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- The New York Times reported last week that companies across the US are exploiting the labor of migrant children.
- The Labor Department announced a number of measures to combat the illegal activity.
- The investigation comes as multiple states seek to loosen child labor laws to address the labor shortage.
13-year-old Jose Vasquez works six days a week at an egg farm outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan. He pulls 12-hour shifts, and doesn't have time to attend middle school like other kids his age, The New York Times' Hanna Dreier reported last week.
"I didn't get how expensive everything was," Vasquez, who lives with his sister, told The Times. "I'd like to go to school, but then how would I pay rent?"
It's illegal for minors to work more than 10 hours a day in Michigan. In most circumstances, it's also illegal for kids Vasquez's age not to be enrolled in school. But Vasquez's case is not a unique one — he's one of hundreds of child migrants to the United States whom companies are illegally employing.
In the last two years, more than 250,000 child migrants have entered the US, according to US Customs and Border Protection data, and those numbers are on the rise. Many of those children are earning money to send back home to their families, or else paying thousands of dollars in fees to their smugglers and rent to Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) sponsors, The Times reported. Additionally, the publication reported that children are working dangerous jobs in each state in the US across multiple industries, including food plants, slaughterhouses, and farms. The economic climate in Central America, where most of the child migrants are from, has been severely damaged by the pandemic.
Following the Times' reporting, the Biden administration sought to crack down on illegal child migrant labor.
The US Department of Labor announced on Monday that it will audit the ORR sponsor vetting process, call on Congress to increase monetary penalties for companies that use child labor, and otherwise "hold all employers accountable to ensure child labor is removed from supply chains," the department said in an announcement.
"The department takes these egregious violations very seriously and investigates every child labor complaint they receive and acts to hold employers accountable," the Department of Labor said. "The department currently has over 600 child labor investigations underway and continues to field complaints and initiate investigations to protect children."
The Labor Department added that a majority of migrant children in the US coming from Latin America do not have a parent in the US.
The Times reported that the use of child labor is prevalent across a number of prominent brands in the US, highlighting J. Crew, Walmart, Target, Fruit of the Loom, and Ben & Jerrys, among others. The Labor Department has found some of these companies, such as ice cream staple Ben & Jerrys, guilty of child labor violations before.
Some of the companies responded to The Times' probe. General Mills, which produces brands like Cheerios and Lucky Charms, said that it understood "the seriousness of the situation" and would review the investigation. Hearthside, which makes products for companies like Quaker Oats and Frito-Lay, said in a statement that they "care deeply about this issue and are concerned about the mischaracterization of Hearthside." The company Forge said it followed state and federal laws and "would never knowingly employ individuals under 18." PepsiCo declined to comment.
Sponsors often engage in threatening and abusive practices, The Times reported. In one case, a sponsor was found guilty of smuggling a child into the country for monetary purposes, and in another, a sponsor collected a child's paychecks and watched him sleep on his basement floor over security cameras.
Some sponsors keep a running tab of charges for the children in their care, such as Nery Cutzal's, whom Cutzal met on Facebook. The sponsor made up expenses, such as $140 for filling out paperwork or $45 for a dinner.
And that's only what these children experience at home — at workplaces, factories that make products for brands like Nature Valley and Cheetos are full of underage workers doing dangerous work. The machinery operated by the children had been known to tear off fingers and scalps, The Times reported. Children wash sheets and dishes late into the night to pay off their debts.
Some states are looking to loosen child labor policies to help companies fight the labor shortage
The Times' investigation and the White House's response come as some states have ramped up their attempts to loosen child labor restrictions. The motivation: companies need cheap labor to fill a persistent labor shortage.
Republican lawmakers in Iowa and Minnesota have introduced legislation in the last month proposing exceptions to child labor regulations in their respective states. And the GOP-led Senate in Wisconsin recently passed a bill to expand legal working hours for 14 and 15-year-olds, although it was vetoed this month by the state's governor. Ohio reintroduced a similar bill this month that would allow expanded hours for those ages with a parent's permission.
Minnesota lost 90,000 workers alone during the pandemic, according to state demographers, making it one of the tightest labor markets in the country. Iowa's not far behind with roughly 75,000 open jobs in December.
Research shows that paying adult workers more would attract them back to the job, but detractors insist that companies can't afford to pay them more. Economists say that during a labor shortage, paring back child labor laws is a common phenomenon in the US.
Trump-era immigration policies, in addition to ones that Biden has perpetuated, are a major reason that the labor shortage continues to cause a problem for companies throughout the US: adult immigrants were barred from entry, which meant companies lacked a workforce to employ.
And now, many of those companies are turning to their kids.