Florida’s disposable workers
After Abednego de la Cruz sliced his finger to the bone cutting concrete blocks while building a fire station in Tallahassee, his boss fired him and refused continued medical care for his injury. De la Cruz, 37, a father whose dominant hand remains damaged, said he thought he could rely on the workers’ compensation system, which requires employers to cover medical care and lost wages for injured employees. Instead, his employer called the police and had him arrested. The undocumented immigrant faces almost certain deportation and fears he won’t be able to raise his 1-year-old U.S.-born daughter.
Some Florida businesses profit from the labor of unauthorized immigrants after accepting phony identification when hiring them, then the employers or their insurers report them after a work injury for using false documents, a year-long investigation by the USA TODAY NETWORK found.
Workers’ compensation fraud laws are meant to punish those who try to abuse the system, such as employees
“They use them to work as cheap labor, but then, if they get hurt, ‘You are done. You get nothing.’ ” Cora Cisneros Molloy Fort Myers lawyer
who fake injuries or employers who leave workers unprotected. A change in the Florida law in 2003 punishes immigrants who were injured if they used Social Security numbers not assigned to them or fake IDs to obtain a job or injury benefits.
Most of the injured immigrants reported under the law in recent years work for a few companies that provide labor and personnel services to high-risk industries such as construction and landscaping, promising cheaper workers’ compensation costs to their client businesses, the investigation found.
Some companies or their insurers legally avoid paying injury claims, while their injured, undocumented workers lose their jobs, get arrested, face jail and deportation and must pay their own medical bills.
SouthEast Personnel Leasing hired de la Cruz in 2013 and leased him to a construction business. Because it’s not required, no one verified his Social Security number until he was injured a year later. Lion Insurance, owned by one of SouthEast’s owners, reported de la Cruz to state investigators.
De la Cruz was charged with a felony for using a fake Social Security number and was denied workers’ compensation benefits.
He is among about 600,000 unauthorized workers in Florida, many of whom fill the ranks of the state’s most dangerous jobs — one in five construction workers, one in three farmworkers.
When they get injured, they become disposable.
After analyzing courts and arrest data, reviewing thousands of pages of judicial and investigative records and crisscrossing the state to interview workers, the investigation found that:
At least 163 immigrant workers in Florida were charged since 2004 with a felony of providing false identification after they were injured. In at least 159 cases, their employer or their insurance company reported them.
More than 80% of the injured immigrants reported from 2013 to 2016 worked for employee leasing companies or staffing agencies that recruit workers.
SouthEast had far more workers charged than any other company — at least 56 cases, or about a third. The company and its related businesses hired immigrants for a decade without verifying documents and turned them in after they were injured.
The same Florida law used against the immigrants makes it a crime for employers to hire workers they know use phony identification. The Daily News, part of the USA TODAY NETWORK, could identify only one employer who faced prosecution in the 14 years since the law was passed.
Under the law, businesses have little motivation to verify documentation of workers when hiring them, but employers and their insurers gain a major incentive to check once they are injured.
Companies could easily verify an applicant’s Social Security number to avoid employing undocumented immigrants, said Cora Cisneros Molloy, a Fort Myers lawyer who represents workers.
“Do they do that? No, because they don’t want to know. It’s willful blindness, and they take advantage of it,” Molloy said. “They use them to work as cheap labor, but then, if they get hurt, ‘You are done. You get nothing.’ ”
SouthEast owner John Porreca and company lawyer Brian Evans declined requests from the Daily News for interviews and did not respond to questions submitted through email and certified letters.
Evans sent a statement saying SouthEast and its affiliated companies comply with Florida statutes. State law requires insurers to report cases in which they suspect fraud.
SouthEast “is, and continues to be, respectful of an injured worker’s right to receive workers’ compensation benefits under applicable Florida law,” Evans wrote.
Simon Blank, director of Florida’s Division of Investigative and Forensic Services, which investigates workers found using false identity information, said he wasn’t aware that employee leasing companies and their insurers reported most of the injured immigrants in recent years.
Blank said his staff must enforce the law.
“Although it’s unfortunate and we feel for those people, the bottom line is they committed a crime, and that crime is putting other innocent people at risk,” he said.
State legislatures and courts for the most part have declared that employers and their insurers — not workers or taxpayers — should pay for the care and compensation of those injured on the job, regardless of immigration status.
This approach is better, court rulings and worker advocates argue, because it discourages unscrupulous employers from hiring more undocumented workers on the belief they won’t have to worry about injuries. It helps keep a level playing field for all businesses and provides safer workplaces in a system that threatens deductibles or higher premiums for employers with high injury rates.
For 31 years, federal law has required employers to ask new hires to sign a form certifying they can work legally and to show documents to prove it, such as green cards or Social Security numbers.
In most states, including Florida, businesses aren’t required to check through the federal E-Verify system that the documents are legitimate. The Internet-based system compares identifying information an employee offers to information in federal databases.
Many employers accept false documents without checking them, even in industries with a high percentage of un- authorized workers or with a history of employees using fake identification. Some workers have accused employers of actually providing the false documents.
In 2003, Florida’s Legislature overhauled the state’s workers’ compensation system, making it a third-degree felony to provide false identity information when obtaining a job or injury benefits. Though the new law kept earlier language that all workers are entitled to injury benefits, it allowed companies to deny benefits to many injured undocumented immigrants.
In addition to arresting injured workers, state investigators have used the statute to charge more than 600 other workers since 2004 for using false identity information to get jobs.
The state has done little to hold businesses accountable for hiring undocumented immigrants they know used false documents.
Martin Rojas of West Palm Beach said he didn’t know that signing some papers and telling the insurance adjustor he was undocumented would land him in jail.
Rojas was working in 2014 as a leased employee of SouthEast when he sprained his ankle at his job with Southern Truss Companies in Fort Pierce.
The Social Security number Rojas used to get the job was on both the medical records release and the fraud statement forms he signed.
After the accident, an adjustor interviewed Rojas by phone and asked for his Social Security number. Rojas said he didn’t remember it but confirmed it was on his job application, according to a recording of the call.
When the adjustor asked whether he had a driver’s license, Rojas volunteered the information that he was undocumented.
Rojas, who doesn’t speak English and attended school only up to the fourth grade, was denied benefits, arrested and sentenced to 90 days in jail and nearly five years’ probation. He was ordered to pay about $2,500 in restitution and faced legal expenses.
He is unable to even replace his wornout clothes.
Contributing: Marquette University student researchers Elizabeth Baker, Allison Dikanovic and Alexandra Videmsky through the O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service and USA TODAY NETWORK reporters Ryan Mills and Camille Chrysostom.
“Although it’s unfortunate and we feel for those people, the bottom line is they committed a crime, and that crime is putting other innocent people at risk.” Simon Blank Division of Investigative and Forensic Services