U.S. companies have been found to have exploited and abused migrant children through their use of labor and not affording them the basic protections and safety that other employees are afforded.
"The carefully documented, credible news reports that U.S. companies are exploiting and abusing migrant children is horrifying and absolutely unacceptable. Basic protections against child labor apply to migrant children too, and every employer that has exploited minors should face extreme penalties," Donna Norton, executive vice president of MomsRising, said. "Many of these children apparently did dangerous work during long, overnight hours. America’s moms expect the federal and state governments to hold employers accountable for these shocking, horrendous human rights abuses."
The House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chair Morgan Griffith (R-VA) and the Subcommittee on Health Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY) wrote a letter to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra to demand accountability for the safety of migrant children who are coming to the United States at an alarmingly high rate. The letter follows an explosive New York Times report titled, “Alone and Exploited, Migrant Children Work Brutal Jobs Across the U.S.”
“It’s unconscionable that innocent children are being exploited because of the Biden administration’s negligence and open-border agenda, which will only get worse if he lifts Title 42," House Energy and Commerce Committee members said. "What the president started with his border crisis is now a human rights crisis for unaccompanied minors. This cannot continue. The Biden administration must be held accountable for the cruel conditions, danger and despair that these children have experienced.”
The number of unaccompanied children referred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) has skyrocketed from a low of 15,381 in fiscal year 2020 to 122,731 in fiscal year 2021 and 128,904 in fiscal year 2022.
The HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently published findings related to the operation of the EIS (Emergency Intake Sites) at Fort Bliss, the largest of the EIS facilities, concluding that case managers lacked sufficient child welfare training and ineffectively coordinated reuniting children with parents/sponsors.
According to the OIG, ORR supervisors grew concerned that policy changes prioritized the fast-tracking release of unaccompanied children to sponsors quickly, rather than vetting sponsors and protecting “children from risks such as trafficking and exploitation.” Supervisors also reported to the OIG that inexperienced ORR case managers “failed to consider children’s significant history of abuse and neglect or whether sex offenders resided in the potential sponsor’s household.”
Recent reporting by the New York Times found that over the last two years, one month after placing children with an adult, HHS “could not reach more than 85,000 children” and the “agency lost immediate contact with a third of migrant children.” Additionally, the New York Times reported that managers at ORR were “worried that labor trafficking was increasing and ... the office had become ‘one that rewards individuals for making quick releases, and not one that rewards individuals for preventing unsafe releases.’"
