Yes, the young migrants are not simply deceived. True, they are not currently eligible for Obama’s deportation halt, which is confined to children who arrived before June 2007. But their overwhelming numbers, and the fact that they come from so far away, will make the White House’s plans for stepped-up deportation difficult to swiftly carry out. Many of them have been menaced by gang violence in their home countries, which allows them to apply for asylum and hope to eventually win it. Others have already been released with only a court summons, and may simply decide to remain and try to stay out of law enforcement’s way.

And if they do, they will have a good chance of eventually receiving the amnesty that smugglers have promised them. If an immigration reform eventually passes under a President Hillary Clinton, today’s young border-crossers will no longer be new arrivals: They’ll have been here for several years, they’ll be sympathetic figures embedded in communities, and there will be strong, understandable pressure to allow them onto any path to citizenship.

And even if they aren’t deemed eligible — well, they can look at America’s political landscape and reasonably assume that if they remain in the shadows, eventually another push to regularize their status will come along.