Jehu J. Hanciles is an associate professor of world Christianity at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta. He studies global Christian expansion, especially in Africa.

Silas W. Allard is a scholar of law and religious ethics with a focus on immigration and human rights. He is associate director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University in Atlanta and managing editor of the Journal of Law and Religion.

Marie Marquardt is a scholar-in-residence at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta. She studies Latin American immigrants, gender and migration, multiethnic and multicultural congregations, religious diversity in immigrant communities and religion in civic and public life. She is the founding co-chair of El Refugio Ministry, which serves immigrants detained in Georgia.

Suzii Paynter is executive coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, an umbrella organization of almost 1,800 congregations and individuals in 30 countries. She can discuss human trafficking, immigration reform, environmental justice, hunger, poverty and religious liberty and other ethical issues from a liberal Baptist perspective.

Read a July 7, 2014, New York Times story about a 2008 law that may be behind the rise in children crossing the U.S.-Mexican border.

Minerva G. Carcano is bishop of the Phoenix Episcopal Area, Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church, which is based in Pasadena, Calif. She is spokeswoman for the Council of Bishops on the issue of immigration.

Read a June 30, 2014, article from CNN about President Obama’s action on immigration policy issues in the wake of the 2013-14 surge in migrant children at the United States’ southern border.

Read a June 27, 2014, article from Bloomberg View about national developments in immigration policy in the wake of the 2013-14 surge in migrant children at the United States’ southern border.

Read an article from July/August 2014 issue of Mother Jones about the expected surge of unaccompanied children arriving at the southern border of the United States in 2014.