A Tennessee-based sanitation company has been fined more than $649,000 after an investigation revealed that it had illegally employed at least two dozen children at slaughterhouses and meatpacking facilities, the Labor Department said this week.

The company, Fayette Janitorial Service L.L.C., was found to have hired the children, some as young as 13, during overnight shifts that involved using corrosive materials to clean “dangerous kill floor equipment” at facilities in Sioux City, Iowa, and Accomac, Va., the department said in a news release.

A temporary restraining order in February required the company to stop employing the children, and on Monday, it agreed in federal court to pay the fine, hire a third party to make sure no underage workers are employed in the future and establish a program for reporting violations, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa.

It is illegal under the Fair Labor Standards Act to hire anyone under 18 for the kind of hazardous work that is often involved in meat and poultry slaughtering, processing, rendering and packing operations. But that has not stopped thousands of migrant children from coming to the United States from Mexico and Central America to work dangerous jobs, in places including meatpacking plants.

“The Department of Labor is determined to stop our nation’s children from being exploited and endangered in jobs they should never have been near,” Christine Heri, a lawyer with the Labor Department, said in the release. “In 2024, we still find U.S. companies employing children in risky jobs, jeopardizing their safety for profit.”

During the last financial year, investigators with the Labor Department found that more than 5,800 children had been employed in violation of federal child labor laws.