Feds Investigate Migrant Teen Trafficking for Poultry Plant Work

Federal law enforcement officials are investigating whether unaccompanied migrant teenagers have been released from government custody to labor traffickers who sent them to work in agricultural processing facilities in numerous cities, reports Bloomberg News. The probes by the Department of Justice and other agencies coincide with a record-breaking levels this year of undocumented children who’ve been apprehended at the border with Mexico and housed temporarily in often-overcrowded facilities run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) or nonprofit partners.

U.S. authorities reported more than 90,000 encounters in the first nine months of FY  2021, already exceeding the FY 2019 record of 76,000. HHS—charged with providing temporary shelter for the children while identifying suitable adults in the U.S. who can take them in—recently halted sending children to at least two agriculture-dense areas in Enterprise, Ala., and Woodburn, Ore. that are under federal investigation for trafficking. It’s unclear how many additional jurisdictions are under investigation or how many total children—all aged 13 to 17—have potentially been exploited by traffickers. Those cities were flagged as suspicious because HHS had released dozens of children to sponsors in each location, in some cases to the same individual. HHS stopped placements of unaccompanied minors to the Alabama ZIP code that includes Enterprise in early June and issued a similar order for Woodburn.