A Maryland Homeowner Hired a Crew to Fix the Roof. Then They Reported the Crew to ICE.
Even by MAGA standards, calling ICE on the crew of immigrants you just hired to work on your home is pretty repugnant.
Photo via Unsplash, Zohair Mirza, Screenshot: Twitter Splinter ICE
Even by MAGA standards, there’s occasionally a story of behavior so repugnant, so bereft of any form of empathy, that it stands out from the pack. And we seem to be receiving one of those stories this week, in the form of a still-unknown Maryland homeowner who reportedly hired a crew of Guatemalan immigrants to remodel their roof, only to summon ICE, resulting in six of the roofers being detained by immigration agents on Monday. Video of the incident first emerged on Twitter, as seen in a screenshot below, wherein one can see some of the roofers sitting on a tarp in ICE custody, before they are presumably taken off for processing, likely bound for one of ICE’s rapidly spreading warehouse detention centers. On the screen, the man broadcasting has added text, reading “la misma dueña de la casa les hecho el hielo.” Translation: “The owner of the house herself called ICE on them.”
Spanish language broadcaster Univision was able to get an interview with the man, identified as Bryan Polanco, a member of the roofing crew who broadcasted live for 30 minutes as his coworkers were rounded up and arrested by ICE as they worked on a house in Cambridge, MD. Polanco was reportedly not detained alongside the rest of the men, Guatemalan immigrants who ranged in age from 18 to 40, because he is a green card holder with permanent resident status in the United States.
“Seeing it is not the same as experiencing it,” said Polanco to Univision. “I’ve seen many videos, and sadly today I had to experience it, and I feel that it’s something that really moves you. I’m very saddened by the situation … many Hispanics here in the United States have felt persecuted. We leave our homes and don’t know if we’ll ever return.”
If this lady did call ICE on the roofers then she is the biggest idiot in the world because hello you still have a big gaping hole where your ridge vent is supposed to be
As is so often the case in hot-button, viral incidents, the spin machine is already revving into action on both sides. There is little concrete information on the case, and the identity of the homeowner is unknown. Viral social media posts from liberal social media influencers such as Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow for the American Immigration Council, have seemingly been working at establishing a narrative that the homeowner was “calling ICE on people working on her roof to avoid having to pay them,” which he observes “would be a felony under Maryland law.” It is indeed illegal in Maryland to compel or coerce work out of someone by threatening to report them to the police or immigration agents, but there’s no particular evidence available yet that the homeowner did this, nor any proof that the homeowner “waited until they were done” to call ICE, another detail being floated around in social media posts without any attribution.
Polanco’s quotes to Univision, in fact, would seemingly suggest that the men had just started on the roofing project that day. He said the following: “We practically had a project to start today … when they started the work, the homeowner kind of called immigration. What she did tell me, and what I told one of the other guys, is that if immigrants come back again to finish the project, she will always call ICE.”
Not that this really casts the homeowner in any kind of better light–they still allegedly called ICE to come and collect the very same work crew that they hired to work on their home, as seen in the video. That would be bad enough, without needing to invent additional details! Univision also spoke with the unnamed wife of one of the arrested men, who identified herself as five months pregnant. She reportedly said the following: “I feel so sad, desperate for my husband … we’re here to get ahead, not to do evil.” The man reportedly has two other children who now don’t know what the ultimate fate of their father will be.
In the video, a white woman–possibly the very homeowner in question–can be seen as ICE departs, seemingly yelling “Go! Get out of here!” at the departing immigrants. One wonders how she’ll be feeling about the incident if it blows up into national news and her own identity ends up splashed around the internet within a few days. Surely, this kind hate can’t be worthwhile for its own sake. All that, and a roof that may or may not have even gotten fixed.
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