Feds Checking Status of Cleanup Workers

In the midst of the largest environmental disaster the United States has ever experienced, federal agents are making sure that everyone involved in the response is a legal resident. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have dropped in on a pair of large command centers full of workers hired by BP. “We visited just to ensure that people who are legally here can compete for those jobs—those people who are having so many problems,” said an ICE spokesman. He added that they did not make any arrests, but would have if they had found undocumented workers. The investigation is largely a response to the large influx of undocumented Hispanic workers who flocked to the area after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. “People are desperate for jobs,” said the Director of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Louisiana, “And they think that if someone looks like an undocumented immigrant they’re taking the food from their mouth.”