This past Tuesday, Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda—an Associate Professor in the UCLA Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies—released a report arguing that there is not a sudden surge in the number of unaccompanied minors cross the border, driven by Central American violent crime—or, more specifically, that this is the wrong way to look at what’s going on at the border. Hinojosa-Ojeda has held policy research positions at the World Bank, the White House Council of Economic Advisers, InterAmerican Development Bank, and others.

Sarah Sloat: It’s been reported that numbers are going up—why do you feel that information is misleading?

Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda: Ten years ago, there were twice as many child migrants as there are now. While the number of children being apprehended at the border has increased over the last few years, the total number of apprehended children actually decreased over the last decade. According to a report published by the Congressional Research Service, 114,563 children were apprehended in 2005. Comparatively, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection claims that 47,397 children were apprehended in 2013.

SS: So why is the arrival of children at the border now being labeled a “surge”?

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.