The Biden administration ignored reports that migrant children were being exploited for labor

The Biden administration apparently knew that immigrant minors were being exploited for labor and did nothing. Several civil servants who spoke up about these facts were met with backlash and even lost their jobs, as revealed by an investigation by The New York Times. The companies that engaged in these practices, however, were hardly investigated, and some of them even kept teenagers in these jobs.

According to Customs and Border Protection, more than 330,000 migrant children arrived unaccompanied in the last three years. The minors are referred to the care of the Department of Health and Human Services and often seek employment that allows them to send money to help family members inside and outside the United States. Thousands of these children ended up working hard labor jobs across the country, including in slaughterhouses, replacing roofs and operating machinery in factories. This was in violation of child labor laws, a recent NYT investigation found. Following the publication of the article in February, the White House announced policy changes and a crackdown on companies that hire children.

Continued complaints

However, NYT reporters found a different reality. In the published document, the newspaper indicates that, despite the fact that the complaints even reached Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, the response did not go beyond the issuance of press releases:

Interdepartmental accusations

In fact, the article denounced that the workers of the various departments "expressed concern for migrant children" but blamed the failure to protect them on other agencies: "H.H.S. officials said the department vetted sponsors sufficiently but could not control what happened to children after they were released. Monitoring workplaces, they said, was the job of the Department of Labor." Some Labor Department officials noted that their investigators focused more intently on child labor and shared their findings with Health and Human Services, "but said it was not a welfare agency."

To complete the circuit, White House staff acknowledged that both agencies had passed along information to them about the labor exploitation of migrant children, but justified their lack of response on the grounds that the reports were not marked as urgent and did not make clear the real scope of the problem. Following the NYT report, White House spokeswoman Robyn M. Patterson announced that the White House was increasing its scrutiny of employers and revising its investigation of sponsors. "It’s unacceptable that companies are using child labor, and this administration will continue working to strengthen the system to investigate these violations and hold violators accountable," Patterson said.

Overcrowding of youth centers due to COVID

The reality, however, still does not match the administration's claims. The overcrowding of youth centers that occurred as a result of the consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the loosening of vetting restrictions for sponsors. Some were not sufficiently investigated, nor were they followed up with in detail to ensure the children's wellbeing outside the centers.

Linda Brandmiller, who in 2021 was working at a stadium-turned-shelter for Dreamers, and whose job it was to monitor potential sponsors for abuse, detected two suspicious cases in her first week. Thus, she communicated these suspicions to her supervisors who worked with H.H.S. One concerned a man who wanted to sponsor three children for employment in his construction company and a second who offered to sponsor two children, but made it clear that the children would have to work to offset the cost of bringing them north.

Retaliation for whistleblowing

Brandmiller made it clear in her emails that it was "urgent" but received no response. Upon learning that a teenager was being handed over to the second individual, and that the latter had already received another 14-year-old minor, she again wrote to superiors demanding "immediate attention" to the matter. She even wrote to the person in charge of the shelter. The only response she received was her dismissal without explanation.

Something similar happened to Jallyn Sualog, who was the most senior career member of the H.H.S. division responsible for unaccompanied migrant children when Biden came to the White House. Alarmed by reports of Dreamers handed over to adults who lied about their identities or planned to exploit them, she warned bosses in an email: "If nothing continues to be done, there will be a catastrophic event." Sualog warned that these were "critical" situations and that they were "putting children at risk."

"They just didn't want to hear it"

She soon realized that no one was listening to her, so she filed a complaint with the Health Service Inspector General's Office, the agency's internal watchdog, under whistleblower protection. Her concern led her to talk to congressional officials about what was happening. "I feel like short of protesting in the streets, I did everything I could to warn them," the official lamented. "They just didn’t want to hear it."

The veteran civil servant was transferred, which she assumed was reprimand for her continued protests. Last fall, the Office of the Inspector General issued a report acknowledging that Sualog's case and other demotions and firings at the agency "may have risen to the level of whistleblower chilling."