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human trafficking
'Vulnerable Children' at Risk as Trump Halts Legal Aid for Unaccompanied Migrant Youth
The move was denounced by one immigrant rights advocate as "an affront to American values."
Feb 19, 2025
Migrant rights advocates are forcefully denouncing the Trump administration's move this week to cut off legal services for unaccompanied immigrant children.
Multiple organizations said Tuesday that they had received a "stop-work order" emailed from the U.S. Department of the Interior. Among them was Acacia Center for Justice. CBS News' Camilo Montoya-Galvez shared a partly redacted copy on social media.
"Acacia's Unaccompanied Children Program provides legal representation to over 26,000 children in and released from Office of Refugee Resettlement custody, protecting children from trafficking, abuse, and exploitation, helping immigration courts run smoother, and ensuring a modicum of due process, so that children navigating the immigration system alone understand their rights and legal obligations," the group's executive director, Shaina Aber, said in a Tuesday statement.
"This decision flies in the face of ensuring children who have been trafficked or are at risk of trafficking have child-friendly legal representatives protecting their legal rights and interests," Aber continued. "The administration's decision to suspend this program undermines due process, disproportionately impacts vulnerable children, and puts children who have already experienced severe trauma at risk for further harm or exploitation."
Immigrant Defenders Law Center president and CEO Lindsay Toczylowski similarly said Tuesday that "the safety and welfare of children in government custody should be the primary concern of our elected leaders. Today's decision by the Trump administration to eliminate access to counsel for 26,000 children is an affront to American values. The Trump administration is abandoning children for the sake of politics and leaving kids to fend for themselves against our complex immigration system."
According toMother Jones, in addition to causing about 26,000 children to lose their legal representation—absent outside funding—the new order will lead to about 100,000 kids "missing out on programs designed to educate them about their rights."
President Donald Trump is known globally for forcibly separating migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border during his first term and last year campaigned on various harsh immigration policies, including mass deportations and ending birthright citizenship. Since returning to office last month, the Republican has taken steps to enact his anti-immigrant agenda.
"Trump's decision to slash a 20-year-old program meant to safeguard the rights of the most vulnerable among us will only cause more chaos in our immigration courts and violates our commitment to children's safety," said Toczylowski. "We will continue to fight for their right to legal representation and to uphold our ethical and professional obligations. We urge the government to restore services immediately to protect children's rights. Our government will be judged by how it treats children in its care. By all standards, this administration is failing them and self-inflicting a black eye as the rest of the world watches."
National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) executive director Mary Meg McCarthy said Tuesday that "the Trump administration continues to choose politics over the rule of law and cruelty over humane treatment of children." She also said that "this denial of congressionally appropriated funding violates federal law," and mirrors Trump's "mass firings and funding cuts of essential programs and agencies across the U.S. government."
As McCarthy explained:
Decades ago, Congress passed the bipartisan Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) that recognized the unique vulnerability of children who travel alone to seek protection in the United States. The TVPRA codified the federal government's obligation to ensure these children have legal representation so they do not face the risk of deportation without due process. Most unaccompanied children are eligible for permanent status in the United States under current laws. Attorneys help them safeguard their rights under U.S. law, connect them to essential services, and shield them from exploitation and trafficking
[...]
Last month, NIJC and other legal service providers successfully sued the Trump administration following the unlawful stoppage of another congressionally funded legal service program. The administration's failure yet again to uphold its legal and ethical duties does not eliminate NIJC attorneys' ethical obligations to the hundreds of children we've committed to represent. We call on members of Congress to vocally oppose this egregious abuse of power by the executive branch.
The Michigan Immigrant Rights Center wrote in a lengthy email about the order that "MIRC condemns this cruel action from the Trump administration, designed to inflict further suffering on vulnerable children and families," including victims of labor trafficking and child abuse.
MIRC also noted that "abruptly terminating statutorily mandated services violates the TVPRA, as well as the government's clear obligations to children that it has otherwise agreed to during litigation, including the Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA) and the relatively recent Ms. L v. ICE settlement designed to prevent family separation, among other critical protections."
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Amazon 'Failed to Protect' Third-Party Workers in Saudi Arabia
Investigations from several newsrooms and Amnesty International report exploitative contracts and unsafe living conditions for foreign workers at the company's warehouses.
Oct 10, 2023
Amazon failed to protect contract workers in Saudi Arabia from human rights abuses that may have amounted to human trafficking.
That's one of the findings from an Amnesty International exposé and combined reporting from NBC News, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, and The Guardian, all published Tuesday. The investigations focused on men recruited from Nepal to work at Amazon warehouses in Saudi Arabia, where they found themselves faced with low pay, unhealthy living conditions, and no job security. When they complained directly to Amazon managers, nothing changed.
"You are in this position because of our work," one of the workers addressed Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos, as The Guardian reported. "You would not have been in that position without the efforts of laborers and helpers from Nepal, the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and others. But you are ignoring workers' concerns."
"It's time for Amazon to finally put things right for workers who have suffered so much."
The Amnesty International report, "Don't Worry, It's a Branch of Amazon": Exploitation of Migrant Workers Contracted to Amazon in Saudi Arabia, focused on 22 Nepali men recruited between 2021 and 2023 to work at Amazon warehouses in Riyadh or Jeddah. They were employed by third-party contractors Abdullah Fahad Al-Mutairi Support Services Co. (Al-Mutairi) and Basmah Al-Musanada Co. for Technical Support Services (Basmah).
The journalistic investigation, published through the network Trafficking Inc., spoke to 54 Nepalese men, 49 of whom were hired through Al-Mutairi. According to both investigations, workers said they were recruited under false pretenses, with 48 telling journalists that they were promised they would be working directly for Amazon.
"I realized it was a different company on the day of the flight," a worker named Bibek told Amnesty International. "I saw on my passport it said, 'Al Basmah Co.' but the agent said, 'Don't worry, it's a branch of Amazon.'"
Once in Saudi Arabia, the workers found themselves making less than direct Amazon employees, even though they had had to pay fees ranging from $830 to $2,040 to secure the jobs in the first place, many taking out high-interest loans.
Their living conditions were cramped and unhealthy, with workers reporting bed bugs, salty water, and faulty air conditioners. When there wasn't work, contractees would be let go and moved to even shoddier housing, which “was extremely dirty," a worker named Kiran told Amazon. "No air conditioning, no fans. The temperature was 50°C… There are so many workers… no beds, cooking gas, or drinking water. There was no internet so we couldn't contact our family."
When workers were let go, they stopped receiving a salary, but were also not allowed to return home unless they paid a steep fee to exit their contracts, which was as high as $1,300 for worker Momtaj Mansur, as NBC reported.
"I told them: Either kill us or send us home, but don't give us so much pain," Mansur told journalists.
His family ultimately took out a loan with a 36% interest rate to bring him home.
"Amazon knows each and every problem we have with the supply company."
"The workers thought they were seizing a golden opportunity with Amazon but instead ended up suffering abuses which left many traumatized," Steve Cockburn, Amnesty International head of economic and social justice, said in a statement. "We suspect hundreds more endured similar appalling treatment. Many of those we interviewed suffered abuses so severe that they are likely to amount to human trafficking for the purposes of labor exploitation."
What's more, several workers said that they complained to Amazon about working conditions to no effect. Complaints raised in 2021 went unanswered as of 2023, according to Amnesty International. Sometimes, the workers were threatened with retaliation by the third-party employers.
When a group brought up the brackish water in their living quarters, "Al-Mutairi threatened us," one worker told NBC, saying: '"Who complained about this? We will make him jobless!'"
Another worker told Amnesty that an Al-Mutairi supervisor pulled him into an office and pushed and slapped him after he raised concerns about the water to Amazon. When the worker then told an Amazon manager, they responded that it wasn't their business.
"Amazon knows each and every problem we have with the supply company," a worker named Kiran told Amnesty. "Amazon asks workers about the problems and issues they face during daily meetings."
Cockburn said that Amazon "could have prevented and ended this appalling suffering long ago but its processes failed to protect these contracted workers in Saudi Arabia from shocking abuses."
"Amazon should urgently compensate all those who have been harmed, and ensure this can never happen again," Cockburn added.
In response to the journalistic investigation, senior vice president of worldwide operations at Amazon John Felton said that an internal investigation by Amazon had turned up violations by a third-party vendor in Saudi Arabia, and the company had made a plan with that vendor to change its operations so that workers would be paid back for missed wages and recruitment fees and housed in safe and healthy accommodations, among other reforms.
"While we considered immediately suspending this vendor when these allegations came to light, we determined that it was in the best interests of their employees, many of whom traveled from other countries to Saudi Arabia for work, to instead work diligently with the vendor to make significant changes to their operations," Felton said in a statement.
Amnesty recommends that Amazon move to hire more workers directly and monitor third-party contractors more closely. It welcomed Amazon's move to compensate workers, but said none had received their owed payment to date.
"It's time for Amazon to finally put things right for workers who have suffered so much, and for Saudi Arabia to fundamentally reform its exploitative labor system," Cockburn said.
The kingdom could do more to protect foreign workers by carrying out its own investigations and ensuring workers' "fundamental rights, including being able to freely change employers and leave the country without conditions," Cockburn said.
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Obama Administration Accused of Giving Human Trafficking Status Upgrade to 'Further Corporate Trade Agenda'
Progressive organization, members of Congress demand explanation for Malaysia's new ranking
Aug 07, 2015
Controversy over the State Department's upgrading of Malaysia in its annual human trafficking report continues to swirl, with one organization charging that it shows the administration watering down human rights abuses to "further its corporate trade agenda."
The latest Trafficking in Persons Report, released last month, has Malaysia downgraded from a Tier 3 ranking to a Tier 2 ranking. And, as the New York Timesreported, that downgrade has impacts on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact:
Congress recently granted President Obama fast-track powers to complete negotiations on the deal, but it included a caveat that prohibited him from doing so with countries listed in Tier 3 of the State Department report -- that is, countries that are not making a significant effort to combat human trafficking.
[...] Its upgrade this year to what is known as the Tier 2 watch list, an intermediate step that indicates a country is trying to tackle human smuggling, immediately drew the anger of critics, who sought to link the improved standing of Malaysia to the trade deal.
A Reuters investigation published this week found that moving Malaysia to Tier 2 was done despite the opinions of human rights experts who were tasked with giving the State Department their assessments.
Now, House Democrats and senators from both parties are demanding answers about the decision and its possible trade-related motives.
Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) sent a letter (pdf) Thursday to President Obama and Secretary Kerry, writing that they are "concerned" about Malaysia's status change, as there is evidence that the country is not "making significant efforts to" tackle trafficking, as the upgrade would warrant.
Also on Thursday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on the TIP report, where Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the committee, threatened to subpoena the internal communications that led to the status change.
"So the government convicted three traffickers for forced labor and one for passport retention, and our State Department, for that record, which is less than what they [Malaysia] did the year before,...raised their status," Corker told Undersecretary of State Sarah Sewall. "I don't see how anybody could believe there was integrity in this process."
Also speaking at the hearing was Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who said that the State Department's "conclusions [on Malaysia's human rights] are not shared by any other concerned observers."
Jeff Conant, Senior International Forests Campaigner with Friends of the Earth, says the motivation is clear. He writes at Foreign Policy in Focus Thursday: "There's only one reason why the State Department would change Malaysia's status: to ease the country's inclusion in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP—a massive 12-country trade and investment pact currently being negotiated by the Obama administration.
"If President Obama is willing to overlook the brutal fate of Asian workers tossed into the sea, beaten lifeless, or worked to death on Malaysian palm oil plantations, how can we believe him when he says the TPP will have strong safeguards for people and the environment?" Conant writes.
Friends of the Earth was at a rally outside the Senate hearing Thursday to raise flags about the change its says may just be "downplaying modern-day slavery just to pass a trade deal."
Luisa Abbott Galvao, Climate and Energy Campaigner with the organization, said the move highlighted further problems with the pending trade deal.
"The sinister manipulation of what should have been an independently conducted assessment of human rights efforts demonstrates the extremes to which President Obama is willing to go to further his corporate trade agenda," she stated Thursday.
"If President Obama is willing to deliberately downplay modern-day slavery to facilitate trade negotiations, we cannot believe his assurances that his trade deals will elevate environmental and social protections around the world," her statement continues. "This cynical episode further delegitimizes the TPP negotiating process, which has gone from undemocratic to outright dehumanizing."
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