Lynch: The ICE Man Cometh

Friday, May 26, 2017 | 2

This will be hard.

For a moment, squeeze yourself into the tight shoes of one of America’s 11 million unauthorized immigrants.

Eight million of you are working. You make up 5% of the civilian workforce. Twenty-six percent of you work in farming; 15% in construction. A lot of people complain that you and your unauthorized, undocumented, illegal alien brethren are taking jobs from Americans who need them, although you haven’t seen a lot of those Americans lining up to pick the fruit and veggies in the hot sun.

You have a job. It’s in construction. Not important how you got it — phony papers, no papers, whatever. You live in one of the 14 states that expressly allow workers’ compensation coverage for unauthorized immigrants.

There are another 24 where coverage is allowed in practice, but not expressly allowed in the statute. And every once in a while, some state legislature will try to expressly exclude you and all the others. But those attempts are always beaten back by, of all things, the business community, because adopting a law like that might lead to unfair competition.

You’re married with three children, all born in the U.S. You’ve been here for seven years, although two-thirds of all unauthorized immigrants have been here for at least a decade. You’ve never been in trouble. With anyone. You own a car, but no one will ever mistake it for a Tesla. It gets you around, though. It especially gets you to work.

Last week, you fell off a ladder at work and broke your leg. First time you’ve ever been hurt at work. A supervisor took you to an urgent care center where a doctor set your leg. Unfortunate, but you’re going to be out of work for eight weeks. Can’t be helped, but, because you live in one of the magical 14 states, you’ll get workers’ compensation.

Two days later the owner calls to tell you not to worry about anything. He says he wants to make things easier for you and the family. He thinks it would help if he gave you some cash to tide you over until the workers’ comp kicks in. Why not come into the office tomorrow at, say, 11:00, so he can do that? You’re grateful, and, in your broken English, you thank him and tell him you’ll be there.

Tomorrow comes. Eleven a.m. and you’re hobbling in the door to the office, broken leg and all, which is when the train comes off the rails. The owner’s not there, but ICE is. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, has come to arrest you. And that’s what happens.

Two weeks later you and your broken leg are sitting in the county house of corrections waiting to find out what will happen to you. You’re worried deep in your bones for your wife and three kids. Worried? No, you’re terrified. So, there you sit.

How’d that feel? Having a nice day, are we?

That story’s not fiction. It happened last week in Massachusetts. The man in whose shoes you were walking is 37-year-old Jose Flores who, with his wife Rosa Benitez, fled gang violence in Honduras seven years ago. Flores now has two lawyers, one for workers’ comp, the other for ICE.

The lawyers know he’s entitled to workers’ compensation coverage but wonder how he’ll collect it if he’s deported to Honduras. So far, the ICE man hasn’t come calling for Rosa Benitez, but that could change at any time. She and the kids are living in constant fear.

What about that owner who called ICE to come get Flores? He is Pedro Pirez. His company, Tara Construction, employs roughly 10 people and, so far, he has no comment about any of this.

We do know one thing: On the day Flores fell off the ladder, Tara Construction was not insured for workers’ compensation.

So, who’s committing the bigger fraud? Flores or Pirez? Something to think about.

Tom Lynch is a principal with Lynch Ryan & Associates, a Massachusetts-based employer consulting firm. This column was reprinted with his permission from his Workers' Comp Insider blog.