Every year, thousands of unaccompianed minors cross the southern border seeking refugee and safety.

While at Southwest Key Programs, one the largest providers of shelters for the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Unaccompianed Minor proogram, I was tasked with providing insight into not only where we have been but where we are going. After the influx of 2019 of youth needing care, it was essential to know what the future may look like to better understand and account for the services these youth would need.

To do this, I create the following dashboard based on public available data from the Department of Homeland Security for crossing not only to show historical values, but provide a forecast. Using a forecast for this limited amount of data can have it’s limitations since variable are missing and the forecast works only to show what would be normaly expected values, and not show predict peaks or valleys precisely.

The forecast has worked quite well, being within 2 - 3% of the actual since released (Dec 2019).

Next steps could include comparing to actual headcount of youth in care to predict headcount totals accurately and bed capacity need for all incoming youth.