The fate of 2,300 children wrested from their parents at the US border with Mexico remained unclear Friday two days after Donald Trump ordered an end to migrant family separations, as the president accused Democrats of spinning "phony" tales of suffering for electoral gain.

While the US leader bowed to global outrage over the splitting of families, conflicting messages were contributing to a sense of chaos in the handling of the crisis.

The administration remained under siege amid continued accounts of parents unable to find their children and no system in place for reuniting them.

Government agencies were unable to say what would happen to the children already sent to tent camps and other facilities spread across the country while their parents were charged with immigration offenses.

In a possible indication of the scope of the crackdown the Trump administration envisions, Time magazine reported that the US Navy is preparing plans to build detention centers for tens of thousands of immigrants on remote bases in support of the president's "zero tolerance" policy.

On Thursday, divided congressional Republicans failed to pass one immigration reform bill, and a second proposal that includes language ending family separations was put off until next week.

Some reunifications were taking place, though it was unclear whether they involved the 700 children taken from parents between October and April, or the 2,300 since the mandatory prosecution of illegal border-crossers, whose children were taken away as a result, began in early May.

Others remained in painful limbo.

One woman, Cindy Madrid from El Salvador, repeatedly dictated her US-resident sister's phone number to her six-year-old daughter before she crossed the border and the family was separated.

The child was one of those heard crying out -- and reciting the number -- in an audio recording reportedly made inside a detention center, which galvanized opposition to the separations.

"It's maddening because at every moment I ask myself, 'How is she? Has she eaten? Are they taking care of her? Do they shower her?'" Madrid told CNN Thursday from a detention center in Port Isabel, Texas.

"There are many more rooms full of women going through the same thing," she said.

Tens of thousands of people from impoverished, violence-stricken Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador and parts of Mexico have crossed the US border since last year requesting asylum.

Trump's crackdown hasn't deterred them, at least not yet.