While the governor of Florida, Republican Ron DeSantis, lashed out Tuesday at a press conference against three undocumented immigrants who were caught looting a house devastated by Hurricane Ian, hundreds of Latino workers, many of them undocumented, have come to the damaged area to lead reconstruction efforts despite dangers and fraud.
Organizations defending the rights of migrants warn these workers about cheating by contractors who recruit them for reconstruction work but then, instead of paying them their salary, report them to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE). English) to be deported.
Adriana Phillips, an activist with South Bronx Mutual Aid, warned a group of Venezuelan migrants in New York against traveling to Florida to work on debris cleanup, USA Today reported Wednesday.
A contractor cleans up debris from Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers on Wednesday.Rebecca Blackwell/AP
"Sounds like human trafficking to me," he told them at the shelter where they were staying in Queens, "they recruit migrants, take them there, don't pay them, and deport them. We've seen this happen with other hurricanes."
Phillips explained to the newspaper that he spoke with two Venezuelan cousins who crossed the border in Texas before being sent on a bus to New York.
They received a message through the WhatsApp messaging app offering good salaries in Florida.
[Almost a week after Ian passed through Florida, a small farming town where many Latinos live is still isolated]
The Venezuelan cousins were looking for a white van on the streets of Queens that was supposed to take them there.
But according to Phillips, other Venezuelan migrants who had already gone to Florida to work on the reconstruction contacted his organization and told them that the cost of transportation and lodging had already been deducted from their salary.
"It's called labor exploitation,"
the activist told USA Today.
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The Workers with Resilience Force, a New Orleans organization that monitors working conditions at sites affected by natural disasters, recently sent a group to oversee rebuilding efforts in Florida.
There he found migrants congregating outside Home Depot stores and others to be called to work removing debris.
"They are the foundation of this dirty and dangerous work," said Saket Soni, director of the Workers with Resilience Force.
His organization has documented several incidents in recent years in which migrants have been harmed in this type of work, without being compensated for the damages.
For example, when they have fallen from the roofs that they are repairing or when they are denied wages and instead of paying them, the contractors call ICE.
[Ian victims expect help with Biden's visit: "Let him give people a roof"]
These are jobs that almost no one else is willing to do: according to a study by the Migration Policy Institute in which they interviewed 371 workers who were helping to rebuild Texas after Hurricane Harvey, 72% were undocumented migrants.
Despite the help provided by immigrants and the abuses they are more likely to suffer, the Florida governor preferred to focus on the case of four looters "who must be brought to justice."
“But you know what?
Three of those four are illegal aliens,” he added, “they are in our country illegally and not only that, but they are trying to loot after a natural disaster.”
"If I could, I would grab these three looters, grab them by their shirt collars and send them back to where they came from," he said.