Children Risk Their Lives Building America’s Roofs

By Hannah Dreier, Brent McDonald, Nicole Salazar, Annie Correal and Carson Kessler Dec. 14, 2023

This is Antoni Padilla, 15. He found work as a roofer in South Carolina after leaving Honduras.

Federal law bars anyone under 18 from roofing because it’s so dangerous. But across the U.S., migrant children do this work anyway.

They call themselves “ruferitos” on social media. In videos like these, they talk about being underage and pose on rooftops and ladders, often without the required safety gear.

One slip can be fatal.

The New York Times spoke with more than 100 child roofers in nearly two dozen states, including some who began at elementary-school age. They wake before dawn to be driven to distant job sites, sometimes crossing state lines. They carry heavy bundles of shingles that leave their arms shaking. They work through heat waves on black-tar rooftops that scorch their hands.

The rise of child roofers comes as young people are crossing the southern border alone in record numbers. Nearly 400,000 children have come to the United States since 2021 without their parents, and a majority have ended up working, The New York Times has reported in a series of articles this year.