Children seeking asylum: Determinants of asylum claims by unaccompanied minors in the United States from 2013 to 2017

This paper examines the treatment and processing of immigration court decisions for unaccompanied alien children (UAC) in the United States from 2013 to 2017. We focus on two primary questions in our research: (1) whether asylum cases involving UAC are substantially different in outcome than non‐UAC cases, and (2) whether there have been significant differences in the immigration courts' asylum decisions involving unaccompanied minors before and after the Trump administration came to power. We utilize various multilevel models to test individual applicant‐, immigration judge‐, county‐, and state‐level variables on the likelihood of UAC receiving a positive outcome in immigration court. We find strong support for the second hypothesis and mixed support for the first. Overall, our findings suggest that multiple political, economic, social, and geographical factors influence immigration hearings for UAC beyond the individual strength of any one child's case.