Wearing their neon green vests, they filed into the room clutching lilies and raising their fists in solidarity with the six fallen construction workers who died in the Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster. Like those men, they work construction. Many were born in Latin America, like the six men lost on Tuesday.
“Todos estamos con ustedes, aquí, ahora, y siempre,” they chanted. “We are with you, here, now and always.”
Immigrant construction workers in Maryland are calling for stronger protections from the federal government in the wake of the Key Bridge collapse. They do dangerous jobs and say that an expansion of the Temporary Protected Status program, which gives some migrants the right to live and work in the country, could help protect them from exploitation.
The calls came during a Friday afternoon solidarity rally hosted by CASA, a Maryland Latino immigration and advocacy group.
“Right now, more than ever, we believe that it’s an opportunity for the president to do the right thing [and expand TPS],” said Gustavo Torres, the executive director for CASA.
According to census data, immigrants work approximately one quarter of U-S construction jobs. In 2020, about 30% of US construction workers were of Hispanic origin, according to the US Bureau of Labor statistics.
According to census data analyzed by the American Immigration Council, a non-partisan advocacy group, 20% of Maryland’s workforce in 2018 was immigrant workers. In the construction industry, that number rises to 30%.
“I risk my life to ensure income and economic growth for my family,” said Darwin Orlando Lopez, a husband and father, is now a Baltimore County resident who moved from his birth country of Honduras 21-years-ago. Lopez, like the three other construction workers who spoke at the rally, spoke in Spanish and through a translator. “I climb structures more than 40-feet into the air and one day I had a fall onto another roof… this job has caused me great danger and physical pain, including a fracture in my arm.”
“As a community member, as an essential worker, we deserve respect and dignity from this country,” said Lopez.
Victoriano Almendares, also originally of Honduras but a now Montgomery County resident, had a similar experience. After a fall, Almendares, an electrician of nearly five-decades, can no longer work in elevators but instead can only do floor work. It has severely limited his income capabilities.
Delegate Joseline Peña- Melnyk, herself born in the Dominican Republic, described immigrants as the “gas” that keeps the country running. She disparaged those that only share negative stories about immigrants.
“I would like to go one day without an immigrant working in this country so that you all can feel what it will be like,” she said.
Eight construction workers doing routine pothole fillings were thrown into the Patapsco in the very early hours of Tuesday morning when the nearly 1,000 foot cargo vessel Dali struck a supportive pylon on the Key Bridge. The bridge collapsed in about twenty seconds. The Dali lost power, veered off course, and was able to issue a “mayday” call three minutes before striking the bridge which allowed police to close the bridge to traffic. Maryland Transportation Authority Police dispatch audio recordings make clear that police intended to warn and evacuate the workers but ran out of time. Eight men fell into the water and two survived. Four are still missing. Two bodies have been recovered. All are confirmed by foreign embassies to be from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico.
Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, lived in Baltimore and was originally from Mexico. Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, lived in Dundalk, MD but was born in Guatemala. Their bodies were recovered from a red pick-up truck submerged in about 25-feet of water on Wednesday.
Two of the missing men were CASA members, said the organization’s president Gustavo Torres earlier this week. Miguel Luna, originally from El Salvador, had lived in Maryland for over half his life. He was a husband and father to three children. Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval was Honduran and the youngest of eight children.
Maynor’s nephew Hector Suazo spoke with The Baltimore Banner and described his uncle as “extroverted and full of joy”-- he also dreamed of opening his own small business in Owings Mills, where he lived. Suazo sent money back to Honduras every month, enabling the family there to operate a small hotel in a town where poverty rates are high.
The men worked for Brawner Builders, a construction company based in Baltimore County, Maryland.
Jesus Campos, who also works for Brawner Builders, used to work with two of the missing men and spoke with WYPR on Tuesday. He described them all as “humble” and dedicated to their families.
The immigration status of the workers killed in Tuesday’s incident remains unknown.
“Immigration status and fears of immigration enforcement mean that immigrant construction workers are particularly vulnerable to worksite exploitation including exposure to hazardous conditions. Highway workers in particular often work overnight hours with increased exposure to accidents so that the rest of us have the convenience of avoiding construction during daylight hours,” representatives from CASA wrote in a press release Friday.
In March 2023, nearly exactly a year before the Key Bridge disaster, six highway workers died when a speeding motorist lost control of her car and entered a workzone on I-695. Three of those workers were of Hispanic origins.
