By Alicia Victoria Lozano -
NBC News
The wrath of Hurricane Ian had barely abated in Florida when, through online platforms such as Telegram and WhatsApp, many began to receive job offers for laborers, needed in the reconstruction works.
The messages in Spanish appeared to be aimed at newly arrived immigrants and asylum seekers desperate to find work.
Some activists are concerned that immigrants could become targets of companies eager to exploit employees with offers of hard work and low wages.
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"This looks and smells like human trafficking," said Ariadna Phillips, a New York community organizer who works with the group South Bronx Mutual Aid.
"They recruit them with flashy photos, telling them, 'You're going to make a lot of money,' and 'We're going to give you this great apartment to live in.'"
But when the workers arrive, it's a different story.
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Cheating with salaries and lodging expenses
Less than two weeks after Hurricane Ian hit Florida and devastated dozens of communities, Phillips said he has already heard from several workers whose wages were reduced after paying for room and board.
The immigrants said that covering these expenses themselves was not part of their agreements with the companies that recruited them.
Some of those people had only arrived in the United States a week ago
, according to the community organizer.
"I tell them to stay in New York because that's where they're going to be the safest," Phillips said.
"We are a sanctuary city and Florida has been sending people to Martha's Vineyard."
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Last month, Governor Ron DeSantis sent two planes carrying immigrants to that wealthy Massachusetts enclave as part of an effort to "transport illegal immigrants to sanctuary destinations," his communications director, Taryn Fenske, said in a statement.
On Tuesday, DeSantis told a news conference that three of the four people arrested last week for "looting" communities after Hurricane Ian were illegal immigrants who should be deported immediately.
[This is how inflation and the cost of materials will affect the reconstruction of Florida after the passage of Hurricane Ian]
"They shouldn't be here," he said.
Her office did not respond to a request for comment from NBC News, Telemundo's sister network.
On Friday, the governor encouraged Florida debris companies to hire local workers.
"The businesses and livelihoods of many people in Southwest Florida have been affected by the storm and they are looking for work," he said in a statement.
The private sector can help them get back on their feet by hiring locally during the recovery, which will support the local economy for at least the next six months."
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Immigrants are key in disaster recovery
Experts say migrants are much more likely to be victims of labor exploitation or suffer disproportionate economic harm after a natural disaster.
"Not only are they the first to be affected by these extreme weather events, but they tend to be the first to try to rebuild," said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.
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Migrant workers from
Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala
historically constitute the backbone of the recovery workforce that goes to regions affected by natural disasters, he added.
They helped rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and Houston after Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
In a survey of 361 construction workers after Harvey, 72% were immigrants who had entered the country illegally, almost half were from Mexico and most of the rest came from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, according to a 2018 study co-authored by Soto.
The average hourly wage for blue collar workers ranged from $12 to $14 an hour
, and 26% of those surveyed reported wage theft in the month after Harvey.
Many also described not being informed about occupational hazards or protective equipment.
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"These workers are more likely to work irregularly or for companies that are likely to flout the rules," exposing them to potentially dangerous working conditions, Soto said.
In New York, job advertisements targeting immigrants offered rates of $15 an hour, per diem, transportation to and from work sites, overtime and even housing, said Phillips of South Bronx Mutual.
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A post reviewed by NBC News included photos of furnished apartments or hotel rooms, with full kitchens.
Another notice written in Spanish and posted by a Florida construction company asked interested workers to contact it via WhatsApp or Telegram and provide their name, age, country of origin and availability to travel.
A third party from the same company said it was looking for 300 workers in Fort Myers, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Cape Coral and Port Charlotte.
Phillips said she has spoken with a dozen immigrants who received the ads and several reached out to her on Tuesday through aid networks in New York.
They had been roaming the streets of Queens for hours, drenched from heavy rain and carrying all their belongings
, looking for the buses that were reportedly taking workers to Florida.
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Exploitation "is happening quietly"
Recalling other "horror stories" of immigrants not being paid to work or deported after working on natural disaster reconstruction, Phillips went to Queens.
She helped dissuade a group of migrants who wanted to travel to Florida and encouraged them to seek help from local shelters and organizations.
Several attempts to contact the company promoting these job opportunities were unsuccessful.
"Often the promises made to these workers are not kept," said Saket Soni, executive director of the Resilience Workforce, a New Orleans group that advocates and monitors migrant workers after natural disasters.
"I am concerned that they are being recruited through fraud,"
he said.
[Ian's damages in Florida could be as high as $47 billion. So you can protect his money from natural catastrophes]
In the days after Ian's passing, Resilience Workforce sent members of its staff to Florida to observe working conditions on the ground.
They reached out to hundreds of workers who had arrived in places like Fort Myers, where the hurricane hit hard, and were waiting outside Walmart and Home Depot looking for work.
Sacha Feinman, director of communications for Resilience Force, said he personally witnessed some workers "put themselves in harm's way," such as roofers not wearing safety gear and several workers sleeping inside a truck at a parking lot.
"It's real," he said of the exploitation of workers.
"It exists. And it's happening quietly."
