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Three migrant teenagers filed a lawsuit in federal court last week claiming their employer, a seafood processing plant in Fall River, violated multiple labor laws, including prohibitions on forced labor, discrimination and “hazardous child labor,” by forcing them to work long, overnight shifts with dangerous machinery.
The processing plant, Raw Seafoods Inc., is described as a leading seafood supplier in New England, employing about 350 people. The allegations offer a glimpse into an unsettling trend: the surge of migrant children in the United States working in perilous industries like seafood processing, often living on the fringe and under tremendous pressure to work. According to the suit, the teens all started working at the processing plant in 2022 when they were 15 years old. Each had recently immigrated from Guatemala to support their families. Two are living in the United States without their parents.
“Raw Seafoods has profited off exploiting immigrant children,” attorneys representing the migrant teens wrote in the complaint. They are being represented by Justice At Work, a labor advocacy firm that provides legal services to low-wage workers, and Yale Law School’s Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic. The migrant workers are not identified by name in the lawsuit because they are minors and for fear of reprisal for reporting the allegations, according to attorneys.
In the complaint, attorneys provided grim details of the distressing labor conditions. The migrant teens worked as fish cutters, they wrote, “using machinery with sharp blades, operating a dangerous fish-sorting machine, transporting heavy boxes … spending much of their shift in freezing temperatures, and being exposed to toxic chemicals and fumes,” they wrote. They often worked ten-and-a-half hour shifts, beginning just after release from school (3:30 p.m.) until 2 a.m. or later, as much as six days per week.
The migrant teens suffered injuries due to the work, including cuts on their hands from operating the fish-cutting machine, freezer burns from handling frozen fish without protective equipment, back injuries from lifting heavy boxes, and rashes from toxic chemicals used to clean the machines, according to the complaint. They were further exposed to persistently low temperatures working in a refrigerated facility and “routinely experienced flu-like symptoms” so severe that one often wedged a napkin beneath his face mask to “catch the heavy sinus drainage while he worked.”
“The [company’s] conduct was motivated, at least in part … to maximize its employees’ productivity by means of forced labor and increase the corporation’s output and revenues,” attorneys wrote.
In a written statement, Raw Seafoods co-owner and vice president Scott Hutchens pushed back on the lawsuit’s allegations. “As a family business, we have prioritized the health, safety, and fair treatment of our employees for 26 years,” he wrote. “These allegations are both shocking and hurtful and are a direct attack against our core value to treat all of our employees with respect and dignity.”
Hutchens added that the company has not been able to investigate the hiring circumstances of the underage workers because they were kept anonymous in the lawsuit. The migrant teens stopped working at the processing plant in 2023, according to the complaint.
“Raw Seafoods complies fully with state and federal labor regulations, regularly undergoing internal reviews and external audits to ensure that the company’s practices are lawful and safe,” Hutchens continued in his statement.
In Massachusetts, strict child labor laws limit hours for workers under age 18. They are prohibited from working more than 18 hours a week while school is in session. Those under 15 can’t work overnight shifts ending after 7 p.m. Further restrictions prohibit those under 16 from working in food processing operations, warehouses, freezers or with dangerous machinery.
The migrant teens often slept as little as two or three hours a night while trying to attend both school and work, according to the complaint. Many of the allegations focused on one supervisor, referred to only as Rolando, who “incited a hostile working environment … by berating them with racist remarks, profanity, and obscenities nearly every day.” It added that the supervisor “scolded” them for taking days off to attend school and, in one instance, prevented one teen from attending school in the 2022-2023 year by “refusing him time off to obtain the vaccines required for school enrollment.”
The lawsuit was filed at a moment of increased focus on child labor violations nationwide. Since 2021, more than 300,000 migrant children have entered the U.S. on their own, according to data from the Labor Department. As a result, the number of children employed in violation of federal law last year increased more than five-fold from a low point in 2015.
Last year, the Labor Department launched a sweeping investigation into child labor at multiple New Bedford seafood processing plants. City and school officials have teamed up with the Labor Department in an attempt to stem the trend. But they say it’s a challenging feat. Many of the jobs in industries like seafood processing are staffed by undocumented immigrants, many of whom are vulnerable to exploitation. Some work illegally with falsified paperwork.
Migrant children, many of whom are living in the United States without their parents, such as the teens working at Raw Seafoods, are often under financial pressure to work. Several interviewed by The Light late last year said they are saddled with debt from financing their immigration and paying for rent in the United States, all while sending money to support their families back home. Sometimes intentionally, they easily slip through the cracks of the school systems, social services and enforcement agencies charged with protecting them from exploitation.
“Raw Seafoods is among countless other companies that exploit the vulnerable community of immigrant children with impunity,” wrote Marí Perales Sánchez, one of the students with Yale Law School’s Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic, in a statement about the lawsuit. “This country cannot allow powerful companies to use and abuse children as a business model.”
Email reporter Will Sennott at wsennott@newbedfordlight.org
WOW!! You gotta be absolutely kidding me with this treatment in this day and age! Raw seafood should be closed down and fined big money. They didn’t know children were working there? Stop this is absolutely horrible and shouldn’t be tolerated at all. Close raw seafood down
So I guess my comment wasn’t published because it didn’t line up with the Light’s liberal bias. Sure glad I didn’t pull the trigger and start supporting you…
You comment was not published because it was defamatory.
We do not want your support.
Go buy Trump sneakers.
Trump needs the money.