Biden Administration Plans Crackdown on Migrant Child Labor...NYTimes
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The announcement came days after a Times investigation showed children were working in dangerous jobs throughout the United States.
By Hannah Dreier
The Biden administration on Monday announced a wide crackdown on the labor exploitation of migrant children around the United States, including more aggressive investigations of companies benefiting from their work.
The development came days after The New York Times published an investigation into the explosive growth of migrant child labor throughout the United States. Children, who have been crossing the southern border without their parents in record numbers, are ending up in punishing jobs that violate child labor laws, The Times found.
As part of the new effort, the Department of Labor, which enforces child labor laws, said it would target not just the factories and suppliers that use child labor, but the companies that rely on them to make their products or provide their workers. Migrant children often secure false identification, including Social Security numbers, and find jobs through staffing agencies or brokers.
Companies have escaped fines in the past by blaming those agencies or other subcontractors when violations are discovered.
“Too frequently, employers who contract for services are not vigilant about who is working in their facilities,” the Labor Department said in a statement.
The department will also explore using a “hot goods” provision of law that allows it to stop the interstate transport of goods where child labor has been found in the supply chain, according to senior administration officials.
The Times found products made with child labor in the American supply chains of major brands and retailers, including J. Crew, Walmart, Target, Ben & Jerry’s, Fruit of the Loom, Ford and General Motors. In Grand Rapids, Mich., children worked late nights at plants operated by Hearthside Food Solutions, which makes and packages food for other companies, including General Mills, Frito-Lay and Quaker Oats.
- Child Labor: The Biden administration announced a crackdown on the labor exploitation of migrant children, a move that came after a Times investigation showed the explosive growth of migrant child labor throughout the United States.
- New Asylum Rules: A tough new measure proposed by U.S. officials could disqualify the vast majority of migrants from being able to seek asylum at the southern border.
- Title 42: The Supreme Court canceled arguments in a challenge to ending the pandemic-era policy, a step that suggested it may dismiss the case based on the Biden administration’s announcement that the health emergency would end in May.
- A Political Showdown: Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, has become the face of the border crisis, particularly for Republicans who see immigration attacks as a winning political strategy.
The Department of Labor has begun an investigation into Hearthside, administration officials said.
Officials also plan to initiate investigations in parts of the country more likely to have child labor violations and ask Congress to increase penalties for violators. Federal investigators have long complained that the maximum fine for child labor violations — about $15,000 per occurrence — is not enough to deter child labor.
In the past two years, more than 250,000 children have come into the country alone. Many of them are under tremendous pressure to send money back to their parents, as well as pay thousands of dollars in smuggling fees and in some cases, rent and living expenses to their sponsors. Most are from Central America, where economic conditions have deteriorated since the pandemic.
Children now are working hazardous jobs in every state and across industries, The Times found. They are taking jobs in slaughterhouses, construction sites and factories — positions that have long been off-limits to American children.
At least a dozen underage migrant workers have been killed on the job since 2017, including a 16-year-old who fell from an earthmover he was driving in Georgia. Others have been seriously injured, losing legs and shattering their backs in falls.
In a speech on the House floor Monday, Representative Hillary Scholten, Democrat of Michigan, called for more to be done.
“Stories of kids dropping out of school, collapsing from exhaustion, and even losing limbs to machinery are what one expects to find in a Charles Dickens or Upton Sinclair novel, but not an account of everyday life in 2023, not in the United States of America,” Ms. Scholten said.
One Hearthside worker, Carolina Yoc, 15, described a grueling schedule of juggling school and eight-hour swing shifts each day, working until midnight packaging Cheerios. She said she was growing sick from the stress and intensity of the factory work and lack of sleep.
A representative for Hearthside said last week that it had relied on a staffing company for workers and that it would implement better controls. After The Times story published, the company said it had hired a law firm and consultant to review its employment and safety practices and begun requiring government identification from any worker entering its plants nationwide.
Most of the other companies identified by The Times said they were investigating the findings or had ended contracts with suppliers. PepsiCo, which owns Frito-Lay and Quaker Oats, whose brands are sometimes manufactured at Hearthside, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
But as more and more minors have crossed the border, the Biden administration has ramped up demand on H.H.S. staff members to release them from shelters as quickly as possible. Xavier Becerra, the secretary of health and human services, has urged staff members to move with the speed of an assembly line, The Times found. The department rolled back some protections in its vetting of sponsors that had been in place for years, including some background checks and reviews of children’s files.
A spokeswoman for the department said last week that it was in the best interest of children to be moved out of detention and that the department had not compromised safety.
Once children are released, they have few places to turn for help. Most leave shelters with little but the phone number for a national hotline run by H.H.S. The Times found that children were calling the hotline to report abuse and exploitation and hearing nothing back. Operators were generally referring calls to local law enforcement and other agencies, who may not have followed up.
On Monday, senior administration officials said Health and Human Services would now direct operators to return calls to children and require them to explain what local law enforcement agency would be in touch.
After caseworkers told The Times that H.H.S. regularly ignored obvious signs of possible labor exploitation — including adults who had been allowed to sponsor as many as 20 children — the department said Monday that it would spend a month investigating whether policies needed to be changed for adults who sponsor multiple children.
Department staff members will also give more information to sponsors and underage migrants about child labor protections.
Luke Broadwater contributed reporting.
Hannah Dreier is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter on the investigations team. @hannahdreier
ORIGIINAL INVESTIGATION STORY. This is a long piece with many photos. Go to the NYTimes link to read.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/25/us/unaccompanied-migrant-child-workers-exploitation.html
Arriving in record numbers, they’re ending up in dangerous jobs that violate child labor laws — including in factories that make products for well-known brands like Cheetos and Fruit of the Loom.
By Hannah Dreier and Photographs By Kirsten Luce
Hannah traveled to Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, South Dakota and Virginia for this story and spoke to more than 100 migrant child workers in 20 states.