The nation may be divided about immigration and its consequences but, on one point, unanimity must be reached:
Immigration, whether legal or illegal, cannot be a vehicle for child labor.
And yet, the Labor Department has uncovered several incidents that involve underage migrants working in slave labor-like conditions.
A Labor Department Tweet: “Packers Sanitation Services Inc. has paid $1.5 M after @WHD_DOL investigators found the company employed at least 102 children aged 13-17 – in hazardous occupations and had them working overnight shifts in 13 meat processing facilities in eight states.”
Furthermore, the department accused Kieler, Wisconsin-based PSSI of employing “oppressive child labor in perilous conditions.”
A series of NBC News stories provided the horrific details.
PSSI, which is contracted to work at slaughterhouses and meatpacking facilities throughout the county, allegedly employed at least 31 children — one as young as 13 — to work overnight cleaning shifts at three facilities in Minnesota and Nebraska, a Fair Labor Standards Act violation.
Additional evidence indicated that the company may also have employed more underage children in similar perilous conditions at 400 other sites nationwide.
Identity theft is rampant and a major facilitator in underage migrant employment.
PSSI is a huge company that employs about 17,000 people and has contracts with hundreds of meatpacking facilities.
Toiling at PSSI wasn’t an after-school job at an ice cream shop. During the graveyard shift and across three slaughterhouses, when they should have been home in bed, minors literally slaved away, mopping up bloody floors.
Interviews with the minors, in their native Spanish language, revealed that several children began their slaughterhouse shifts at 11 p.m. and worked until dawn, some for six or seven days a week, and often for periods of up to 15 months.
At least three victims suffered chemical burns.
The NBC News story skirted the central factor that abets minor children’s criminal employment: President Joe Biden and Homeland Security Department Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ open border.
Don’t be misled. The news media’s deceptive language about “unaccompanied minors” is intended to deflect the truth. Unaccompanied minors are more accurately described as the victims of child smuggling rings and are tied into the Biden administration’s open borders policy.
As the minors mature into adulthood, they become embedded in the permanent labor force. To most of them, any job is a good job. They need incomes to send remittances back home and to pay off their smuggling fees.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics show that after Biden took office in January 2021, he acted immediately to eliminate effective policies, including categorically exempting unaccompanied minors from Title 42. Such encounters skyrocketed.
Between fiscal year 2020 and 2021, total unaccompanied minors encounters at the southern border increased a staggering 342%, from 33,239 in fiscal year 2020 to 146,913 in 2021.
Those encounters increased to 152,057 in fiscal year 2022 and are on pace to be at a similar level in 2023.
At a recent Senate hearing, Mayorkas couldn’t explain the child exploitation surge under his watch, a fact that The New York Times described as “ignored or missed.”
Multiple veteran government staffers and outside contractors told the Health & Human Services Department, including in reports that reached Secretary Xavier Becerra, that children could be at risk.
Critics had previously brought to Mayorkas’ attention that the DHS Office of Refugee Resettlement routinely releases minors into the custody of unvetted families, many of whom are illegally present, and likely also illegally employed.
The Labor Department also issued news releases that noted an increase in child labor. Senior Biden aides were shown proof of exploitation, like migrants working with heavy industrial equipment and caustic chemicals.
The net result of multiple efforts to shine light on booming child exploitation: nothing.
Multiple felonies are committed on every step of the journey from the border to the slaughterhouse.
Corrupt government and private sector employers hold the upper hand. Fines are meaningless. Hard jail time might make a difference.
But if Congress can’t pass mandatory E-Verify, it’s unlikely to put its weight behind throwing the donor class behind bars.