Stanford Health Policy's Paul Wise, MD, writes in a new commentary that migrant children "are caught in the vice-grip of a tortured political moment in the United States."

"This commentary is intended to elevate the precarious state of migrant children in the U.S. and contribute to a broader, long-overdue pediatric focus on children in detention," writes Wise, the Richard E. Behrman Professor of Child Health and Society and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. His co-author of the commentary published in the Nature journal, Pediatric Research, is Lauren Stoffel, an incoming Stanford freshman who worked with Wise on compiling a history of U.S. policy toward unaccompanied children arriving at the border.

"Specifically, this commentary is directed at protecting unaccompanied migrant children, defined as migrants less than 18 years of age who are detained without a parent or legal guardian," they write. "While most migrant children who enter U.S. detention are apprehended with their parents as part of a family unit, the focus of this discussion on unaccompanied children (UCs) reflects their special vulnerabilities and requirements for custodial care.

"Immigration to the United States has long been associated with crescendos and decrescendos of harsh rhetoric and highly restrictive policies. What makes this moment unique, however, is that this contentious public sentiment is bearing down on an unprecedented number of unaccompanied children. During the 2000’s, the number of UCs apprehended at the U.S. southern border ranged between 4,800 and 8,200 per year. However, by 2014, this number had grown to almost 70,000. After a sharp drop associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, UC apprehensions again rose dramatically, reaching 150,000 in 2022 and plateauing at approximately 135,000 in 2023.  (Most UCs are over 14 years, are boys, and are from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, or Mexico."

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