Weeks after revelations that migrant children are routinely exploited for cheap labor in the United States sparked bipartisan outcry and calls for action on Capitol Hill, Congress has moved no further to address the issue, which has been mired in a long-running partisan war on immigration policy.
Legislation to address corporate use of child labor has gone nowhere and currently has little Republican support, while Democrats’ efforts to increase funding for federal agencies to provide more support services to migrant children crossing the border themselves , get big chances in the House, where the GOP has pledged to cut agency budgets.
At the time, Republican proposals to enforce tighter controls on adults in households sponsoring migrant children and expedite the removal of unaccompanied minors had little chance of gaining ground in the Democrat-led Senate.
Instead, as Congress prepares for a bitter debate over immigration policy in the coming days, Republicans and Democrats have retreated to their opposite corners, dismissing any initial hopes of addressing the issue of child labor in a bipartisan way. grasp, have given up.
Republicans have pointed to exploitative conditions at companies employing migrant children, documented in an investigation by The New York Times, to justify a strict immigration package. The Times reported in February that while the number of children crossing the southern border alone has risen to record levels, many have taken on dangerous jobs that violate old labor laws, including in factories, slaughterhouses and construction sites.
The GOP legislation, headed for a House vote this week, would reinstate a series of strict policies championed under the Trump administration, including measures to detain migrant children in detention centers and expedite their deportation.
Democrats, desperate to avoid any pretense of aiding Republicans in their fight against Mr Biden’s immigration policies, have quieted their criticism of the administration’s handling of the situation, instead directing their anger at the companies that apparently employ migrant children. to have.
As a result, the political space disappears for a congressional consensus on a policy solution to help protect these children from exploitation.
“I know it’s complicated, but this really should be about protecting children, not the larger politics of the border,” Janet Murguía, president of the Latino civil rights organization UnidosUS, said in an interview, accusing Republicans of “playing politics” and Democrats of being “skittish” in addressing the issue. “It’s a good idea. It should be easy to find bipartisan support for this.”
The Biden administration has taken steps to change some of its policies and practices since The Times revealed the explosion of migrant child labor. The Department of Health and Human Services, responsible for placing unaccompanied migrant children in the care of trusted adults, has appointed a team to support children after they leave government shelters, providing more children with case management and legal services. The department’s Inspector General is also conducting an evaluation of the vetting system used to place migrant children in homes.
The Department of Labor has launched several initiatives to improve enforcement of child labor laws, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said last month that his department added a new mission to address exploitative crimes, including a focus on migrant victims of child labor .
Yet there is little sign of a meaningful push to introduce legislation that could stop the exploitation of migrant children as workers. Early in the outcry from lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats spoke angrily about the issue, bringing the Biden administration to account. Leading members of both parties sent letters to cabinet secretaries demanding to know how unaccompanied minors held dangerous jobs during grueling factory shifts. Ordinary legislators drafted bipartisan legislation to impose fines on companies that violate child labor laws.
But by the time Congress held its first oversight hearings on the issue last month, the topic was included in a looming battle in the House over a border security bill and a ramped-up Republican campaign to impeach Mr. Mayorkas over the state of the southern border. .
Even in a series of hearings designed expressly to address the trend of migrant child labor, Republicans have used the topic to condemn the Biden administration’s overall immigration policies.
“This is a crisis exacerbated by President Biden’s open-border agenda,” Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Washington Republican and the chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said last month at an oversight hearing with the U.S. inspector general. the Health and Human Services Department.
During a Senate Judiciary Committee review hearing, Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, berated Mr. Mayorkas over the matter, suggesting it should cost him his job.
“You have facilitated this modern indentured labor of children at every stage,” Mr. Hawley yelled. “Why wouldn’t you get dropped off for this?”
At the same time, Democrats have tempered their criticism of the Biden administration for the crisis, even as some of them have gone on to declare the administration’s handling of the issue unacceptable. They have reserved their harshest words for Republicans, whose proposed policies they believe would exacerbate a humanitarian crisis.
“It’s hard to take seriously the party that brags about its concerns about exploited children while depriving unaccompanied children of vital protection,” New York Representative Jerrold Nadler, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said at the recent hearing.
He defended the administration’s handling of the case, including its vetting of sponsors.
“Despite the fact that there are some pretty heartbreaking stories about sponsors being traffickers or using the children to work, it is my understanding that this past fiscal year more than 85 percent of sponsors are close relatives,” Mr. Nadler said at a recent judicial power. hearing of the Subcommittee on Child Labor by Migrants.
These relatives are often uncles or cousins who hardly know the soon-to-be children, and some of them push the minors into dangerous work, The Times said in its reporting.
In the Senate, Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said last week that he was in the process of bringing in senior officials to testify about the exploitation of migrant children. Mr Durbin was one of the first Democrats to send letters to the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services demanding to know what steps were being taken to protect children from the conditions described in the Times report.
But some Democrats say their party has been too timid in confronting the Biden administration over the crisis.
“What we’re seeing is that Republicans don’t want to hold Republican governments accountable and Democrats don’t want to hold Democratic governments accountable,” Representative Katie Porter, a California Democrat, said in an interview.
Several Democrats have sent letters to the companies named in the Times investigation asking what steps they have taken to ensure they do not employ minors in the future. A group of a dozen major institutional investors, including state officials from New York, Connecticut and Maine, sent their own letters, and the New Mexico treasurer placed some of the companies on a list barring future investment. Ford said it would require employment agencies to provide better age verification, and Ben & Jerry’s, which faces a class action lawsuit over the presence of young workers in its supply chain, vowed to suspend dairy farms that use child labor.
Other Democrats have held back their public fire as the companies pressure lawmakers to give them more time.
In March, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus drafted letters to send to the CEOs of companies involved in the use of child labor, saying that every company should “take necessary steps to eliminate child labor throughout its supply chain” and requested to briefings, according to a draft shared with The New York Times. The group informed the White House that the letters were coming.
But the effort stalled when companies including PepsiCo and General Motors lobbied members of the caucus to wait, according to two people familiar with the initiative.
The letters were never sent.
At the same time, the two sides have pursued divergent legislative paths. In late March, Representatives Hillary Scholten of Michigan, a Democrat, and Nancy Mace of South Carolina, a Republican, joined forces on a bill to increase civil penalties for individual child labor violations nearly tenfold from their current maximum of about $100,000. 15,000 per routine violation. . It mirrored a measure introduced several weeks earlier by Hawaii Democrat Senator Brian Schatz.
But since then, House Democrats have rallied behind a more aggressive proposal from Michigan Democrat Dan Kildee that would raise maximum civil payouts and create new criminal liability for companies that repeatedly violate child labor laws. Democrats in the House and Senate have also introduced legislation to deny Agriculture Department contracts to companies that commit gross violations of labor laws, including child exploitation, either directly or through subcontractors. No House Republicans other than Ms. Mace signed the measures.
Republicans have only just begun proposing similar legislative changes. On Wednesday, Mr. Hawley introduced a measure that would impose fines of up to $100 million on labor law violators and $500 million on willful violators, but only for the largest companies — those with at least half a billion dollars in business annually.
Many other Republicans argue that going after companies is simply not a priority.
“I’m fine thinking about that, but at the end of the day, stop the magnet,” said Texas Representative Chip Roy, a lead architect of his party’s strict border security bill, arguing that policies that allow migrant children entering the United States was the main reason why children were put to work.
When it comes to companies exploiting children, he added, “I’m pretty sure that’s already against the law.”
