A Blind Spot in the Law: Undocumented Child Labor Exploitation in the U.S.

In July 2023, a meat processing plant incident in Hattiesburg, Mississippi led to the tragic death of sixteen-year-old Duvan Thomas Pérez. While cleaning the machinery, Pérez became caught in the rotating shaft and was fatally injured. As a result, Pérez’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Mar-Jac Poultry LLC, explicitly naming the Human Resources director and safety supervisor present at the time of the incident. This suit was backed by two separate investigations by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Wage and Hour Division. OSHA’s probe into this case left Mar-Jac, a poultry company notorious for hazardous conditions, with seventeen citations and over $200,000 in federal fines for the preventable death of a child laborer. While this incident reveals the critical issue of dangerous workplace conditions, Pérez’s status as an undocumented immigrant complicated this story. Pérez’s identity as both an undocumented immigrant and a minor combine to increase the risk of labor exploitation.

Despite this oversight in labor condition regulations, the federal government has passed extensive legislation regarding work opportunities for immigrant populations. Under the Reagan administration, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was passed in 1986. This law required employers to verify the legal status of potential employees before hiring them, doling out penalties to companies who hired undocumented laborers. However, companies often find loopholes to hire undocumented workers and profit from their inexpensive labor. Companies can hire employees through subcontractors and then claim to be unaware of illegal hiring practices. Using this legal workaround, companies can place undocumented child laborers in adverse working conditions. Because of their need for economic security despite an insecure immigration status, many undocumented children in illegal workspaces refrain from leaving these positions or reporting the work conditions to authorities. In Pérez's case, he received the position at the meat-processing plant from one of the company’s subcontractors, using the identity of a 32-year-old man to hide his true age. Though acts like the IRCA protect undocumented people in law, there are common workarounds that ultimately leave this demographic with few legal labor protections.

Legislation concerning undocumented laborers exists, yet it largely fails to address unsafe working conditions for these laborers. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, protects undocumented workers against having to disclose their immigration status in the event of a workplace investigation. Legislation like this provides necessary labor security and privacy for undocumented individuals. However, it overlooks the disproportionate levels of exploitation that undocumented laborers, and especially child laborers, face. In general, laws concerning undocumented employment protect the ability for undocumented immigrants to work rather than ensuring safe working conditions. Although the National Labor Relations Act ensures some workplaces protections and employment stability for undocumented laborers, laws such as IRCA and variances in state legislation generally limit employment opportunities for undocumented laborers. Because of this unregulated area of the law, undocumented workers are vulnerable to exploitation.

 While much of the media coverage surrounding Duvan Pérez’s case centered on the remediation of labor conditions, it also prompted discussion of migrant and undocumented worker conditions. In the United States, the exploitation of migrant labor remains an extremely prevalent issue. Because undocumented laborers often cannot obtain legal work, many pursue employment in extralegal ways. Pérez’s position at a Mar-Jac slaughter house aligns with this common course of labor pursuit for undocumented immigrants. However, Pérez’s employment was also illegal because Pérez was 16 years old while employed at Mar-Jac.The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, a Progressive Era piece of labor legislation, prohibits minors from working in certain occupations deemed too hazardous, and explicitly lists slaughterhouse and meat-packing plant labor. The legal team representing the family of Pérez could easily invoke this piece of legislation in their lawsuit, arguing that Mar-Jac violated the law by hiring sixteen-year-old Pérez.

Unfortunately, Mar-Jac’s employment of Pérez represents a growing pattern of exploitation of child labor in the nation, especially for undocumented child laborers. Violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act are on the rise, having quadrupled from 2015 to 2022. These companies use the legal status of undocumented minors and their significant need for a source of income to exploit their labor. Undocumented child laborers face two-fold exploitation—via unsuitable conditions due to their undocumented status and because they are children holding these grueling positions. Child laborers are often forced to take unsafe jobs, working twelve-hour days in dangerous conditions that resemble those before the 20th-century labor reform movement. Some undocumented children work on top of receiving their education; many refrain from attending school altogether. Well known brands such as J.Crew, Ben & Jerry’s, and Fruit of the Loom can trace their products back to immigrant child laborers. More widespread than may seem evident, an entire sector of child laborers flourishes unchecked under current law.

The lack of sufficient legislation on this aspect of immigrant labor allowed companies to exploit undocumented laborers without accountability. Companies such as Mar-Jac that engage in these labor practices often accumulate violations of workplace safety without consequence. When government authorities do dole out punishments, they often come in the form of relatively low fines that fail to incentivize companies to abandon their dangerous and illegal practices. Fines dealt by OSHA for workplace incidents vary by severity, but some companies may pay as little as $14,502 for violations that result in severe damage, the average fine in 2013 being just $1,895 for severe violations. These methods of punishment fail to hold companies accountable, and thus are not the best way to improve workplace conditions. Legislation that targets the reckless workplaces that place undocumented workers in fatally dangerous conditions could change the lives of young immigrant laborers like Duvan Thomas Pérez across the nation.

Sinclair Harris is a first-year at Brown University concentrating in History and International & Public Affairs. She is a staff writer for the BULR blog and can be contacted at sinclair_harris@brown.edu.

Mira Echambadi is a junior at Brown University concentrating in International and Public Affairs and Applied Math. She is an editor for the Brown Undergraduate Law Review and can be contacted at mira_echambadi@brown.edu.