The cost of the ‘American dream’: migrants dying due to extreme working conditions in the US

Last year, Hugo watched a friend die in a vast sweet potato field.

His lifeless body was left leaning against a truck tire, one of the few places where there was shade on the farm where they worked in North Carolina.

“They forced him to work,” Hugo recalled. “ He kept telling them he felt bad, that he was dying . An hour later, he fainted.”

Hugo, not his real name, has spent most of his time in the United States as a migrant farmworker, a job that generally pays minimum wage or less and where working conditions can be extreme.

The BBC agreed to use a pseudonym because it expressed concern that it could face reprisals for speaking out about the incident.

Hugo left Mexico in 2019 on a visa to work in the United States. He left behind a wife and two children to pursue the “American dream ,” not knowing if or when he would return.

His friend, the one who died on the farm, was called José Arturo González Mendoza.

It was the first time Mendoza, 29, had traveled to the United States for work. He died in his first few weeks at the farm in September 2023. He had also left his wife and children behind in Mexico.

“We come here out of necessity. That is what makes us come to work and leave behind what we love most, our families,” says Hugo.

From farmers and meat processors to cooks and construction workers, migrants often perform dangerous jobs and workplace deaths often go unnoticed by the public.

But over the past year, the issue has been in the spotlight due to multiple high-profile deaths and a migration crisis at the border that has amplified anti-migrant rhetoric.