IC SERIES| On the Horizon : REAL ID as a Backdoor to Mass Amnesty

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.

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 ten 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.