In 2023, a New York Times investigation followed the story of 14-year-old Marcos Cux, whose story highlighted the dangerous situations unaccompanied migrant minors face across the United States. In oversized green rubberized overalls, steel-toed boots, and double-layered gloves, Marcos readied for an overnight cleaning shift at a Perdue chicken slaughterhouse in rural Virginia in February 2022. In the middle of the night, with the rest of his family sleeping, he was driven by a cousin to the industrial facility — a drab complex behind metal fencing along a lonely highway.
Even in the face of federal laws that bar minors from working in slaughterhouses because of serious risks of injury, Marcos was part of an overnight cleaning crew in which children described being as many as one-third of the workforce. Marcos bought falsified documents identifying him as a man in his 20s with the aid of a middle-school classmate already working there. For a 14-year-old migrant, the $100 he was paid per six-hour shift — a number that in his native country would be unfathomable — was a strong enough lure, despite the work’s physical and chemical risks.
If Cux had not injured himself, an investigation would not have ensued. Imagine how many of these missing children are forced into child labor or, like Ilhan Omar, falsify their documents to show they are adults and or like Omar falsify documents to be minors at the point of entry or for work.
This exposé posed more significant questions about the institutional breakdowns that make such exploitation possible. In 2016, I began investigating Department of State programs that would work with organizations such as AEI and United Work Services to bring “youth” from other nations to work in the USA. Those young “adults” would enter with falsified documents, making them eligible. The ages of these “youth” workers are 18-24, but in many instances, some were minors as young as 13.
A female that came under the AEI, a company contracted with the Department of State, was 13 and placed to work as a “pool girl” in North Dakota by the man camps in the oil fields. The female was trapped in a motel performing sexual acts for the “big wigs” of the oil industry. I spoke and wrote in length about it and sent all the findings to the DOJ in 2017 and also filed it in a suit against the now Attorney General of North Dakota, who killed himself the morning of his indictment.
This isn’t something that just happened once. The Department of Labor has been actively investigating these incidents since 2021. At an Iowa pork plant, a dozen undocumented immigrant children cleaned meat processing equipment during illegal shifts on the dangerous “kill floor” over four years, the U.S. Department of Labor said on Wednesday as it detailed a federal investigation.
As young as 13, 11 children were assigned to use caustic chemicals to wash down toxic machinery like “head splitters, jaw pullers, bandsaws, and neck clippers” at the Seaboard Triumph Foods pork processing plant in Sioux City. It was the second time federal investigators found children working at this facility.
The investigation found that Qvest LLC, an Oklahoma-based cleaning contractor of Seaboard from 2019 to 2023, employed the undocumented minors. The company was penalized under federal child labor laws, paying a fine of $171,919. The violations continued after hiring a new cleaning contractor, Fayette Janitorial Services, in September 2023. Investigators discovered that Fayette had 24 children, many undocumented and wearing school backpacks, working overnight shifts. These children had previously been work-ready through Qvest. In May 2024, Fayette was fined $649,304.
“These findings are a testament to Seaboard Triumph Foods’ long history of employing children illegally at their Sioux City facility, dating to September 2019,” said Michael Lazzeri, the Midwest Regional Administrator for the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. “Even after it switched contractors, children continued to work in unsafe conditions at this facility.”
The case illustrates how undocumented migrant children, who often arrive at the southern U.S. border alone, are especially vulnerable to exploitation. A 2023 New York Times investigation exposed the systemic abuse of migrant children, wage theft, and child labor being part of the package, with children working in dangerous jobs and grueling overnight shifts. Only one in three of these children now lives with their parents, down dramatically from just a decade ago, and their sponsors may exploit them for labor, putting them in precarious situations.
The Labor Department’s report is part of a bigger pattern: in 2024 alone, violations impacting 4,030 children were detected in 736 investigations, resulting in $15.1 million in fines—an increase of nearly 90 percent compared to 2023.
The settlements with Qvest and Fayette require hiring third-party compliance officers, training on child labor laws, and setting up hotlines to report violations. Both companies must also discipline managers who oversaw the illegal employment of minors and file compliance reports for three years.
Although federal authorities have added scrutiny to protect undocumented children, the repeated violations serve as a reminder of systemic failures to safeguard those views, whose lack of legal standing renders them easy prey for those seeking to exploit them. Such findings highlight the pressing need for improved enforcement mechanisms as well as policies that protect vulnerable migrant children from these abuses.
Undocumented children — particularly unaccompanied ones arriving in the U.S. — are particularly vulnerable to labor exploitation because of their precarious legal status, lack of family support, and dire need for income. Examples of how these children may be utilized for labor and how falsified identification aids in the potential exploitation of these children:
Examples of Undocumented Child Labor
Agricultural Work
Undocumented children generally work in agriculture, where there are few labor laws and little oversight. The workers may toil long hours in extreme conditions, often exposed to toxic pesticides and punishing weather.
This time around, Human Rights Watch noted minors as young as 12 were working on farms, often for sub-minimum wages.
Employers exploit these children by threatening their deportation or refusing to pay them.
Manufacturing and Warehousing
Children had been hired to work in factories and warehouses, where they assembled goods, packed goods, and moved heavy objects.
One high-profile case involved children working to clean slaughterhouses and run dangerous machinery—Packers Sanitation Services Inc. hired more than 100 children in 2022.
Hospitality and Food Service
Most undocumented children work in kitchens, dishwashing or janitorial services at restaurants and hotels. These jobs typically include shifts that end late at night and frequent exposure to harmful chemicals.
Such exploitation has implicated the tourism sector in states like Florida and Nevada, where falsified IDs are used to circumvent employment age verification.
Domestic Work
The majority of these boys and girls are in domestic servitude, especially girls. These include working in private homes for cleaning, cooking, and childcare, usually for poverty-level wages or room and board.
Advocates say cases of physical abuse and confinement are included in these arrangements. It’s reminiscent of Concepcion Malinek, 50, who assisted at least 10 undocumented immigrants with illegally coming into the U.S. and then forcing them to work to pay off their debt to her. She would force the undocumented immigrants to work in a factory, collect most of their paychecks, and threaten to have them deported and separated from their children if they didn’t comply, prosecutors said.
Construction and Landscaping
Boys, especially, are recruited into grueling construction or landscaping jobs, often without protective gear or training.
Several cases in Texas in 2023 involved exposing children working at residential construction sites, sometimes using phony Social Security numbers.
The Role of Fabricated Identification
Fake IDs make it possible for them to constitute child labor unreasonably. Those who violate laws, especially employers, often use forged documents to circumvent labor regulations.
False Paperwork in Labor Exploitation
Children or their traffickers are using false Social Security numbers, work permits, or driver’s licenses to satisfy legal hiring requirements.
In the 2020 case of Joel Greenberg, a former Florida tax collector at the center of the Matt Gaetz scandal, it emerged that he provided fake driver’s licenses. These IDs were connected to an underground market traffickers and exploitative employers could access.
Ease of Access
The system is vulnerable to abuse because state databases are not often cross-referenced. The ability of undocumented children to look like legal workers is made possible by an under-the-table market of employees with access to government databases, like Greenberg.
The IDs can either be false, using identities of dead or inactive people.
Perpetuation of Exploitation
Employers use fake IDs as willful blindness. If investigated, they maintain they follow document verification processes allowed under federal laws such as E-Verify.
In fact, for undocumented children, having a fake ID is often linked to debt to traffickers or corrupt “sponsors” of an already existing cycle of exploitation.
It is important to highlight that Joel Greenberg, a former Seminole County, Florida, tax collector, is at the center of scandal, corruption, fraud, and alleged criminal activities. His case drew national attention because of his ties to U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz and the more significant implications of what he did.
Background on Joel Greenberg
Joel Greenberg was the elected tax collector in Seminole County, Fla., in 2016. The former president proved controversial during his time in office, from using his office to enrich himself to criminal behavior.
Criminal Activities
False Driver’s Licenses
Greenberg exploited his office as a tax collector to manufacture fake driver’s licenses. He used his access to official state systems and citizens’ data to create fake IDs. These IDs were exploited for multiple illegal activities, such as:
Helping minors gain access to activities such as drinking or other controlled services.
Aiding and abetting sex trafficking and exploitation of minors
Facilitating crimes and other criminal enterprises needing fake identification.
The Ukrainian/Russian De Rothschild caught at Mar-a-lago are most likely linked to Greenberg and his activities, so they probably used Gaetz as a segue for access.
END GAME: DANGER ON THE HORIZON OF NATSEC AND REAL ID.
The enforcement of REAL ID requirements will hit undocumented migrants especially hard, as this population already struggles to live in the shadows of American life. By requiring that identification used for federal purposes—such as accessing federal buildings, boarding domestic flights, and accessing some government services—meet more rigid criteria, millions of undocumented persons will be deprived of moving through these critical arenas.
Without a route for obtaining REAL ID-compliant documents since they illegally entered the country, they will experience more significant barriers to everyday life — reduced mobility, diminished access to justice systems, and exclusion from agencies safeguarding public safety and well-being. This exclusion threatens to drive undocumented migrants further into the shadows, where they are more susceptible to exploitation and abuse by employers, landlords, and traffickers who take advantage of their few rights and lack of recourse.
The repercussions of such an exclusionary approach would create a dangerous underclass of residents, producing a form of the caste system in the U.S.
Unable to undertake legal forms of work and travel, undocumented migrants may ultimately be forced into criminalized economies or exploitative labor arrangements for their survival. Putting people in this situation increases their chances of committing a crime and further destabilizes communities by perpetuating cycles of poverty and disenfranchisement. Such action undermines the ideals of equality and justice that serve as the bedrock of American life, inciting anger and division.
Over time, the REAL ID mandate would ironically weaken national security and public safety by pushing millions into undocumented and untraceable networks, conflicting with our security interests and increasing inequities across our society while stretching limited resources even thinner.
SOLUTION
I like solutions and loathe simply pointing out issues. Below is a summary of my WHITEPAPER on this. “REAL ID 2025 Rollout: Incoming Global Scrutiny and Increasing the Threat Landscape”
REAL ID will be deployed as a weapon by both Democrats and Republicans. That was ALWAYS their plan, not only by producing vulnerabilities among undocumented migrants but also as a plank of political discourse. To the extent that REAL ID creates burdensome identification requirements, it could unintentionally exacerbate the hardship of undocumented populations, which in turn could open up the debate to charges that this policy enshrines a caste-like system of second-class residents. Critics will use that to bash policymakers — especially President Trump — and not just blame them for inaction but demand that the solution be sweeping measures like blanket amnesty, citing the humanitarian crisis that restrictive immigration policies have created.
Leaving REAL ID implementation in a bureaucratic limbo state until deportations and real immigration reform are achieved is the only way out of this problem. Such a postponement would enable the government to focus its resources on securing borders, addressing the issue of illegal entry, and enforcing immigration laws with deportations being at the forefront without also disenfranchising millions of people who were already in the system.
This approach certainly covers the government’s responsibility to the people and the people to initiate the improvement of society around them by providing national sovereignty and a practical approach to control its security without global agencies intervening, promoting the notion of “TRUMP SLAVERY CASTES.”
President Trump must prioritize addressing the REAL ID issue on day one of his administration, ensuring its implementation is deferred to allow time for comprehensive and responsible action. Delaying this policy will provide the necessary space to enforce immigration laws effectively, secure our borders, and uphold the rule of law without succumbing to global scrutiny or political theater. By avoiding the immediate push of undocumented migrants into survival-driven crime, this approach fosters stability while ensuring that all actions are deliberate and just.
Deportation and immigration reform are monumental tasks that require a calculated strategy. The delay will enable the administration to focus on the most urgent humanitarian crisis: locating and protecting vulnerable children. This includes holding accountable every individual, organization, taxpayer-funded program, politician, and corporation involved in exploiting these children and others for personal gain. Crimes against humanity must not be tolerated in our nation. By approaching this issue with resolve and patriotism, we can uphold the principles of justice, sovereignty, and compassion, ensuring America remains a beacon of hope and fairness.
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