Illegal workers are arrested after accident
June 17, 2008 6:00 AM
YORK, Maine — Five undocumented workers were taken into custody last Thursday at a construction site in York, and a sixth was hospitalized following an accident there.

On June 5, just after 10 a.m., police received word that a man had fallen off a roof at the site of the American Legion building on Hannaford Drive.

The man who fell off the roof gave his name to police as Esterberto Urena, no known age, of Revere, Mass. He suffered a broken rib, according to the police report, and was taken to York Hospital.

A total of six men had been at the job site. After determining the workers did not have U.S. identification and were potentially undocumented, police contacted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, according to Sgt. Martin Doherty. Officials from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration were also contacted.

Portland-based ICE officers did respond to a call in York Thursday morning, according to the ICE Office of Detention and Removal Operations in Boston.

"Five individuals were taken into custody and found to be in violation of U.S. immigration laws," said Paula Grenier of ICE public affairs in Boston. She said three of the men were from Guatemala, one was from El Salvador and one was from Costa Rica. According to the police report, the men were taken to Cumberland County Jail.

Grenier said the men's cases will be heard by an immigration court.

Urena was not one of the five. As of Monday, he was no longer at the hospital, said spokeswoman Dawn Fernald. Further information on his whereabouts was unavailable Monday.

The workers had told police they were with MQ Construction in Massachusetts, and lived in Revere, Mass. The men said they leave Revere at 6 a.m. each morning for work, and return at 7:30 p.m.

Although police said they contacted the company to report the fall, no one from MQ Construction came to check on the situation. The Ford van the men had been using was impounded, along with some construction tools. It remained at Jack's Towing as of Monday.

Attempts to reach MQ Construction were unsuccessful because there is no company by that name listed in Massachusetts.

OSHA took a harness and a holding strap from the job site as part of its investigation into the fall, police said.

An American Legion official said he had not known undocumented workers were involved in the construction of the new building. The organization had hired South Portland-based Innovative Development, and the men had been part of a roofing team, said Commander Gene LeMay. "This was done through a subcontractor and a subcontractor below them," said LeMay.

Although they heard about the accident, LeMay said they hadn't heard anything further until facilities manager Stephen LaPointe happened to go by the job site in the afternoon.

"We didn't know about undocumented employees until about 2 in the afternoon," LeMay said.





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