Carrizo Springs and Donna and will have updates as they become available.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.