Inside the Lives of Immigrant Teens Working Dangerous Night Shifts in Suburban Factories

[Hermit-The-Prog]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/11/immigrant-child-labor-factories-bensenville-illinois/
During the day, they attend high school. At night, they work to pay debts to smugglers and send money to family.

Melissa Sanchez

It’s a little before 6 a.m. and still dark when Garcia gets home from work this October morning. The apartment where he lives with his aunt and uncle is silent. They’ve already left for their own jobs.

After nine hours hosing down machinery at a food processing plant, Garcia is tired and hungry. But he has less than an hour to get ready for high school, where he is a junior. He quickly showers, gets dressed and reheats some leftover chicken soup for a meal he refers to as his dinner. Then he gulps down some coffee, brushes his teeth, and walks outside to catch the school bus waiting near the edge of the sprawling apartment complex.

Here in the Chicago suburb of Bensenville, and in places like it throughout the country, Guatemalan teenagers like Garcia spend their days in class learning English and algebra and chemistry. At night, while their classmates sleep, they work to pay debts to smugglers and sponsors, to contribute to rent and bills, to buy groceries and sneakers, and to send money home to the parents and siblings they left behind.

They are among the tens of thousands of young people who have come to this country over the past few years, some as unaccompanied minors, others alongside a parent, amid a spike in the number of Central American migrants seeking asylum in the U.S.

[ . . . ]

[alwaysinasnit]

1. K&R Thanks for posting.

[Metatron]

2. K&R

It's hard to believe this is 2020 sometimes.