PSSI issued the following statement on a recent NBC Nightly News story, which falsely claimed that an anonymous underage individual is working for PSSI in Kansas. After PSSI’s investigation found the individual is not a minor, NBC News retracted the story and admitted the individual is 21 years old.

PSSI repeatedly implored NBC News to identify the individual in question before airing this segment to help us investigate the matter and enforce our long-standing, zero-tolerance policy against employing anyone under 18. Unfortunately, NBC refused to do so, leading the network to recklessly broadcast a false story.

NBC News‘ experience also shows what we have consistently been saying from the start: There is increasing identity fraud facing employers, government officials, and many others – even journalists – amid a record crisis of unaccompanied minors entering the United States’ increasingly strained shelter/sponsor system.

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As soon as NBC News brought this claim to us, we immediately reviewed our workforce at every single facility we serve in Kansas. After the story aired, our investigation continued and we were able to narrow our search for the individual they interviewed based on a review of NBC News footage from the segment.

When our investigation found this individual, we interviewed him and he said was not a minor. NBC News has since admitted he is 21 years old. This individual said he left Guatemala a year ago and was detained by U.S. border officials when crossing into America. To obtain release, he said he presented his younger brother’s birth certificate to falsely claim he was underage — given the federal government’s policy of letting unaccompanied minors stay in the country.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, they have caught hundreds of adults falsely claiming to be minors to avoid deportation.

When this individual applied to work at PSSI, he presented false identification that cleared the federal government’s own E-Verify system. However, our investigation found no evidence that he is a minor — contrary to NBC News’ report.

We presented the findings of our investigation to NBC News and reserve all our legal rights.

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As we have said repeatedly, PSSI has a long-standing zero-tolerance policy against employing anyone under the age of 18 and we don’t want a single minor working for our company — period.

Because PSSI has run all new hires through E-Verify for approximately than two decades – alongside extensive other measures including a $10 million investment in biometric identity verification – the only way our procedures could be circumvented is through deliberate identity theft or fraud at the local level, as occurred in cases cited to us by DOL.

We have taken extensive steps since the DOL matter to continue strengthening our procedures to enforce our absolute prohibition against employing anyone under 18 — including new training on spotting identity fraud – which are further detailed below. We also recently hired a new CEO to lead the company going forward and announced a $10 million charitable fund to support local community and national efforts to combat child labor violations. PSSI is also committed to working with government agencies, outside experts, local communities, other companies, and other stakeholders to help address this problem wholistically – since we recognize no one business will be able to solve it alone given the broad-based nature of this emerging challenge amid the unaccompanied minor crisis. Regardless of the reason these issues occurred, however, it is our responsibility to help fix the problem.

1. PSSI retained one of the most highly decorated former officers in the history of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, to provide additional identity theft training to PSSI’s Compliance and Human Resources teams on how to detect and identify fraudulent documents to minimize the risk of identity theft circumventing its compliance program.
2. PSSI conducted extensive additional internal reviews of its workforce to help ensure that no one under the age of 18 is working for the company today.
3. As part of the DOL settlement, PSSI engaged an independent third-party consultant – who is a 26-year DOL veteran and former District-head responsible for enforcing child labor and wage/hour laws – to conduct monthly, unannounced facility visits, at facilities chosen by the consultant, to monitor PSSI’s ongoing compliance with the child labor laws.
4. PSSI’s Board engaged an independent third-party law firm, ArentFox Schiff, to review and make recommendations to bolster PSSI’s compliance policies and procedures.
5. PSSI hired an external compliance consultant to help strengthen its compliance department, and to assist the Company in hiring substantial additional new compliance personnel.
6. PSSI conducted company-wide training for all managers on its prohibition of minor employment and has made clear that managers or supervisors who hire, or who are aware of instances of minor employment but do not take immediate action, will be terminated on a zero-tolerance basis. The training will require an acknowledgment of receipt and will be incorporated into the onboarding process for all managers and supervisors on a going-forward basis.
7. PSSI is launching its “See Something, Say Something” campaign with its hourly workforce, outlining the Company’s absolute prohibition against child labor, and the team members’ duty to speak up if they see anything suspicious relating to a team member’s age warranting further investigation. During the training, PSSI is recommunicating information to all team members on how they can anonymously report any concerns, including age-related concerns, to a toll-free hotline.
8. PSSI has sent communications to school districts in every single community we serve asking that they contact us immediately if they know or have reason to believe that one of their students is working for PSSI so we can swiftly remove them from employment. We firmly believe that anyone under the age of 18 should be in school and not in work in environments such as ours.
9. PSSI reiterated its policy to conduct ongoing age verification audits at 100% of its worksites, utilizing both on-site management’s face-to-face visual inspection, and PSSI’s Corporate Compliance team’s review of biometric photos.
10. PSSI is enhancing Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s) and workflows to assist the on-the-ground team with identity verification and investigations.
11. PSSI is undertaking a review to identify additional technologies it can leverage as part of its background screening of new hires prior to their first day in the facilities they serve.

Child labor in the United States is a complicated problem that is not confined to a single company or industry. Solving it requires the government and the private sector to identify and enforce policies and practices that will keep children out of workplaces they shouldn’t be in.