section_path: Profile and demographics/2011–2016 surge in unaccompanied minors from Central America
section_name: 2011–2016 surge in unaccompanied minors from Central America
paragraph_text: 2011–2016 surge in unaccompanied minors from Central America
  
  Over the period 2011–2016, US Border Patrol apprehended 178,825 unaccompanied minors from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. The provisions of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, which specifies safe repatriation of unaccompanied children (other than those trafficked for sex or forced labor) from countries which do not have a common border with the United States, such as the nations of Central America other than Mexico, made expeditious deportation of the large number of children from Central America who came to the United States in 2014 difficult and expensive, prompting a call by President Barack Obama for an emergency appropriation of $4 billion and resulting in discussions by the Department of Justice and Congress of how to interpret or revise the law in order to expedite handling large numbers of children under the act.
  
  A 2016 study found that Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which allows illegal immigrants who migrated to the United States before their 16th birthday and prior to June 2007 to temporarily stay, did not significantly impact the number of apprehensions of unaccompanied minors from Central America. Rather, the study stated, "the 2008 Williams Wilberforce 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 apprehended along the southwest US–Mexico border." According to a 2015 report by the Government Accountability Office, the primary drivers of the surge "were crime and lack of economic opportunity at home. Other reasons included education concerns, desire to rejoin family and aggressive recruiting by smugglers." A 2017 Center for Global Development study stated that violence was the primary driver behind the surge in unaccompanied Central American minors to the United States: an additional 10 homicides in Central America made 6 unaccompanied children flee to the US. The widespread promulgation of false "permiso" rumors by human smugglers, as well as migrant perception of the Obama administration's immigration policies, also played a part in the increase.