The U.S. Labor Department is investigating allegations that migrant children have worked at a meal preparation delivery facility in Illinois that is a subsidiary of the popular meal kit company HelloFresh, the company and federal regulators said.
At least six teenagers, including some from Guatemala, worked night shifts at the facility, Cristobal Cavazos, the executive director for Immigrant Solidarity, an immigrant rights advocacy group that helped report the claims to federal regulators, told ABC News, which reported on the investigation.
“They’re minors working dangerous jobs,” Mr. Cavazos told ABC News, which reported that the children were working there as recently as last summer.
In a statement on Monday, a spokesman for the Labor Department confirmed an investigation into HelloFresh and a temporary staffing agency, Midway Staffing. The spokesman declined to comment further, citing the open investigation.
It was not clear what kind of jobs the minors had at the facility.
The claims relate to a Factor75 facility in Aurora, Ill., according to a HelloFresh spokeswoman who said the company learned of the claims from the Labor Department. In 2020, HelloFresh acquired Factor75, which provides ready-to-eat meals to customers.
In a statement on Sunday, the HelloFresh spokeswoman said: “We were deeply troubled to learn of the allegations made against a former temporary staffing agency, Midway Staffing. As soon as we learned of these allegations, we immediately terminated the relationship.”
“We have zero tolerance for any form of child labor,” she added, “and we have taken action to ensure no minors perform work in or have access to our facilities.”
Midway Staffing said in a statement on Monday that it was cooperating with the Labor Department’s investigation.
“Midway Staffing denies that its actions or practices contributed to or caused any alleged child labor violations,” R.J. Parrilli, the company’s chief executive, said in the statement.
He added, “Midway Staffing refuses to knowingly hire anyone who is not at least 18 years of age.”
Founded in Berlin in 2011, HelloFresh delivers meal kits with ingredients measured out for specific recipes. The company, which operates in more than a dozen countries, was one of the earliest entrants in an industry that includes other big players such as Blue Apron and Plated.
The Labor Department said that employers nationwide were fined more than $15.1 million for child labor violations in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, an 89 percent increase from the previous year. Those penalties were related to 736 investigations that uncovered violations involving more than 4,000 children.
Under federal law, minors are prohibited from working in dangerous jobs that are common in the meat processing industry, where there is a high risk of injury.
The investigation is the latest by the department to target companies that employ children. Last month, the department said it had fined a cleaning company in Oklahoma nearly $172,000 after an investigation found that it had hired nearly a dozen children to work dangerous overnight shifts at a slaughterhouse in Sioux City, Iowa, operated by Seaboard Triumph Foods.
In May, a cleaning company in Tennessee was ordered to pay more than $649,000 in civil penalties after federal regulators found that it had employed at least two dozen children as young as 13 to work overnight shifts at the Sioux City structure and at a Perdue Farms plant on the eastern shore of Virginia.
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