Alone and Exploited, Migrant Children Work Brutal Jobs Across the U.S.
–by Hannah Dreier
The New York Times uncovered that an overwhelming number of migrant children are ending up in very dangerous jobs. Largely from Central America, the children are driven by economic desperation that was worsened by the pandemic. This shadow work force extends across industries in every state. The Times examination drew on court and inspection records and interviews with hundreds of lawyers, social workers, educators and law enforcement officials. The number of unaccompanied minors entering the United States was 130,000 in 2022 (Three times what it was five years ago). We expect another wave of unaccompanied migrant children this summer. Unaccompanied migrant children often obtain false identification to secure work.
Some 250,000 unaccompanied minors have come into this country. The children stayed in jail-like facilities run by Customs and Border Protection and, later, in tent cities.
Federal law bars minors from a long list of dangerous jobs, including roofing, meat processing and commercial baking. Except on farms, children younger than 16 are not supposed to work for more than three hours or after 7 p.m. on school days.
But these jobs — which are grueling and poorly paid, and thus chronically short-staffed — are exactly where many migrant children are ending up.
Unaccompanied minors have had their legs torn off in factories and their spines shattered on construction sites, but most of these injuries go uncounted.
While many migrant children are sent to the United States by their parents, others are persuaded to come by adults who plan to profit from their labor.
This shadow work force extends across industries in every state, flouting child labor laws that have been in place for nearly a century.
- Twelve-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee.
- Underage slaughterhouse workers in Delaware, Mississippi and North Carolina.
- Children sawing planks of wood on overnight shifts in South Dakota.
Tens of thousands of migrant children are sent to their sponsors with little but the phone number. There is no follow-up by any federal or local agencies to ensure that sponsors are not putting children to work illegally. There are sponsors who take the paychecks of migrant children
Hearthside Food Solutions, one of the United States’ largest food contractors, makes and packages products for well-known snack and cereal brands.
The New York Times pointed out that Hearthside Food Solutions was full of underage workers who had crossed the Southern border by themselves and were now spending late hours bent over hazardous machinery in violation of child labor laws.
In interviews with more than 60 caseworkers, most independently estimated that about two-thirds of all unaccompanied migrant children ended up working full time—in some cases 12 hours a day.
In town after town, children scrub dishes late at night. They run milking machines in Vermont and deliver meals in New York City. They harvest coffee and build lava rock walls around vacation homes in Hawaii. Girls as young as 13 wash hotel sheets in Virginia.
The Times found in Los Angeles, children stitch “Made in America” tags into J. Crew shirts. They bake dinner rolls sold at Walmart and Target, process milk used in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and help debone chicken sold at Whole Foods. As recently as the fall, middle-schoolers made Fruit of the Loom socks in Alabama. In Michigan, children make auto parts used by Ford and General Motors.
The Department of Health and Human Services (H.H.S) is responsible for ensuring sponsors will support them and protect them from trafficking or exploitation. Unfortunately, caseworkers say that “they rush through vetting sponsors.” Although Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for protecting them from exploitation that have not been able to reach more than 85,000 children. Overall, the agency lost immediate contact with a third of migrant children. Law enforcement officials are unwilling to investigate cases of abuse.
Far from home, many of these children are under intense pressure to earn money. They send cash back to their families while often being in debt to their sponsors for smuggling fees, rent and living expenses.
Sponsors are required to send migrant children to school, but many have been misled by their sponsors and are not in school.
The Labor Department is supposed to find and punish child labor violations, but inspectors in a dozen states said their understaffed offices could barely respond to complaints, much less open original investigations. When the department has responded to tips on migrant children, it has focused on the outside contractors and staffing agencies that usually employ them, not the corporations where they perform the work.
Conclusion
Given the widespread abuse of unaccompanied migrant children, the program should be stopped immediately. We need to establish procedures that allow government workers to: (1) monitor sponsors (2) oversee working conditions, and (3) assure migrants have access to school. My recommendation is to reduce drastically the number of children allowed into this country that are not accompanied by their parents.
The Department of Health and Human Services have failed miserably to protect children from trafficking or exploitation.
