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Suspected illegal immigrant apprehended working on ‘Castle’
Thursday, 03 August 2006
By SAM GALSKI
galski@standardspeaker.com
Federal immigration enforcement agents apprehended a suspected illegal immigrant who was working to renovate the former Hazleton High School Thursday afternoon, Hazleton City and Hazleton Area School District representatives said. Officials from the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a state police trooper took an employee from the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Everest General Contractors firm into custody Thursday afternoon after he apparently could not provide some paperwork requested by investigators, according to Jerry Ranieli, a project manager working at the site from Pittston’s SamCar firm.

The Hazleton Area School District hired Everest to install a new roof for the former high school, also known as the “Castle.”

Ranieli, however, said he did not know if charges were filed against the employee or if the man was allowed to return to work Thursday.

ICE agents and a state trooper arrived at the “Castle” construction site at about 1 p.m. Thursday and asked four employees for identification, Ranieli said.

Three of them were allowed to return to work.

A fourth employee produced documents, but investigators said they “still need additional paperwork,” Ranieli said.

“From what I can see, the paperwork was in place,” Ranieli said. “But he was still missing one piece of identification needed. They told him to ‘Come with us’ and that’s as far as I know about it.”
Ranieli said that investigators “acted on a complaint.”

When asked about the incident, Hazleton Mayor Louis Barletta said that one “illegal alien was apprehended by ICE,” but referred additional questions to the federal agency.

Officials from Everest did not return a message left at their office Thursday afternoon.

Ranieli said he spoke with a foreman who was at the construction site Thursday afternoon, but said the foreman told him that the company hasn’t had any problems with its employees.

“The roofing contractor said they were in the country for a while now and said he had no problem,” Ranieli said.

A Hazleton police spokesman said a person at the construction site was “picked up by ICE,” but said the department wasn’t involved.

However, a spokeswoman from the Troop N Barracks in West Hazleton said she wasn’t aware of any such incident Thursday.

The Hazleton Area School Board awarded a $576,000 contract to Everest General Contractors in November 2004. The contract covered work to install a new rubber roof on the building.

The school district paid the firm another $36,000 for a 20-year warranty.
Roof restoration is part of an estimated $24 million restoration project that the school district has undertaken to convert the former high school into a third-through eighth-grade school.