Children across the nation are working in dangerous, sometimes lethal jobs in American factories, farms and mills — according to a New York Times exposé that has rattled corporate America, President Biden, and Congress.

The kids, who are here without their parents, have fled countries rife with violence and poverty. Many are seeking asylum and other protections under the law. But in the meantime, they are laboring in the shadows — in physically demanding jobs that employers often have trouble filling. These children are helping to put food on our tables and clothes on our backs — sometimes suffering serious injuries as a result. The moral implications are chilling.

The Biden administration responded swiftly, promising an inter-agency task force that will rightly focus on the direct problem of failed child labor protections. But this moment also calls for big policy solutions — without them, children and adults will remain vulnerable to exploitation, in ways that intersect profoundly with our daily lives.

Why would some of the top names in American business look the other way as children are hired into jobs that are only suitable for adults? One reason is the profound shortage of workers — the nation has over 10 million job openings but only 5.7 million unemployed workers. Immigration restrictions are a strain on the American economy, as Labor Secretary Martin Walsh recently explained. Despite bipartisan consensus on the importance of immigration to fueling economic growth and addressing the labor shortage, Congress has struggled for more than two decades to pass sensible immigration reform. The issue remains mired in ugly, xenophobic rhetoric.

There are now more than 11 million undocumented people in the country, living and working as our neighbors and close relatives of U.S. citizens. Many have lived in the country for decades, paying billions in federal, state, and local taxes. The absence of a path to legal status has created an American underclass — people relegated to a lifetime of disadvantage and vulnerability to exploitation — including by employers. This is anathema to our Constitution and values of fairness and dignity for all workers. Yet, as long as our economy depends on the labor of people working in the shadows, immigrant workers will continue to be vulnerable to exploitation and harm, sometimes trapped in jobs with poor working conditions — undermining labor protections for all. And fixing our broken immigration system will also fuel wage and job growth for native-born Americans.

The Biden administration and Congress should use this moment to re-engage in stalled discussions over creating a path to citizenship for our immigrant co-workers, neighbors, and loved ones.

Why are the children laboring in these conditions here without their parents? For some, their parents may not have been allowed to enter the country alongside them, due to restrictive policies like one known as Title 42. It’s a Trump-era policy initially used to shut down the asylum system during the pandemic. President Biden has embraced it for far too long. Policies like this force parents to make an impossible choice: Send their kids alone to the U.S., or keep them in dangerous situations at home or in Mexican border towns, waiting in limbo.

Rather than solving this problem, the Biden administration recently announced its intent to implement a new asylum ban that would continue to restrict many families from accessing asylum together. The ACLU called on the Biden administration to abandon this plan, which mimics the illegal Trump asylum bans that courts halted after our lawsuits.

American Civil Liberties Union

Biden Must Reverse Plans to Revive Deadly Trump-era Asylum Bans | ACLU

The administration’s proposed tweaks to Trump’s bans are mere window-dressing on policies that will still inflict needless suffering.

Kids seeking asylum and other protections should be allowed to enter the country and seek those protections with their parents. Keeping families together is the best way to ensure that children are cared for and kept safe from exploitation.

Why are migrant children working in dangerous jobs in the first place — especially since the U.S. government knows they are here and they are in the process of seeking legal protections?

First, as many as half of all unaccompanied children do not have lawyers. For children old enough to work and who are eligible, a lawyer could support them in applying for a work permit. Without work authorization, these older children are left to work in the shadow economy.

More broadly, these children need lawyers to help them navigate the complex legal system and act as a trusted adult to whom they can turn for help. The White House’s interagency task force should heed advocates’ longstanding calls to ensure legal representation for unaccompanied children — as well as offer social services for their health and well-being.

All you need to know about the current condition of West Virginia’s public-education system is summed up in one recent headline: “West Virginia public schools are underfunded, understaffed and underperforming.” To take one marker, only 28 percent of students in the state are proficient in science. These are big problems that require expansive, thoughtful solutions. Lawmakers should be devoting all available time and resources to protecting public-school students’ educational futures. Instead, they’re working to pass a bill, SB 619, that would exacerbate these crises. If enacted, the bill would allow public schools to teach intelligent design — a form of creationism — as a “theory of how the universe and/or humanity came to exist.”

Teaching any form of creationism in public schools is unconstitutional. It undermines science education, and it is likely to embroil school districts in lengthy and costly litigation. In fact, that is exactly what happened in Dover, Pennsylvania, two decades ago. Despite clear case law that bars teaching creationism in public schools and prohibits other efforts to suppress or chip away at evolution education, the Dover Area School District incorporated into its biology lessons a disclaimer questioning the validity of evolution and promoting intelligent design as an alternative. The ACLU of Pennsylvania and Americans United for Separation of Church and State sued the school district on behalf of local families.

The school district tried to defend its policy by arguing that, unlike other forms of creationism, intelligent design is not a religious belief and is thus properly taught as a scientific alternative to evolution. But after a six-week trial during which extensive expert evidence about intelligent design was presented, Judge John E. Jones III — who was nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush — unequivocally rejected the district’s arguments. He concluded that intelligent design is merely “creationism re-labeled” and “is not science” because it “fails to meet the essential ground rules that limit science to testable, natural explanations.” And he ruled that incorporating intelligent design into public-school science classes violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

The massive loss in the case came with a massive bill: The district owed the plaintiffs $2,000,000 in attorneys’ fees, although the plaintiffs agreed to accept only half that amount in recognition of the district’s limited resources and the fact that the community had voted out the school board members who had insisted on pushing intelligent design.

West Virginia lawmakers know that it’s unconstitutional to teach creationism in public schools. They know that, just like in Pennsylvania, schools that take up the legislature’s invitation to do so will be sued and will face millions of dollars in costs and fees. They also know that attacking the integrity of science education will cause West Virginia students to fall even further behind, leaving them unprepared for advanced college coursework in scientific areas, and subsequently disadvantaging them in the competitive technical and scientific job sectors. And they know that employers with science- and tech-related businesses may hesitate to settle in West Virginia if they believe that its government does not value, and many of its residents do not possess, basic scientific knowledge.

Despite knowing all of this, lawmakers continue to press forward with SB 619. Maybe they believe it will score them political points with certain extreme religious groups and others seeking to inject religion into public schools. Any short-term political gain, however, will come at appalling long-term costs: the rights of families and faith communities, not government officials, to instill religious beliefs in their children; the educational and employment success of students; the solvency of public schools already struggling financially; and the economic and job prospects for the entire state of West Virginia.

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and revoke the federal constitutional right to abortion continues to have life-altering and life-threatening consequences. With more than a dozen states banning abortion, a climate of fear and confusion has loomed over health care providers, abortion funds, helpers, and anyone seeking to end their pregnancy in recent months.

Beyond exerting direct control over our bodies and our health, abortion bans and other criminal laws give prosecutors license to investigate, arrest, and prosecute people who provide necessary health care. In some instances, bans and laws can be used or misused to target patients and other people who help them get the care they need. In state legislative sessions across the nation, legislators continue to push for more ways to restrict abortion and criminalize those who provide abortion care.

The ACLU has a long history of seeking transformational change in our criminal legal system and protecting people’s reproductive freedom. In this moment of crisis, we have brought together our expertise in both areas to launch the Abortion Criminal Defense Initiative (ACDI), which I am proud to lead.

American Civil Liberties Union

Intake: Abortion Criminal Defense Initiative

If you or someone you know is seeking legal representation for a criminal investigation or prosecution related to abortion care, we're here to help.

Since long before the fall of Roe, we’ve known that the effects of restricting abortion fall disproportionately on women and people with low-incomes, people of color, young people, and other marginalized communities — communities who are also most at risk for investigation and prosecution in our criminal legal system.

As a public defender, I witnessed how our criminal legal system is weaponized to unjustly constrain the freedom, dignity, and well-being of people, especially people in these communities. I saw the devastating toll the system has taken and continues to take. The criminalization of abortion care is another way in which our criminal legal system is being wielded to control the bodies and futures of people who are disproportionately Black, Brown and low-income.

Through the ACDI, the ACLU will fight on behalf of providers, supporters, and patients who face criminal investigation and prosecution related to abortion care. They deserve a strong and zealous criminal defense. We are establishing and working alongside a network of experienced criminal defense attorneys. The doctor caught in a web of complicated abortion restrictions as they put the health of their patients first, the family member helping their loved one travel to a clinic, and the individual unjustly investigated for receiving abortion care all deserve access to a zealous defense should they face prosecution.

For years, we have challenged abortion bans across the nation and been a leader in the fight to protect and expand access to abortion care. Leveraging our deep expertise in criminal defense and advocacy for reproductive freedom, the ACLU is prepared to meet the current moment. We have a presence in every state, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico and will build a strong network of criminal defense attorneys.

As we continue to work towards a world where everyone can get the reproductive health care they need, we won’t back down from defending the rights and dignity of individuals to make decisions about their bodies and their futures.