Delmer Joel Ramirez Palma survived the deadly collapse of a Hard Rock Hotel under construction in Louisiana earlier this month, but he’s now facing yet another terrifying prospect: deportation. The construction worker was taken into federal immigration custody within a day of speaking about the collapse to Spanish-language media, his attorneys told the website NOLA.com.
Ramirez Palma is one of the nearly two dozen workers who survived the collapse of the hotel in New Orleans, which killed three. Along with a group of four other survivors, he sued the developers and contractors on the project, “accusing them of causing the collapse by using inadequate materials and supports,” and saying that workers had complained about conditions but were ignored. But instead of being able to recover from this disaster, Ramirez Palma is currently in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.
“A Border Patrol spokeswoman said that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents had summoned officers to arrest Ramirez after spotting him fishing without a license,” NOLA.com reported. “When pressed for identification, the Border Patrol spokeswoman said, Ramirez had only ‘foreign citizenship documentation.’” This came after his statement on the collapse to media, which ICE spokesperson Bryan Cox claimed has nothing to do with his detention, pointing instead to a deportation order from 2016.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that ICE has routinely targeted people, regardless of immigration status, after they have exposed abuses abuses or been critical of immigration policies. Just weeks after Donald Trump’s inauguration, unshackled agents targeted a Dreamer as she was driving from an immigration press conference. Internal documents and whistleblower leaks have also revealed that the administration surveilled protests against the family separation policy, and kept tabs on journalists and immigrant rights advocates in a secret database. Most recently, ICE raided a Mississippi factory that settled with workers suing over racist and sexual harassment.
NOLA.com reported that attorney Daryl Gray “said Ramirez’s case illustrates why he believes some workers who know what was happening at the construction site ahead of the collapse are afraid to come forward.” That fear, Gray continued, is “being deported or some other retribution by their employers. Just like all Americans, however, they do have the rights that are afforded to us within this courthouse.” Gray noted that immigrants like Ramirez Palma have helped America thrive, only to then be targeted: "Immigrants are exploited for the growth of our great nation.”
Ramirez Palma is currently being jailed at an ICE detention facility in central Louisiana, and his advocates are pressing for his release, noting that he requires follow-up medical care relating to his injuries—and, as ICE’s record has shown again and again, the agency is completely ill-equipped to handle that. “His attorneys said they will be pursuing all measures to stay his deportation moving forward and believe he has not yet exhausted all his options,” CBS News reported.