This, it is safe to say, is not what President Obama had in mind when it came to election year politics about immigration. On Monday, Mr. Obama will ask Congress for $2 billion to help his administration speed deportations of the tens of thousands of families and unaccompanied minors from Central America now flooding across the Texas border, according to a New York Times report.

The president had hoped this would be the year that a comprehensive immigration reform bill at last became law after the Senate passed its version last summer.

At the very least, he hoped to tweak immigration enforcement through an executive action to make deportations more humane.

Instead, Monday’s move is an acknowledgment that coyotes and cartels trafficking undocumented immigrants across the US border are exploiting several US vulnerabilities simultaneously, creating a humanitarian crisis.

Border authorities have fast-track provisions to deport undocumented Mexican immigrants, largely because the two countries share a border, making deportation simple.

President Obama will ask Congress to give the Department of Homeland Security additional powers to speed deportations to Central America, since most immigrants in the current surge are coming from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

Until this month, the United States had only one detention center for families, meaning that many families were freed on their own recognizance until deportation hearings began.

Now, federal officials have had to open shelters on three military bases for unaccompanied minors and a new detention center for families in New Mexico.