Health Secretary Becerra: Government should go after employers who exploit children

Health Secretary Xavier Becerra on Tuesday said federal authorities need to crack down on employers who illegally use child labor amid questions on how much administration officials know about immigrant child labor abuse in the United States.

“What’s out of the ordinary is when employers, knowing that a 12- or 13- or 14-year-old is being employed in their place of work, allow that to happen. That’s the exploitation. That’s the abuse, that’s the violation of law,” Becerra told The Hill.

“And that’s what we should truly attack because no child should be exploited, but no employer or company should close their eyes and act as if they don’t know what’s going on when a child is being hired to do work that’s even dangerous for an adult. That’s what we have to tackle and we have to make sure we don’t allow that to happen.”

Becerra was singled out in a New York Times report as one of the Biden administration officials who was made aware about the growing problem of immigrant child labor. 

But Becerra said he knew about the issue long before he took the Health and Human Services (HHS) job.

“Are we aware that there are cases in America where kids are working in exploitative circumstances? I didn’t have to become secretary to know that.”

“I knew that before I became a member of Congress. I knew that before I got into elected office. I knew that because I’m the son of a farm worker. I’ve seen situations where friends and relatives have been placed in difficult circumstances,” he said.

As secretary of Health, Becerra oversees the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which retains custody of unaccompanied minors who are encountered at the country’s borders and ports of entry by immigration and border officials.

ORR generally retains custody of the minors until a sponsor is found to take the minors in, at which point custody is relinquished to the sponsor.

In most cases, authorities say, those sponsors are relatives of the minors.

But the Times report found that over the past two years, ORR was unable to reach more than 85,000 of the minors in routine follow-up calls a month after their placement with sponsors.

Still, Becerra said, ORR’s jurisdiction ends once custody is transferred.

“Once we find a sponsor, who goes through a vetting process, background checks, most all of them, the vast majority are relatives of these kids. We place them in the care of that sponsor, our jurisdiction, our responsibilities, our authorities don’t reach beyond our custody of the child,” he said.

Becerra’s proposal that the administration focus its efforts on employer oversight would put the onus on the Department of Labor to enforce child labor laws more aggressively, a task Becerra said could be complex.

“I want to stay in my lane but I would suspect what they’d say is it’s tough in the vast expanses of the country to reach every place of employment and be able to oversee the industries to make sure that they’re not employing children,” said Becerra.

“Youth, children, can work in this country under certain circumstances – it’s being able to do the oversight to make sure that industries are not exploiting children.” 

Becerra also pointed to the possibility of employers hiding behind subcontractors as a potential snag in child labor law enforcement.

And while HHS has a legal obligation to seek sponsors for the minors, Becerra said children are safe from exploitation while in his agency’s custody.

“At HHS, we look at children as children. We don’t look at them as migrant children. We don’t look at them as poor children. We don’t look at them as children from one part of the world or another. We don’t look at them as children who are coming from a difficult circumstance or as children – we just look at these kids. Kids are kids. 

“And so we will do what you would do what you would expect to do for any child and that is provide them with the care and safety that they deserve. And so that’s what we do while they’re in our custody.”