Labor Department investigating HelloFresh for allegedly employing migrant children

(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Department of Labor is investigating HelloFresh over allegations that the popular meal kit service employed migrant children at a cooking and packaging facility in Illinois as recently as this summer, ABC News has learned.

At least six teenagers, at least some of whom migrated from Guatemala, were found working night shifts at the facility, said Cristobal Cavazos, the executive director for Immigrant Solidarity, an immigrant rights advocacy group that helped report the matter to federal regulators.

“They’re minors working dangerous jobs,” Cavazos told ABC News.

The Labor Department is also investigating whether Midway Staffing, an agency that hires employees to work at the HelloFresh facility, also violated federal child labor rules, according to documents obtained by ABC News.

The German-based HelloFresh, which is the largest meal kit company in the U.S., is the latest food supply firm to come under scrutiny for allegedly employing underaged migrants.

The Department of Labor confirmed to ABC News it is investigating the HelloFresh facility and the staffing agency.

“We were deeply troubled to learn of the allegations made against a former temporary staffing agency,” a spokesperson for HelloFresh told ABC News in a statement. “As soon as we learned of these allegations, we immediately terminated the relationship.”

“We have strict protocols in place to ensure all vendors follow our robust global ethics and compliance policies,” the spokesperson said. “We have zero tolerance for any form of child labor, and we have taken action to ensure no minors perform work in or have access to our facilities.”

The spokesperson told ABC News that the facility, in Aurora, Illinois, is a Factor75 facility, which was acquired by HelloFresh in 2020. Factor75 is a prepared meal delivery services company.

Midway Staffing did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.

In fiscal year 2024, the Labor Department found 4,030 children employed in violation of child labor laws across all industries. Of the 736 cases brought by the department, nearly half involved minors employed in violation of hazardous occupation laws.

According to immigrant rights advocacy groups and labor experts, migrant children in the U.S. are not only employed in agriculture and food supply jobs, but also in dangerous jobs including construction and roofing.

Last month, the Labor Department fined a sanitation contractor that employed children to perform dangerous work during overnight shifts at its Sioux City pork processing plant. Eleven children were found to have used “corrosive cleaners to clean head splitters, jaw pullers, bandsaws, neck clippers and other equipment” from at least September 2019 through September 2023, according to court documents.

In September, three immigrant teenagers filed a federal lawsuit against a seafood processing plant in Massachusetts alleging that the company forced the minors to work through “perilous, overnight shifts in its seafood processing plant.”

“In early 2023, American consumers were shocked to learn that children as young as 13 were working illegally in meatpacking plants throughout the U.S.,” Reid Maki, Director of Child Labor Advocacy for the National Consumers League, told ABC News, “It’s disturbing that this illegal hazardous child labor is continuing, with kids often exposed to caustic chemicals, working the night shift, and trying to attend school without sleep.”

“Some companies are ramping up monitoring, but the problem is pervasive and the U.S. Department of Labor badly needs congressional appropriations to increase the number of inspectors to make sure corporate efforts are succeeding,” Maki said.