Homeland Security takes a deeper look at possible human trafficking of under-age workers to slaughterhouses

A child cleans a slaughterhouse for PSSI; the subject
was blurred by the source. (Department of Labor photo)

"Last month, the Labor Department found that Packers Sanitation Services Inc. . . . employed 102 children at 13 slaughterhouses across eight states," reports Julia Ainsley and Laura Strickler of NBC News. Now, "The Department of Homeland Security has widened its investigation into migrant children found cleaning slaughterhouses and is now working with the Justice Department to examine whether a human smuggling scheme brought migrant children to work in multiple slaughterhouses for multiple companies across multiple states, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the investigation."

The investigation is looking into "how Central American children, some as young as 13, wound up working dangerous jobs that are legal only for American adults by presenting identification stolen from U.S. citizens," NBC reports. "So far the investigation is focused on smugglers who may have provided the children with false identities and possibly led them to dangerous jobs. The companies themselves are not targets of the investigation, the officials said."

A former Packers Sanitation Services manager, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told NBC, "In this industry you have a lot of people who are undocumented workers. A lot of times it’s because they’re not going to pay well enough to hire people in America who want to do it." NBC reports, "The former manager confirmed that the company uses the federal government’s E-Verify program, but said that while some employees presenting false documents were turned away, it was common for workers who presented obviously false IDs to get hired as long as the documents stated they were legal and of age."

Packers Sanitation spokesperson Gina Swenson disputed the former manager, saying, "This is categorically false — period. We have been crystal clear that we do not want a single person under the age of 18 working for the company. We have trained and retrained our hiring employees on how to actively spot identity theft — as part of our extensive efforts to enforce this absolute prohibition against employing anyone under the age of 18."