Attorney Mary Yanik with the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice wants to know why the Honduran construction worker, Delmer Joel Ramirez-Palma, is in an immigration holding facility in Louisiana and could be deported.
"This is all extraordinary suspicious, strange circumstances," Yanik said. "He's terrified. He believes he was retaliated against,"
Especially after Ramirez-Palma spoke about the unsafe conditions at the site of the Hard Rock Hotel collapse last month to Jambalaya News, a Hispanic media organization.
"It happened two days after the collapse," Yanik said. "He's well known (as someone) who spoke about safety concerns in the past."
Yanik believes deporting Ramirez-Palma could impact the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's investigation into what lead to the hotel collapse.
Attorneys said they're worried the deportation will frighten other undocumented immigrants and keep them from speaking with federal investigators.
"My hope is that there is reconsideration to this decision to deport him," Yanik said. "(U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) fully has it in their power to release him, to not deport him, (or) to delay the deportation."
Bryan Cox, a spokesman for ICE, said claims that Ramirez-Palma's deportation has any connection with the Hard Rock Hotel collapse are false.
"This individual is in custody because he has a final order of removal," the spokesman said. "It is concerning to me, and I agree there is fear in the community because these claims are being made. These claims are irresponsible and they do a disservice to the community,"
Ramirez -Palma is in a holding facility is because he's had a deportation order since 2016, officials said. It had nothing to do with the OSHA investigation into the Hard Rock Hotel collapse.
"This particular individual indisputably was in the United States unlawfully, had his day in court, was ordered removed almost four years ago, and has been in the country unlawfully since that time."
256,000 people who were here unlawfully were deported in 2018, ICE officials said. ICE officers don't enforce anything unless a federal judge tells them.
"Nothing that ice is doing is made up by ice," Cox said. "These are federal laws that congress passed, so if people have disagreements with what the laws are, there is a process in our country to change. That process lies with congress."
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