See No Evil

In 2022, a thirteen-year-old Guatemalan boy, Ever Reyes Mejia, was released by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to a sponsor in Alabama. He ended up working twelve-hour overnight shifts at a Hyundai parts supplier, operating industrial equipment without adult supervision.

He was not alone. Investigators and journalists later documented migrant children working night shifts in auto plants, slaughterhouses, and construction sites across a dozen states — children who had been processed, released, and forgotten by the federal apparatus that accepted legal custodial responsibility for them.