L.A. fire rebuilding might be on collision course with Trump immigration crackdown
The breeze was tinged with smoke from the fires that burned through Pacific Palisades as dozens of workers finished up the brick facade of a sprawling home in the tony Brentwood Park neighborhood.
The talk was in Spanish, an unremarkable fact given the language has been the lingua franca on most construction sites in Southern California for decades.
But that fact could be at the center of a leviathan clash of interests: the need to rebuild thousands of homes that were incinerated on a scale the city had never seen before, and the promises of an incoming president to deport a good percentage of the workers who would be needed to get that colossal undertaking done.
“Everyone is scared,” said Melvin Merino, 36, a painter at the home. Workers “are reluctant to talk about their immigration status out of fear it may be shared with immigration officials.”
...
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to execute the largest mass deportation program of unauthorized immigrants in U.S. history and “seal” the borders from immigrants. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, promises to bring back worksite enforcement.
Immigrants rights groups are bracing for widespread roundups and expulsions, holding legal workshops up and down the state in a bid to aid residents who might be stopped by federal authorities.
The threat is rattling the construction industry, which already has a labor shortage. The wildfires that leveled an estimated 12,000 structures in Pacific Palisades and Altadena will only intensify demand. As homeowners turn to contractors for the slow process of rebuilding, an immigration policy that deports undocumented workers or forces them underground may hinder the recovery.
...