Alondra was a bit nervous. Wearing a dress she borrowed from a friend, she was called up to speak in front of more than 300 people at a banquet celebrating the 15th anniversary of a labor advocacy group in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
The 16-year-old from Guatemala made a plea to the audience, which included officials from the U.S. Departments of Labor and Homeland Security, and state representatives.
“What I need is a work permit and permanent residency so I can stay in this country,” she said in Spanish.
Until September, Alondra had worked at a seafood processing factory in the city. She was one of more than two dozen teenagers The Public’s Radio spoke to as part of Underage & Unprotected, an investigation published the same month that revealed migrant teens from Central America were working in the New Bedford seafood processing industry. The Public’s Radio is not using Alondra’s full name because of her current legal status.
The Public’s Radio also revealed that the Labor Department launched an investigation in New Bedford into at least two seafood processing plants and one Rhode-Island based staffing agency for possible violations of child labor, overtime pay, and anti-retaliation laws.
After she received a phone call in which she said, “someone from the government” asked questions about her employment, Alondra left her job. And without a job, she is left without a way to support herself and her family.
A need for work
Early this spring, Alondra left San Andrés Sajcabajá, a small agricultural city in Guatemala, to help support her mother, grandparents and six younger siblings.
“I decided that, because I’m the oldest, I told [my family] ‘I’m going,’” Alondra said.
After traveling by bus, van, and foot, she crossed the Rio Grande River into Texas alone. After she turned herself into federal agents, she was placed in detention for a month.
Many migrant children who enter the U.S. alone can stay in the country while they apply for asylum or other forms of immigration relief. Once federal agents take them into custody, they are sent to shelters that are under the jurisdiction of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Her father was already living in New Bedford and became Alondra’s sponsor. She was released to him in March and they moved into an apartment in New Bedford he shared with another family.
Alondra started looking for jobs as soon as she arrived. At first, her father didn’t want Alondra to work because she was a minor. Eventually, he relented and gave her permission to seek work to ease their financial pressures.
“He was paying for everything and he couldn’t,” Alondra said.
Without legal work authorization, she didn’t have many options.
In June, a family member connected Alondra to a job at the seafood processing plant where she said she filled out an application with a fake ID that said she was 20 years old. She made $15 an hour.
In September, Alondra got the phone call about her job. Someone who she said identified themselves as being “from the government” asked her if she was working at the seafood processing plant. She lied and said “No,” afraid she would be sent back to Guatemala.
When pressed, she admitted she worked there but downplayed how often. Alondra said the person she spoke with told her she should not be working there and instead needed to go to school.
A Labor Department spokesperson said they can’t confirm whether it was someone from their department who made the call to Alondra. However, Alondra is cooperating in the ongoing Labor Department investigation in New Bedford and Rhode Island, according to Mari Perales Sánchez, a Yale University law student who is working on Alondra’s case through the school’s Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic.
It is not clear whether as a 16-year-old Alondra’s work broke any laws. Federal law prohibits 14- and 15-year-olds from working in any manufacturing setting, including seafood processing. In Massachusetts, 16- and 17-year-olds are not allowed to work more than 9 hours a day, more than 48 hours a week, or after 10 pm on school nights.
Later that month, Alondra got home from work, and her father surprised her with a backpack and notebooks and said she would start school at New Bedford High the following day.
“I was a little bit sad because I wanted to work,” Alondra said. “I have debts and I want to pay them.”
Since Alondra is cooperating in the ongoing federal investigation, Sánchez said she could qualify for deferred action, a form of prosecutorial discretion that allows undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States for a two-year period, and become eligible for a work permit.
In January, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it would dedicate additional resources toward processing applications for deferred action from non-citizen workers who “are victims of, or witnesses to, the violation of labor rights.”
IMG2169: Alondra spoke in December at the 15th anniversary event for the Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores (CCT), a labor advocacy group in New Bedford, Mass.
In November, Sánchez processed Alondra’s deferred action application. She learned about Alondra’s looming debts and her desperate need to pay them back.
“She was more solemn or quiet, but definitely sharing her story, provided a lot of documents she already had prepared,” Sánchez said. “It was a situation where you can see that she had gone through a lot very recently.”
Due to attorney-client confidentiality agreements, Sánchez declined to disclose any specific information on Alondra’s case, including who contacted Alondra and told her to stop working at the seafood processor.
Alondra is currently waiting for a response on her application.
Access to legal, safe jobs
Migrant teens like Alondra who are released to sponsors cannot immediately work legally when they come to the United States. They can apply for asylum or Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, among other avenues that can lead to a work permit. But that can take more than a year.
Deferred action cases tend to be processed within a few months, according to the Yale Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic, but they offer only a temporary respite: deferred action doesn’t provide a path to legal status, like a green card, or permanent work authorization.
Still, without quick access to work permits, advocates say kids are left with financial burdens they can’t pay, which can lead them to pursue unlawful or dangerous jobs.
“A worker’s authorization allows them to be able to have a job that will allow them to work in accordance with their schedule,” Jennifer Velarde, an immigration attorney in New Bedford said. “And give them more opportunities to choose and also be more protected at the workplace.”
More than 5,000 unaccompanied minors have been released to sponsors in Massachusetts since October 2021, according to ORR data.
Over the last several months, Gov. Maura Healey and government officials from the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office and the state’s congressional delegation requested that the Biden administration expedite the process for new immigrants to receive work permits.
Massachusetts State Rep. Christopher Hendricks, a Democrat who represents New Bedford, supported those efforts and said access to work permits is important for immigrants in his district, especially those working in seafood processing.
“We need permits approved faster than they are now so people can get to work,” Hendricks said. “We see that as a real tangible, quick fix that can really put people in jobs and get people working.”
Many of the teenagers who told The Public’s Radio they worked in seafood facilities lacked legal work authorization, which could have opened up other job possibilities. Hendricks said that work is too dangerous for young people and plans to introduce a bill during the next legislative session that would outlaw 16- and 17-year-olds from working in seafood processing. (Federal child labor laws already prevent teens under 16 from working these jobs).
“It’s a dangerous profession where you’re working with, a lot of the time, sharp tools all day throughout your shift,” Hendricks said. “That’s the type of work that should be exclusively for adults — trained working adults.”
Left with debt
Alondra is in the ninth grade. Her spiral notebook, packed with solutions to addition and subtraction problems along with intricate doodles of flowers and faces, make obvious her favorite subjects: math and art. She doesn’t have many friends and she likes it that way.
Though she’s enjoying school, she worries about her $4,500 debt, which will come due starting in February. And she worries about her father, who resorted to borrowing money from family members to pay his own migration debts while supporting both Alondra and her siblings in Guatemala.
Without a job, she’s not able to help.
“I need to pay for all the things you need to live here,” Alondra said. “It leaves me sad.”
