Many mistakes and unfortunate circumstances have created the border crisis. One of the mistakes, which Congress could fix easily, was the 2002 decision to give the Department of Health and Human Services authority over unaccompanied minors. Congress should hand this task — which, these days, is a complex, large-scale logistics operation — over to the Department of Homeland Security.

When our border patrol catches Mexican teenagers trying to enter illegally, we often can just turn them away. When the teenagers are from Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador, all more than 1,000 miles south of the U.S. border, simply turning them back is perilous.