“I didn’t get how expensive everything was,” said 13-year-old Jose Vasquez, who works 12-hour shifts, six days a week, at a commercial egg farm in Michigan and lives with his teenage sister. “I’d like to go to school, but then how would I pay rent?”
The Labor Department tracks the deaths of foreign-born child workers but no longer makes them public. Reviewing state and federal safety records and public reports, The Times found a dozen cases of young migrant workers killed since 2017, the last year the Labor Department reported any.
One company, Ben & Jerry’s, said it worked with labor groups to ensure a minimum set of working conditions at its dairy suppliers. Cheryl Pinto, the company’s head of values-led sourcing, said that if migrant children needed to work full time, it was preferable for them to have jobs at a well-monitored workplace.
After a week of 17-hour days, she sat at home one night with her aunt and considered her life in the United States. The long nights. The stress about money. “I didn’t have expectations about what life would be like here,” she said, “but it’s not what I imagined.”
His sister did not go to school either, and they had spent the day bickering in their room. Now night had fallen and they were eating Froot Loops for dinner. The heat was off, so they wore winter jackets. In an interview from Guatemala, their mother, Isabel Lopez, cried as she explained that she had tried to join her children in the United States last year but was turned back at the border.
Holy Shit
:gui-better:
My people, what have they done to us? 🙁
:deeper-sadness:
> Trump stops publishing the deaths of foreign-born child workers.
> Biden doesn't undo that.
:shocked-pikachu: