House Republicans are poised to delay their August recess by one day, as they frantically scramble to pass a border security bill.

After a chaotic afternoon, which saw the GOP leadership suddenly pull their legislation from the House floor because of flagging support, lawmakers planned a Friday morning meeting at 9 a.m. to try to plot a path forward. Plans are in flux, and subject to change at any minute, aides and lawmakers warned.

In a Thursday afternoon meeting, Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) heard from a number of Republicans who did not want to leave Washington until a package passed the House — a sentiment reflected by nearly every lawmaker who emerged after the meeting ended.

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“I’m willing to stay here ‘til the cows come home,” said Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.). “Use your metaphor — hell freezes over, cows come home.”

But all day Thursday, the votes in support of the original $659 million border bill faded away, and it’s unclear if Scalise will be able to recapture votes in support of the package. Thursday was his first day as whip.

Lawmakers were supposed to be heading home Thursday to begin a five-week recess. But the House schedule was in such flux that members walked off the floor canceling and rebooking flights to go home.

After the bill was pulled, Boehner (R-Ohio) was surrounded on the House floor by a dozen colleagues while incoming McCarthy (R-Calif.) was also talking to fellow lawmakers.

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Democrats in the Senate, who are struggling to pass their own border bill, took the opportunity to poke the Republican House. When asked whether he was surprised Boehner didn’t seem to have the votes for the GOP bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid quipped: “No. Not the first time.”

The GOP legislation, which was rewritten twice to attract support, had trouble getting off the ground, and if the House doesn’t vote, lawmakers will head back to their districts to hear from voters with a crisis raging at the border.

The turmoil is stunning considering how far to the right the GOP leadership pulled this bill. Boehner, McCarthy and Scalise, the new GOP whip, crafted a process that would have given the House a vote on legislation to stop the Obama administration from expanding its deferred deportation program. But even that wasn’t enough.

The episode is most embarrassing for Scalise, whose allies crowed this week about running a more effective whip organization than McCarthy, the longtime Republican vote counter who will now be the majority leader.

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The political impact of this decision is not clear, but if the House doesn’t vote, Democrats will be able to say that the GOP left Washington for an entire month without passing legislation to address the influx of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border.

The challenges facing the House bill were evident earlier Thursday, when hard-right conservatives indicated that they still weren’t appeased by the last-minute offer of a vote on the immigration deferral program — known as DACA — in exchange for moving forward on the border funding bill.

This bloc demanded tougher border-security and immigration provisions in the supplemental package while also pressing for the language rolling back DACA to be included in the funding bill.

“I don’t like it,” Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) said of the two-step strategy Thursday morning. “We need to get rid of DACA, and the bill itself is bad.”

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Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), another conservative, had already started to circulate a Dear Colleague letter warning Republicans against the stand-alone vote on DACA.

More than 57,000 unaccompanied children, mostly from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, have been apprehended at the southern border since October — exhausting government resources and leading federal agencies to warn that they will begin running out of money in August to deal with the crisis.

Beyond providing funds for the border, the House bill would have revised a 2008 anti-trafficking law that has, in practice, made it more difficult to deport children from countries other than Mexico or Canada. The legislation also called for bolstering National Guard presence on the border.

The White House blasted the House’s plan on Thursday after leaders tacked on the DACA vote. The deferral program was announced by President Barack Obama in June 2012 in the middle of his reelection bid. More than 550,000 young undocumented immigrants who grew up in the United States have been protected from deportation and gotten work permits under the program.

But Republicans have blamed DACA for contributing to the current crisis on the border , arguing that it sends a message to children from abroad that they, too, could be allowed to stay here lawfully.

“It is extraordinary that the House of Representatives, after failing for more than a year to reform our broken immigration reform system, would vote to restrict a law enforcement tool that the Department of Homeland Security uses to focus resources on key enforcement priorities like public safety and border security, and provide temporary relief from deportation for people who are low priorities for removal,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.

House Democratic leadership pressured its rank and file throughout the week to reject the border spending bill, denying the GOP of votes to offset defections in their own part. Most Democrats raised humanitarian objections to changing the 2008 trafficking law.

“Clearly, many factors led these desperate parents to hand off their children to complete strangers with the hope they make their way to safety here,” Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) said. “We ought to consider the complicated policy questions and provide a carefully considered solution. Yet these policy changes reveal a knee-jerk response coupled with another bill to deport children who are already in the U.S.”

Burgess Everett contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this piece misstated the cost of the border bill.