Some immigrant workers doing hurricane cleanup are detained by ICE
By MIRIAM JORDAN and KALYN WOLFE
Each year, thousands of immigrant workers travel hundreds of miles to clear toxic debris, haul away fallen trees and begin reconstruction in the aftermath of hurricanes.
But as residents start returning to Pensacola, Florida, and other areas where Hurricane Isaias ripped off roofs and toppled trees onto houses last week, workers and organizers warn of a potential labor shortage fueled by fear of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
On Sunday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed that three immigrants lacking legal status were taken into custody after they were stopped by sheriff deputies in the town of Milton, which sustained significant damage.
The workers were part of a crew that had arrived from the Midwest, said Saket Soni, executive director of the disaster-worker advocacy nonprofit Resilience Force.
“Other workers who heard about this immediately laid down their tools and fled the area, abandoning hurricane-repair jobs,” said Soni, whose organization represents about 7,500 workers.
He added that people preparing to deploy to the area were holding back. Many disaster response workers do not have legal status.
Fear had already intensified after word spread earlier last week that immigrants repairing a restaurant’s roof in Pensacola Beach were ordered by men who identified themselves as the police to come down, triggering a two-hour standoff until the officers departed.
The officers weren’t immigration agents. Yet news of the encounter spread swiftly across the disaster response network.
Soni said an 18-person crew of experienced roofers canceled its trip to Pensacola after hearing about the standoff and reports of federal agents at a local Home Depot and other places in the area.
A worker shortage could pose a challenge to the recovery effort in the Panhandle, where disaster loss, including damage to commercial and residential properties, could exceed $1 billion by some estimates.
Immigration arrests were near all-time highs in almost every state over the summer. In Florida, the spike was fueled partly by local agencies, such as sheriff’s departments, deputized to carry out federal immigration enforcement.
“For sure, we need to make a living,” said Santos Alvarado, a disaster response veteran who has worked after more than 20 hurricanes since Katrina in 2005.
“But the brutality of what ICE is doing to people scares us.”
A dearth of disaster laborers would echo fallout from immigration enforcement already straining construction, healthcare and other industries that depend on foreign workers.
Alvarado, who has done everything from demolition to rebuilding, said he was still debating whether to work the Isaias recovery.
As an immigrant from Honduras, Alvarado said he felt particularly vulnerable after the Trump administration stripped Temporary Protected Status, a legal safeguard, from Hondurans. He has lived in the United States since 1993 and has U.S.-born children.
Like migrant farmworkers who follow crops, hurricane workers move from disaster to disaster, often arriving before power has been restored and while conditions are still hazardous. They sleep in motels, tents and their vehicles.
The National Hurricane Center has predicted a below-normal season for this year, making a major storm unlikely before the season ends next month.
But the Pensacola area desperately needs hands.
After surveying the wreckage, Soni of Resilience Force said laborers were in demand to repair everything from waterfront homes worth millions of dollars to mobile homes farther inland, as well as damaged businesses.
Early Tuesday, immigrants were working on the wind-torn roof of the Grand Marlin, an imposing restaurant on Pensacola Beach, when four men wearing shirts inscribed with “police” ordered them down. The workers didn’t comply.
Sydney Booker, a spokesperson for Florida’s Department of Financial Services, said investigators for the state agency were there to prevent “fraudsters and unlicensed contractors” from exploiting storm victims.
They were not enforcing federal immigration, she said.
Grace McCaffery, a community advocate, said she had been contacted by the spouses of the workers, who had called their families to inform them of what appeared to be immigration agents.
“Wives of the workers called me crying because their husbands were surrounded and scared they would be arrested,” she said.
Bryan Housley, the restaurant’s president, said his business had hired a “local, reputable roofing company” to repair the roof, noting that the same contractor had worked at their location in Panama City, Florida.
“Long story short, they were authorized to work here,” Housley said.
Repairs would resume soon with a different crew from the same company, he said.
“No, those workers don’t want to come back,” Housley said. “That company has quite a few people that work for them, and those gentlemen said, ‘No thank you, we don’t want to experience what happened to us yesterday ever again.’”
Saul Hernandez, with 23 hurricanes under his belt, traveled to Florida last weekend to assess the devastation. By Wednesday, he was back in Louisiana, a hub for hurricane workers, trying to recruit other people.
It’s been a hard pitch.
“My colleagues are asking if there’s any guarantee ICE won’t be there bothering people who work,” said Hernandez, a Salvadoran immigrant. “They are eager to work to support their families, but they are also afraid.”
