They are young, alone, and exploited. These are the unaccompanied young migrants that daily enter the U.S. looking for the opportunity of a better life. Instead, many of them end up in dangerous occupations because of a lack of skills and the laxity of child labor law enforcement.
According to several sources, many migrant children who have arrived in the U.S. without their parents are working in unsafe and illegal jobs across various industries, such as food processing, manufacturing, and agriculture. Some of these jobs involve operating dangerous machinery, working long hours and late-night shifts, and being exposed to harmful chemicals. These children are often exploited by employers who pay them low wages, deny them benefits, and threaten them with deportation if they complain.
They are part of a new economy of exploitation. A New York Times investigation called it a “shadow work force” that violates all the child labor laws that have been in place for nearly a century. Twelve-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee. Underage slaughterhouse workers in Delaware, Mississippi and North Carolina. Children sawing planks of wood on overnight shifts in South Dakota.
Largely from Central America, the children are driven by economic desperation that was worsened by the pandemic. This labor force has been slowly growing for almost a decade, but it has exploded since 2021, while the systems meant to protect children have broken down.
One of the most dangerous of these jobs is roofing, yet it is one that is so pervasive as to have given birth to a new word that blends English and Spanish. It has even turned into an affectionate diminutive: they are “ruferitos.”
The New York Times spoke with more than 100 child roofers in nearly two dozen states, including some who began at elementary-school age. It is a punishing job: they wake before dawn to be driven to distant job sites, sometimes crossing state lines. They carry heavy bundles of shingles that leave their arms shaking from the strain and fatigue. They work through heat waves on black-tar rooftops that scorch their hands.
Because of child labor laws, these children, who have entered the country illegally, have no protection from parents or indeed, frequently no family at all, and no legal job options. They rarely have any skills to offer the new country that they have entered, and even if they did, they would have to wait for their sixteenth birthday to take them. For some jobs, those considered hazardous, the hiring age is 18.
Despite all these obstacles, the most common job for these children is under-the-table work in roofing and construction, according to teachers, social workers, labor organizers and federal investigators. Roofing is plentiful and pays better than many of the other jobs these children can get.
According to The New York Times, Juan Nasario of New Orleans, said he had been replacing roofs during 12-hour shifts nearly every day since he arrived from Guatemala four years ago, when he was 10. He does not go to school, he has financial obligations to fulfill.
In Dallas, Diego Osbaldo Hernández started roofing at 15, after coming to the United States from Mexico last year to live with an older friend. His jobs take him all across Texas, but his favorite place to work is San Antonio for a very practical reason: “They are the shortest houses,” he said.
The U.S. government has been criticized for its poor oversight and lack of protection for these vulnerable workers, who have fled from violence and poverty in their home countries. The Labor Department has reported a 44% increase in the number of children it found working in violation of federal child labor laws in the last 10 months.
The federal government is aware of the problem, and earlier this year pledged to crack down on child labor. But for these desperate children, roofing is the most lucrative occupation they can find, and thus the roofing work force continues to grow as fast as children arrive.
Children working on construction sites are six times as likely to be killed as minors doing other work, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Roofing is particularly risky; it is the most dangerous job for minors other than agricultural work, studies show. Not surprisingly, labor organizers and social workers say they are seeing more migrant children suffer serious injuries on roofing crews in recent years.
The laws to protect children from such harm are in place—and in theory, they are stringent. But as long as there is poverty, they will be violated by desperate people, and whether it be construction, agricultural work, or roofing, children will be–figuratively and literally–walking precariously on a steep roof.
