Thousands of children are doing one of the most dangerous jobs in America: roofing.

They're working in violation of basic child labor and workplace safety laws, and more and more of them are getting catastrophically injured. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
There are so many migrant child roofers in the US now, they’ve developed a whole TikTok subculture built around the hashtag "ruferitos.”

All roofing work is illegal for minors. But contractors say they don't worry about hiring kids because labor inspectors never visit worksites.

14-year-old Marcos Cux had his arm shredded at a Perdue slaughterhouse in Virginia last year.

The plant was full of migrant kids working in violation of child labor laws.

The whole town heard about the accident. But even teachers and police kept it quiet.nytimes.com/2023/09/18/mag… There are two main employers on Virginia's Eastern Shore: Tyson and Perdue. Together, they produce a third of chicken sold in the US.

It's become an open secret that middle schoolers work nights at the plants. One manager told me the companies couldn't run without child labor.

A major child labor rollback goes into effect in Iowa this weekend.

14 year-olds are now allowed to work in meat coolers, 15 year-olds can join assembly lines and 16 year-olds can serve alcohol.

In a few weeks, similar rollbacks take effect in Arkansas. https://t.co/GfktQsxrdWwho13.com/news/new-iowa-…
The child labor rollbacks are so extreme that they violate a century of US law.

But the Labor Department can’t force officials in Iowa or any other states to enforce federal rules. So we can expect to see a lot more kids working adult jobs this summer.news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-re…

The US is seeing an unprecedented wave of migrant child labor right now.

Thousands of kids are working overnight in dangerous factories for brands like Cheerios, Fruit of the Loom and Ford. They're here alone and they're being failed in the most basic way.nytimes.com/2023/02/25/us/… I spent the last year talking to children who live with distant relatives or strangers and work illegal jobs. These are 12 and 13-year-olds who pay rent, take on overtime, and rarely get a weekend off. They’re part of a shadow work force that has exploded since the pandemic.

Thousands of families whose loved ones died early in the pandemic are now going to nursing homes and city records offices begging to have the virus listed on death certificates so they can get help paying back funeral expenses. washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/12… Yong Chao Liu's father died in a Queens nursing home where a fifth of residents died of covid. He went into debt to get the body out of a refrigerated truck and buried. But he doesn't qualify for FEMA's covid funeral assistance program because the paperwork says only "pneumonia."

I spent last month in a closing FEMA trailer park in California, trying to understand why so many families become permanently homeless after natural disasters. washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/10… Mike and Crystal Erickson lost their home when a wildfire destroyed the town of Paradise.

FEMA spent $350,000 per trailer to build a place for them to get back on their feet. But it was only temporary. And affordable rentals basically disappeared in this area after the fire.

Black families who've passed down land since a generation after slavery are now losing it to worsening natural disasters.

The government won't help them rebuild unless they can produce a formal deed. But deeds were hard to come by in the Jim Crow South. washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/07… I met Albert Nixon in rural Alabama. He's lived on his farm for 90 years. In March, a tornado destroyed the home where he was born. FEMA denied his application for help rebuilding because his grandfather passed down the land without a will.

Last winter, I wrote about an asylum-seeker named Kevin and how ICE used confidential therapy notes to keep him detained.

In July, his detention center was overrun by Covid, and he gave up his case. He didn't survive even a month back in Central America.

washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/12… More than 2,500 immigration detainees have given up their cases since the pandemic began, despite the risks back home. One told me it felt like choosing to jump from a burning building. Most had no criminal records.

8,500 others have stayed in detention and caught the virus.

Homeless people in 5 states have now come down with covid-19. One has died.

An outbreak among the homeless would have horrific consequences. But they've been left out of federal aid packages. So frontline workers are taking huge risks to pick up the slack.washingtonpost.com/national/its-t… I spent last week with a woman who is breaking news of the virus to homeless people in Texas. Some people panicked and wept when she told them. She says there's no way to do this work without getting close to people who have likely been exposed.

Kevin was required to see a therapist when he got to the US. She said their sessions would be private. Instead, everything he disclosed was passed to ICE, to be used against him in court.

This is now happening in migrant child shelters around the country.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/… Under new Trump administration policies, more and more immigrant children are having intimate confessions, early traumas, even half-remembered dreams used against them in court. They’re not allowed to skip these therapy sessions, and everything they say can be filed as evidence.