American First Policy Institute (AFPI) journalist and policy analyst Kristen Ziccarelli criticized the Biden Administration for allegedly worsening the issue of child trafficking at the U.S.-Mexico border in an issue brief published on June 19.
"America is experiencing a revival of the worst parts of the Industrial Revolution in the forms of indentured servitude, modern-day slavery, and forced labor of children being trafficked and smuggled across the southern border," Ziccarelli wrote. "An overlooked aspect of the Biden Administration’s open border policies is that they enable the cartels to take advantage of vulnerable children for profit."
"Due to the relaxed standards for migrant children that arrive unaccompanied, families pressure their children to come to the U.S. alone and work. Coupled with the debt they have incurred to the cartels for the transportation from the home country to the U.S. southern border, these children are burdened with the task of making money. In other cultures where child labor is more acceptable, families send their children to the U.S. to make money for them, knowing that they themselves may be turned away at the border due to their age."
“The kids almost all have a debt to pay off, and they’re super stressed about it,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) caseworker Kelsey Keswani told the New York Times.
Ziccarelli proposed that the U.S. implement new policies meant to deter unaccompanied alien children (UACs) from entering the country in order to help resolve the border crisis. She argued that the government should charge a fee that "makes it less desirable to send money from the U.S. back home, and should also disrupt the cartels in their debt bondage of underage children".
In an article for Human Trafficking Search, New York Times journalist Hannah Dreier wrote that over 250,000 children entered the U.S. in the last two years, with only a third of them being sent to live with their parents. Many of the children end up in the care of "sponsors" who profit from their work. One case involved a 13-year-old Guatemalan boy named Nery Cutzal who arrived in Florida and was informed that he owed his sponsor $4,000. Said sponsor also sent Cutzal texts threatening him if he didn't pay them back.
According to Dreier, while adolescents are twice as likely to be seriously injured at work as adults, migrant preteens and teenagers are still often made to work long hours at difficult, dangerous jobs including roofing, meat processing, and commercial baking. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) tracks the deaths of foreign-born child workers, the data hasn't been made public since 2017. In that year, the DOL reported that 12 young migrant workers died on the job.
