How child migrants are put to work in unsafe and illegal conditions

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• Geoff Bennett:

  Migrant children in the U.S. are working in some of the most dangerous jobs in the country. What's more, private auditors assigned to root out unlawful labor practices often overlook child labor.

  Laura Barron-Lopez has more.

• Laura Barron-Lopez:

  A recent New York Times investigation found auditors failed to identify child migrants working at production warehouses used by some of America's most recognizable brands, including Skittles, McDonald's and Gerber.

  In addition, the most common job for migrant children coming to the U.S. is also one of the most hazardous, roofing and construction, despite federal law prohibiting anyone under 18 from doing so.

  Hannah Dreier of The New York Times joins me now.

  Hannah, thanks so much for being here.

  You reviewed private audits conducted at 20 production facilities for well-known brands. What did those audits reveal about the use of illegal child labor?

• Hannah Dreier, The New York Times:

  So, at all of these production facilities, there were children working usually the night shift with fake I.D.s doing jobs that are totally off-limits for minors.

  These are industrial jobs, working assembly lines, working with caustic chemicals at slaughterhouses. And despite the fact that there were private auditors sent explicitly to try to find out if these plants were using child labor, these kids were missed every single time.

• Laura Barron-Lopez:

  How did the companies respond to your investigation that these children were missed repeatedly?

• Hannah Dreier:

  You know, I have been covering migrant child labor for the past almost two years now, and we have uncovered children working these kinds of jobs in all 50 states.

  And every time I have gone to the companies and said, McDonald's, why were children making the pork in your sandwiches, or, Gerber, why were children working overnight on your baby food products, they say, well, that can't possibly have happened because we have auditors in place who are supposed to be catching this stuff.

  And what we found is, really, the system is set up in a way that it's not going to find children. Children work at night, and the auditors come in the morning. Children work with fake I.D.s. The auditors are checking paperwork, not actually speaking with children.

  A 16-year-old was killed over the summer making chicken that goes in Chick-fil-A sandwiches. But he was working with an I.D. that said that he was in his 30s. So that's never going to get caught by the system.

• Laura Barron-Lopez:

  The private auditing industry makes billions to root out bad labor practices.

  So you hinted at why these children sometimes fall through the cracks, children that are cleaning in cleaning crews for slaughterhouses or they're working in meat-packing plants across the country. Are there disincentives for auditors to actually say that there are child laborers?

• Hannah Dreier:

  That's exactly right.

  I talked to dozens of these auditors, and they say that they essentially have this conflict of interest. The audits are paid for by the factories. And so auditors say, when they come in and they find a lot of violations, they get in trouble with the factories and sometimes even with their own private auditing firms.

  I spoke to one auditor who was finding a lot of problems at factories. And his bosses sent him an e-mail, and they said, people will forget what you said. They will forget what you did, but they're not going to forget how you made them feel. And they're essentially saying, we want you to provide better customer service.

  And this auditor is trying to find actual problems and getting this pushback from inside his own organization.

• Laura Barron-Lopez:

  Your reporting has also documented a surge in the number of migrant children coming to the U.S.

  Since 2021, nearly 400,000 migrant children have arrived alone in the United States. What countries are these children coming from? And what's caused this increase?

• Hannah Dreier:

  We have seen record numbers of children coming every single year since 2021.

  And, like you say, they're coming from Central America, for the most part, and they're coming really escaping poverty. These are places that were hit very hard by the pandemic. Food prices have soared. The jobs haven't come back. And what we're seeing again and again is, parents are sending children, sometimes as young as 10, 11 years old, and they're expecting these kids to not only support themselves in the U.S., but also send money back.

  And so we have a situation now where there are nearly half-a-million kids in this country, and they're under huge pressure to make money. And they're ending up in these jobs that are sort of the only jobs they can get.

• Laura Barron-Lopez:

  Many of these migrant children are working in roofing.

  And you spoke to more than 100 child roofers. What kind of tasks are they assigned? And can you give us a picture of the type of serious injuries that they might have when they're working in these jobs?

• Hannah Dreier:

  I went up on sites with some of these children, and the conditions are terrifying. They're at sometimes 30, 40 feet. They're working without harnesses or training.

  And sometimes they're falling. Roofing is one of the three most dangerous jobs in this country. It's something a child should never be doing. But these kids are working 12-hour days. And in a lot of cases, they're getting hurt.

  I spoke to the family of a 15-year-old who died in Alabama after he fell 40 feet. He was replacing the roof on a warehouse. A 16-year-old just this summer was killed in Florida when he fell from the roof of a house. Even when children aren't dying, I mean, they're getting terribly injured.

  And that goes for all of this work. They're getting their legs ripped off and slaughterhouses, their arms ripped open. And, sometimes, they're just working overnight, every night, and going to school, and they're sleep-deprived. It's terrible for their health.

• Laura Barron-Lopez:

  The times investigation into migrant child labor spanned a year or more, as you said. How has the Labor Department responded to all of this? And what do experts say needs to be done to root out unlawful child labor?

• Hannah Dreier:

  So, this increase in child labor is coming at sort of the worst time.

  The Department of Labor is facing historically low staffing levels. Right now, it would take more than 100 years for inspectors to visit every workplace once. The Department of Labor has said in a response to our reporting that it's stepping this work up, it's trying to open more investigations, that it has opened some investigations in response to things that we found, like kids at certain slaughterhouses, at certain factories.

  But in the absence of a more robust Labor Department, really, it's falling back on these private audits, which are failing to find kids. It's the kind of situation where, if companies really wanted to go out and change how they're auditing, they probably could find these kids. They look young. They're not hard to find.

  But they have to want to find out what's going on.

• Laura Barron-Lopez:

  Hannah Dreier of The New York Times, thank you.

• Hannah Dreier:

  Thank you, Laura.