Posts Tagged ‘Hurricane Katrina’

ICE Agents in Louisiana Search for Undocumented Immigrant Cleanup Workers Assisting in the Oil Crisis Cleanup

Friday, June 4th, 2010

This story was co-produced by Feet in Two Worlds and El Diario/La Prensa.

NEW ORLEANS — Federal immigration officials have been visiting command centers on the Gulf Coast to check the immigration status of response workers hired by BP and its contractors to clean up the immense oil spill.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Louisiana confirmed that its agents had visited two large command centers—which are staging areas for the response efforts and are sealed off to the public—to verify that the workers there were legal residents.

“We visited just to ensure that people who are legally here can compete for those jobs—those people who are having so many problems,” said Temple H. Black, a spokesman for ICE in Louisiana.

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, thousands of Hispanic workers, many of them undocumented, flocked to the region to help in the reconstruction of Louisiana’s coastal towns.  Many stayed, building communities on the outskirts of New Orleans or finding employment outside the city in oil refineries and in the fishing industry.

Read full story here.