For those trying to get a handle on this issue see this report plus links.
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Lost Boys and Girls of Central America
Most of the children who have been apprehended as part of this influx are from three countries in Central America: Guatemala (35%), El Salvador (27%) and Honduras (25%). The majority of the children the WRC interviewed said that their flight northward had been necessitated by the dramatic and recent increases in violence and poverty in their home countries. The WRC’s independent research on the conditions in these countries corroborated the children’s reports. These increasingly desperate conditions reflect the culmination of several longstanding trends in Central America, including rising crime, systemic state corruption and entrenched economic inequality.

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The children interviewed in DCS custody described conditions of abject poverty coupled with rapidly escalating gang violence in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. These children exhibited both an urgent need to escape and an incredible will to survive. Most of them expressed a “necessity” for leaving their home, indicating more “push” than “pull” factors for their decisions to migrate. All of them are looking to the United States for refuge and hope for a future.

Children’s Voices
In El Salvador, there is a wrong—it’s being young. You’re stalked by gangs, authorities beat and follow kids because they don’t trust them; they think they’re gang members. There are no jobs for young people because employers don’t trust the kids either... It is better to be old.
Carlos

One girl said she was scared to take public transportation because Honduran gangs are burning buses full of people if the driver doesn’t pay “protection money.” She said gangs also regularly burn jails and houses. Another girl had to flee because of the rampant killings. She described how she went out of her house one morning and found a chopped-up body lying on her doorstep. Girls as young as nine are being gang-raped by gang members in their home countries. If a girl is impregnated, she will be left to care for the child until he or she is old enough to join the gang.
Girls focus group at IES Los Fresnos.

Further Reading
Migration Policy Institute - What Is the Right Policy Toward Unaccompanied Children at U.S. Borders? By Kathleen Newland

Center for Strategic Studies - Central America’s Economic Diaspora Feb 24, 2011 Kennon Pearre

VERA Institute of Justice - The Flow of Unaccompanied Children through the Immigration System

TN Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition