"Immigrant worker who fell through Madison roof is a cautionary tale", 5 July 2026

Juan can no longer walk. A fall through a Madison auto repair shop roof in 2023 paralyzed him from the neck down…

Like many undocumented immigrants working in construction, Juan found the job…through a blurry relationship between a labor recruiter and a general contractor. Neither had the worker’s compensation insurance state law requires…

A recruiter…connected Juan with his first gig…and he soon found himself crisscrossing…as an itinerant construction worker…

“Sometimes we’d work up to 13 hours,”…Juan said he never fully knew who called the shots…

The site supervisor hadn’t provided him with a safety harness…

Juan struggled to remain conscious as the site supervisor debated whether to call an ambulance…

… Juan’s case pointed to two possible employers: Luis Villafuerte, the subcontractor who brought Juan to Madison, and RestoreMasters, a…contractor in charge of the roof repair.

Neither had worker’s compensation insurance in Wisconsin…

RestoreMasters, which did not respond to requests for comment… failed to get a Wisconsin endorsement on its policy before taking the Madison job…

State investigators reached a decision…RestoreMasters was his employer at the time of his injury…so it bore responsibility for failing to secure a worker’s compensation insurance policy…

The final payout…reached nearly $1 million…