How a worker who survived a catastrophic building collapse ended up in ICE detention
Delmer Palma’s looming deportation has had a chilling effect in New Orleans, hampering a federal investigation of the Hard Rock site disaster, lawyers say.
By Eli Rosenberg
November 25, 2019 at 7:00 a.m. EST
Delmer Joel Ramirez Palma was in bad shape.
The 38-year-old metal worker survived the collapse of a building he had been working on near the French Quarter in New Orleans, jumping between floors as the 18-story structure crumbled around him. But he suffered from headaches, extreme back pain, sleeplessness and signs of shock, his family says.
Doctors said he needed to take a few weeks to heal.
So his wife, Tania Bueso, was surprised when he called her and said federal immigration agents were arresting him for deportation. The collapse had occurred just two days before.
The spectacular wreck had brought a circus of unwanted attention to New Orleans. Three workers had died, dozens of others were injured, and speculation was growing that the site, an $85 million development slated to become a Hard Rock hotel, had been a mess of dangerous working conditions. A federal investigation was moving quickly. Lawsuits against the developers were piling up. (William Kearney, a spokesman for 1031 Canal Development, the LLC behind the development, did not respond to requests for comment.)
But Palma’s arrest sent a secondary shock wave through New Orleans, where the Latino population has more than doubled in the past 20 years. Activists and lawyers said they think it has had chilling effect, discouraging workers without permanent legal status from coming forward to cooperate with investigators and reminding more of the federal government’s power to deport them at any moment.
This is one of the unseen consequences of the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown on undocumented immigrants in the United States — 8 million of whom are in the workforce. Not only do these arrests break apart families, like Palma’s, but they send a message that immigrants are not protected, even if they have witnessed misconduct at work, advocates say. And that means that people who would exploit them — on construction sites, in kitchens, on farms and in factories — are more empowered.
Palma’s lawyers think the timing of his arrest was suspicious. Their client had been fishing in a national wildlife refuge when Fish and Wildlife agents questioned him and called the Border Patrol. Palma had repeatedly reported safety issues at the construction site to supervisors and was always told to go back to work, his lawyers say.
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” said Homero López Jr., a Tulane University law professor who is representing Palma. “It definitely looks like they’re targeting him."
They fear he could be deported as soon as Monday.
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