‘Alarming’ rise in migrant child labor under Biden, up 88% since 2019: GOP senator

The Biden administration is overseeing an “alarming” rise in exploitative child labor nationwide — a trend spurred by the ongoing migrant crisis at the southern border, according to Sen. Bill Cassidy.

In a pair of letters to officials at the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services (HHS), Cassidy (R-La.) pointed to reports of an 88% uptick in illegal child labor since 2019, including in “dangerous jobs” such as meat processing.

Federal watchdogs have also disclosed that the Biden administration “weakened” officials’ “ability to vet sponsors” who receive migrant children in the US and “protect” those children “from risks such as trafficking,” he noted.

Now, the lawmaker is demanding answers from the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division and HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement about how the agencies plan to protect unaccompanied children from exploitation.

“This years-long increase in unaccompanied migrant children crossing the southern border under the Biden administration, and the negative incentive for these children to expose themselves to dangerous working conditions is an intolerable tragedy for which we must find an immediate and lasting solution,” Cassidy wrote to Wage and Hour Division administrator Jessica Looman.

“It is clear that the enforcement actions taken so far against violators have not slowed this upward trend in exploitative child labor.” 

Nearly 400,000 unaccompanied children have crossed the southern border into the US since 2021, according to HHS data compiled by the New York Times, and almost all were referred by the Department of Homeland Security to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).

Reports have indicated that migrants as young as 12 years old are “working in dangerous jobs at all hours of the day and night,” Cassidy added, including as roofers, slaughterhouse workers and sawmill employees.

One 16-year-old Guatemalan national was killed when he was pulled into a deboning machine at a chicken plant in Mississippi last July — but Congress didn’t learn of the tragic incident until January.

The Wage and Hour Division found that 5,792 minors were working in the US as of last year in violation of federal labor laws — a 50% increase from 2022.

Despite having launched an Interagency Task Force to Combat Child Exploitation in February 2023, “the results do not appear to show much progress in deterring violations,” Cassidy said.

The Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General later that year launched an investigation into the Wage and Hour Division over the issue.

The inspector general of HHS released a report in 2022 that also panned ORR for doing “the absolute minimum vetting of sponsors” to speed up the process of releasing children from immigration authorities into the US.

“As a result, there are safety issues that are likely being overlooked,” the report states, quoting from a July 2021 letter that a supervisor sent to the office’s leadership.

That disclosure had no effect on sponsor vetting, however, as ORR further relaxed those standards in January, Cassidy also said.

A February report from the HHS OIG also revealed that the office had not even been complying with its own standards, with 16% of cases having failed to conduct background checks on sponsors of children.

“ORR is responsible for protecting children from “smugglers, traffickers, or others who might seek to victimize or otherwise engage the child in criminal, harmful or exploitative activity,” which includes working dangerous jobs in exploitative conditions,” Cassidy wrote to ORR director Robin Dunn Marcos.

“These recent reports, however, expose the Biden administration’s failure to reform ORR’s sponsor vetting and child placement procedures and its inability to coordinate with other federal agencies to protect unaccompanied children.” 

Reps for the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division and the Office of Refugee Resettlement did not immediately respond to requests for comment.