Vice President Joe Biden suggested Wednesday that the United States has somehow adopted all of the illegal unaccompanied minors who have streamed across the border in recent months.

“These are not somebody else’s kids. These are our kids,” Biden said.

Appealing to lawyers to help represent unaccompanied minors, Biden said it would be a difficult task for an overburdened legal system to assess whether children apprehended on the border meet the criteria for refugee status and whether returning them would risk their physical demise.

Biden’s remarks to people in the legal services community reflected the sense of urgency the Obama administration sees in securing legal representation for more than 57,000 unaccompanied children despite its inability to persuade Congress to agree on emergency funds to address the influx. The White House said fewer than half of those children currently have lawyers.