Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

In 2014, the United States experienced a “surge” of unaccompanied minors (UAM) apprehensions. At its peak, 63,676 UAMs were apprehended-- a stunning 45% increase from 44,668 UAM apprehensions in 2013. Two explanations emerged: one argues that push drove children to flee as asylum seekers; the other asserted that lenient migration policy pulled these individuals to the United States. This paper questions whether the 2012 enactment of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) altered minors’ incentives to migrate.

Utilizing Border Patrol monthly apprehension data from 2010-2017, this paper compares changes of UAM to others (adult and family unit) apprehensions. First, a Vector Autoregressive Model regresses the time series of UAM apprehensions on other apprehensions, while simultaneously de-trending in a multivariate OLS model. Next, a Seemingly Unrelated Regression estimates the association between UAM and other apprehensions before and after DACA’s enactment. The model estimates a baseline association of 0.043 prior to DACA. More interestingly, after DACA we observe a 7-fold increase in the association between UAM and other apprehensions (0.32). Additional robustness checks adjusts the temporal break to 2014 and confirms results.

The findings suggest that, post-DACA the mechanisms affecting migration drove adults and minors alike. Adults receive no direct DACA benefits, therefore if DACA increased UAM migration, we expect a decrease in the association of UAM and adults after 2012. These findings supports the push theory suggesting that a humanitarian crisis in the Central America resulted in the 2014 surge of UAMs.