President Obama is scheduled to make a speech addressing the immigration crisis along the U.S. border with Mexico in Texas Wednesday evening.

Over the past few weeks, the immigration crisis has intensified as dozens of undocumented children, mostly from Central America, have been caught trying to make their way into the country along the Southwest border each day.

So far, over 52,000 children and teenagers have been caught crossing the Southwest border illegally over the past nine months, which is nearly twice the size of last year's total, reports the LA Times. More than 37,000 children were apprehended this year just in Rio Grande Valley alone.

By law, each child is required to undergo an immigration hearing before they can be deported, which is a process that usually takes two years. As a result, the government must house the children before they can be sent back to their native country in order to protect minors from being sent home and forced into labor or the sex trade.

"While they wait for that immigration hearing, the law also requires that they be held in the least restrictive custody setting," said Marc Rosenblum of the Migration Policy Institute, according to NPR. "What that means in practice is that most of these kids are getting placed with family members in the U.S. while they wait for an immigration hearing."

However, to help ease the humanitarian crisis along the border, the Obama administration has asked Congress for more than $2 billion "to speed up the process, but also to help warehouse the children while they're awaiting deportation," NPR reports.

In the meantime, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has blamed the influx of unaccompanied minors from Central America being picked up by the Border Patrol on the president.

"This is a failure of diplomacy," Perry said told ABC during an interview. "It's a failure of leadership from the administration in Washington, D.C."

Watch President Obama's speech live here.