Members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee questioned the leaders of several federal agencies at a hearing Wednesday about their roles in protecting migrant children who enter the United States.
The hearing followed recent reports about unaccompanied migrant children working dangerous jobs across the country, including a recent investigation from The Public’s Radio about minors who said they worked in seafood processing plants in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Some 300,000 unaccompanied minors have come to the United States in the past two years, part of an unprecedented surge in teens seeking asylum in the country. Many of those teens, according to reporting from Reuters, the New York Times, and other outlets, end up working in dangerous jobs.
Since 2019, the U.S. Department of Labor has seen an 88% increase in the number of children working in violation of child labor laws, according to Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda. In the past fiscal year, the department found nearly 1,000 employers who had illegally employed children.
“Unaccompanied children fleeing violence are among the most vulnerable people seeking refuge in the United States,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said in a statement. “Congress has an obligation to ensure the health and safety of these kids—we must do better to protect them.”
Sen. Durbin, alongside other democratic lawmakers such as Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, introduced a bill that would alter how the federal government cares for children who enter the country by themselves. Among other reforms, the bill would provide legal representation in immigration court to unaccompanied minors.
Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers suggested that to address the crisis of migrant teens working in dangerous jobs, the country should turn more unaccompanied minors away at the border, reducing the burden on strained U.S. immigration systems.
“You just can’t have every child throughout the world dropped on our doorstep,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). He and other senators argued that changing anti-trafficking legislation that allows unaccompanied minors to remain in the country while they apply for asylum or other forms of immigration relief would mitigate the child labor crisis.
In advance of the Judiciary Committee hearing, 12 Senate Democrats, including Rhode Island Sens. Whitehouse and Jack Reed, sent a letter to the Acting Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor, Julie Su, urging the department to hold not only the subcontractors and staffing agencies that supply labor accountable, but also the companies at which minors work.
In an interview, Sen. Reed said he plans to co-sponsor forthcoming legislation from senate colleagues codifying that companies who use subcontractors and staffing agencies will be held fully liable for child labor violations at their businesses.
“The liability should be shared,” Reed said. “The company has an obligation to do some due diligence also, particularly when it’s obvious. If someone looks very young you gotta ask yourself, ‘How old?’”
The bill, which lawmakers plan to introduce Thursday, would also significantly increase penalties for businesses that employ children, which experts say are far too low to dissuade companies from illegally hiring underage workers, and prohibit businesses that use child labor from federal contracts, among other provisions.
