Pew Research Report: Nearly 90% of Illegal Immigrant ‘Children’ Are Teenagers

Nearly all of the illegal immigrant children who have been apprehended along the U.S.-Mexico border in the last two years have been teenagers.

According to a new Pew Research report, in fiscal year 2013, 91% of illegal immigrant “children” apprehended at the border were teenagers. Of the nearly 60,000 illegal immigrant “children” who were apprehended since October of last year, 84% have been teenagers.

Pew obtained the government figures through a Freedom of Information Act request, and the numbers paint “the first publicly available detailed portrait of the age and home country of child migrant–unaccompanied and accompanied–caught at the U.S.-Mexico border from Oct. 1, 2012, to May 31, 2014.”

Pew also noted that while the number of children ages 12 and younger who have been apprehended has increased, “the number of apprehensions of children who are accompanied by a parent or guardian has increased at a far faster clip, nearly tripling (160% increase) in less than a year.” According to the data, “in the partial fiscal year 2014 data provided, 22,069 accompanied children were apprehended, up from just 8,479 during all of the previous fiscal year.”

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