Underage and Unprotected: Migrant teens worked in risky jobs in New Bedford seafood processing...

The U.S. Department of Labor is investigating possible violations of child labor, overtime pay, and anti-retaliation laws at two processors and one Rhode Island-based staffing agency

Kill. Clean. Repeat.

Nathanael quickly learned the routine. Rip the legs off a crab. Clean them with giant spinning wire brushes. Toss them down a chute. Repeat.

“Sometimes when you kill a crab, the brain splatters,” he said. “When you remove the shell, everything splatters.”

Nathanael said he began working at The Atlantic Red Crab Co., in New Bedford, Massachusetts last fall, when he was 14. He said he worked alongside his cousin, Joel, who was then 16. Three workers told The Public’s Radio they witnessed the teens killing, cleaning, and weighing crabs at the plant.

The Guatemalan teenagers had recently arrived in the United States after swimming across the border from Mexico. A family member said the cousins applied to a staffing agency using fake IDs, and that the agency – Workforce Unlimited, Inc. – sent them to work at the plant. The teens said they routinely worked 12-hour days, sometimes seven days a week, making $16.50 an hour.

“Over time, doing it every day, the body can’t take it,” Joel said.