In addition to having some of the highest poverty rates in Central America, the northern triangle countries also have rampant gang activity and violence. Gangs operate with relative impunity, and their actions are a large cause of migration. Gangs forcibly recruit boys sometimes as young as 12 years old, and can kill, rape, or forcibly extort locals. Many migrants flee the northern triangle because of the high levels of gang activity and violence, not to mention the negative impact caused by the past civil wars. These migrants, who want to live lives free of the near constant violence and struggle to survive, are often disproportionately affected by the poor conditions of their countries. Parents migrate to give themselves and their children a better life, and children sometimes journey north all alone to escape their circumstances.  A majority of northern triangle migrants have not completed high school, a very large majority are Catholic or Protestant, and most are indigenous to their home countries. These people see the United States as the best place they can go to, and seek to increase the wellbeing of their life by risking the dangerous journey north. 

Many migrant children have family members in the United States, and they cross the border (or are compelled to do so) in part to reunite with family members. 

In 1954, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) acted to overthrow Jacobo Árbenz, Guatemala’s second democratically-elected president. This was done because Árbenz, with his policies of expropriation, wanted to take some of the private land of the American-owned United Fruit Company. The US state department and United Fruit demanded $16 million in compensation: a demand much higher than the $1.2 million offered by Árbenz. When Árbenz refused, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and CIA director Allen Dulles, who are both former partners of United fruit’s main law firm, convinced then president Eisenhower that Árbenz needed to be taken out of power. 

The will from the United States government to depose Árbenz culminated in the United States deposing Árbenz and replacing him with Carlos Castillo Armas, a military officer who led a brutal dictatorship. This US-backed coup d’état paved the way for over 40 years of brutal dictatorships and near-constant war between the government and various militia groups, which ended with peace accords in 1996. The end of the war failed to greatly improve the terrible conditions of the country. Socio-economic issues were not given the attention they deserved, and inequality in Guatemalan society vastly increased. The Guatemalan civil war, as well as the Salvadoran civil war, were some of the fist major catalysts for mass migration from this region. 

In recent years, the Mexican government has been under increased pressure to curb the mass influx of migrants that cross through Mexico into the United States. The Mexican government has done this by increasing security at migration checkpoints all across the country and by beginning attempts to keep migrants off the train. This has led to unpredictable stops along the train's path where migrants were forced to find support and resources from local groups while the train was stopped. 

The ORR (Office of Refugee Resettlement), a department of HHS, prefers to release children to sponsors or parents who the agency carefully determines to be suitable to provide care. While the UACs are in the care of these facilities, their cases are being heard: United States Citizenship and Immigration Services rules on asylum cases and the Justice Department rules on all other migration-related cases. Children who win asylum or immigration relief can legally stay in the United States and enjoy all the freedoms afforded by the United States government, and children who lose their case are deported by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to their country of origin. Of the 290,000 UACs who crossed the border since 2014, 4.3% were returned to their home countries, 28% were granted protection, and the remaining 68% of cases remain unresolved. These numbers indicate that UACs tend to be offered protections more than other types of migrants, even though a majority of the cases remain unresolved. 

Migrants often pay smugglers, sometimes called “coyotes'' to get them across the border. As of 2014, an estimated 75%-80% of UACs at the border have been assisted by smugglers. Doing so can often be dangerous, as the smugglers are often unreliable and can be violent or affiliated with human or sex trafficing groups. Migrants are often aware of these dangers, and they see them as worth the risk if it means a chance at life in the United States.