Children working in American jobs, in violation of federal labor laws, have skyrocketed under President Joe Biden, coinciding with a surge of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) ending up in a labor trafficking pipeline in the United States.
The Department of Labor quietly released a report late last week showing that from October 2022 to July 0f this year, there has been a 44 percent increase in children discovered working U.S. jobs in violation of the law.
The report states:
Between Oct. 1, 2022 and July 20, 2023, as a result of this stepped-up enforcement, the agency concluded 765 child labor cases finding 4,474 children employed in violation of federal child labor laws and assessed employers with more than $6.6 million in penalties. These cases reflect a 44 percent increase in children found employed in violation of federal law and an 87 percent increase in penalties assessed from the same time period in the previous fiscal year. [Emphasis added]
In addition, the agency is currently pursuing more than 700 open child labor cases. This enforcement data demonstrates the department’s commitment to identifying and addressing the child labor violations more aggressively than in the department’s history. [Emphasis added]
An explosion in labor trafficking among UACs — who arrive at the border and are quickly turned over to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) where they are ultimately placed with an adult sponsor — is so common that Labor Department officials noted they are working with Mexico and nations in Central America to “educate migrant communities” about child labor laws in the U.S.
Most recently, 16-year-old Duvan Tomas Perez of Guatemala died as a result of injuries while working at one of Mar-Jac Poultry’s meat processing plants in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Perez was a middle school student who arrived in the U.S. six years ago.
Since Biden took office, more than 300,000 UACs have been placed with adult sponsors throughout the U.S., but whistleblowers have warned that HHS is not properly vetting those sponsors and migrant children are ending up in labor trafficking, sex trafficking, and domestic servitude as a result.
“It’s been said that it is harder to adopt a cat than it is to sponsor an unaccompanied minor because there are rarely background checks done, almost never home studies, no financial assessments,” Center for Immigration Studies Director of Policy Jessica Vaughan recently told lawmakers.
“The Biden administration has stopped doing background checks on other people in the households to make sure that the placements are safe,” she continued. “This is something that would simply not be tolerated in our foster care system.”
Since Biden took office, HHS officials have lost contact with at least 85,000 UACs after releasing them to adult sponsors — the overwhelming majority of whom are not their biological parents.
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, at a hearing last week, failed to state that 100 percent of the homes are inspected where UACs ultimately end up across the U.S. — a requirement for many pet adoption programs.
