RHO: Before, [border authorities] never bothered to ask kids whether they were unaccompanied or not, so the change is really in the way the kids are being classified. Now, the law forces them to determine if they are unaccompanied—and lo and behold, among the kids who are apprehended, we went from 6.8 percent unaccompanied in 2005 to 82 percent in 2013.

The Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) of 2008 requires that all Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) from non-contiguous borders [all countries but Mexico and Canada] to have their case heard in immigration court. The impact of TVPRA is that Border Patrol has been forced to more accurately classify apprehended children. So in a sense, the numbers of apprehended children is not a crisis per se; it’s a result of the U.S. government finally doing the right thing, which is interviewing people and giving them due process.

SS: But, despite a decline over the course of the decade, the numbers have gone up in recent years. Why?

RHO: Migration is entirely driven by the business cycle. The global recession reduced migration to the U.S.; the economic recovery has prompted migration to resume. I predict that in the next three to four years, as the economy recovers even more, there will be twice as many children coming. Immigration is like a wave function, and this current rise is entirely driven by the decline in unemployment. The unemployment rate of Latinos in the U.S. has started to go down, so immigration has started to go up, which means that there are more apprehensions of undocumented migrants.

SS: What is your response to the thinking that the children are trying to cross the border primarily to escape gang violence?