DACA and the Surge in Unaccompanied Minors at the US‐Mexico Border
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12250 |
| Date | 01 August 2016 |
| Published date | 01 August 2016 |
DACA and the Surge in Unaccompanied
Minors at the US-Mexico Border
Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes* and Thitima Puttitanun**
ABSTRACT
Apprehensions of unaccompanied minors from Central American countries have been on the
rise since 2008, but news reports particularly caught up with the increase after 2012. Some
politicians posited that the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) contributed
to the surge by creating the expectation that children would be allowed to stay in the country.
Immigration advocates, however, believe that the two are not related. Using data on apprehen-
sions of unaccompanied minors by border patrol sector, nationality and year, we find that
DACA did not significantly impact those apprehensions. Rather, the 2008 Williams Wilber-
force Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, along with violence in the originating
countries and economic conditions in both the countries of origin and the United States,
emerge as some of the key determinants of the recent surge in unaccompanied minors appre-
hended along the southwest US-Mexico border.
INTRODUCTION
The number of unaccompanied alien children crossing the southern border of the United States has
grown drastically since 2008, capturing congressional attention and leading to a number of hearings
in the House (Rempdell, 2015). Figure 1 depicts the recent surge in apprehensions of unaccompa-
nied alien children from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. In addition to its growth,
it has been noted that the composition of the flow of unaccompanied alien children changed over
the time period under consideration. While the vast majority of these children used to come from
Mexico, the surge in unaccompanied minors observed in recent years has been dominated by chil-
dren originating from three other Central American countries: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Hon-
duras.
1
A confluence of factors, including extreme violence, endemic poverty, increasingly
sophisticated smuggling networks and the desire to reunite with family members in the United
States, have fuelled this growth. Additionally, it has been argued that legislative changes, in partic-
ular, the 2008 Williams Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA)
of President Bush era and the more recent Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)
announced by President Obama on 15 June 2012, might have been used by smugglers to sway
migrants with false promises that they will be able to stay in the United States once they get into
the country (Hing, 2014; Rempdell, 2015). The TVPRA legislated that unaccompanied minors from
non-contiguous countries needed to be released into the custody of family or sponsors while they
await a deportation hearing in front of a judge, thus enabling children to stay in the United States
for what became, in most instances, years. Under DACA, individuals approved for consideration of
* San Diego State University.
** Kasetsart University, Bangkok.
doi: 10.1111/imig.12250
©2016 The Authors
International Migration ©2016 IOM
International Migration Vol. 54 (4) 2016
ISS N 00 20- 7985 Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
deferred action were granted a renewable two-year reprieve from deportation proceedings and
become eligible for work authorization in the United States. Because of the timing of DACA and
the publicized surge in unaccompanied minors coming from Central America after 2012, Senator
Sessions have called for a vote on DACA suspension.
2
Yet, so far, we still lack a good understanding of the role that DACA or, for that matter, the
TVPRA might have played, if any, on such inflows.
In this article, we explore the determinants behind the recent increase in inflows of unaccom-
panied alien children from Central America. In particular, given President Obama’s second execu-
tive order expanding DACA programme, we pay special attention to the effect that DACA might
have played on the surge of unaccompanied minors originating from Mexico, El Salvador, Guate-
mala and Honduras in recent years. Because one of the requirements of DACA involved being
present in the United States, DACA might have encouraged undocumented immigration. Addi-
tionally, DACA could have stimulated inflows of unauthorized children if it somehow fostered
beliefs that other deferred deportation concessions or even permanent amnesties would occur in
the future.
Establishing the effect of DACA on the surge of unaccompanied minors is important for sev-
eral reasons. First, the rapid increase has resulted in children often being held in overcrowded
facilities with adult asylum seekers, thus increasing their difficulty in gaining access to proper
legal and medical care (Binford, 2013; Stinchcomb and Hershberg, 2014; MPI, 2012). This led
President Obama to declare the wave of unaccompanied minors an “urgent humanitarian situa-
tion”, asking federal agencies to coordinate an emergency response to the situation. Yet an
appropriate response requires a good understanding of the root causes for such flows, which we
still lack.
Second, since President Obama’s new executive order announced on 20 November 2014 extends
the eligibility of DACA applicants and grants a temporary reprieve from deportation and work per-
mits to parents of US-born or permanent resident children –an initiative currently placed on hold
after Judge Hanen’s decision to temporarily enjoin its implementation, an in-depth debate on the
effect of the original reprieve from deportation offered by DACA will surely follow. Some have
alleged that these temporary reprieves form deportation increase illegal border crossings. What
FIGURE 1
APPREHENSIONS OF UNACCOMPANIED MINORS OVER TIME
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
35000
40000
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Unaccompanied Minors
Year
Source: U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) via a Freedom of Information Act request.
The Surge in Unaccompanied Minors at the US-Mexico Border 103
©2016 The Authors. International Migration ©2016 IOM
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