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Immigration Laws Violated on Largest Public Transportation Project In Central Texas

Design-build team’s handling raises questions about accountability in the Texas construction industry

By Kali Venable

AUSTIN—On Tuesday, Feb. 26, Ace McDowell showed up to an unusual sight at the 183 South Project, where he works as a field inspector for Colorado River Constructors (CRC). At an hour when workers would typically be grinding on the job, they stood around talking and making frantic phone calls.

The 45-year-old Austin native, who has worked in the construction industry for more than half of his life, immediately began asking questions.

“[One of the foremen] said man, they’re getting rid of people. They’re firing people, they did an audit,” McDowell said. “Immigration had done an audit on the payroll and found out that the documentation didn’t match — they were falsified documents.”

The audit run on Balfour Infrastructure, Inc. — one of the two contractors that make up the CRC design-build team on the 183 South Project — is part of a nationwide initiative to increase worksite enforcement of immigration policy. Led by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency under the Trump administration, the initiative is meant to stiffen penalties for businesses that use cheap, unauthorized labor (see infographic 1). 

(Infographic 1)

In a 2016 analysis of the U.S.’s unauthorized workforce, the Pew Research Center found that approximately 23 percent of construction workers in Texas are undocumented. Researchers at the Workers Defense Project and the University of Texas at Austin put that number even higher, after 50 percent of Texas construction workers, surveyed for the non-profit’s Build A Better Nation study, reported that they were undocumented.

Steve Pustelnyk, the director of community relations at the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority (CRTMA), explained that ICE audits can have huge impacts on a workforce in the construction industry, where there is already a labor shortage and a dependency on unauthorized workers.

“So many of the folks who do work in construction are not citizens that when you have those crackdowns, essentially you are cutting into the labor force and their aren’t people to replace them,” Pustelnyk said. “It does become a problem in terms of completing the construction process for those jobs that are the very hard jobs that a lot of folks don’t want to do.”

The 183 South Project is the largest publicly funded project ever commissioned by CTRMA, an independent government agency that was established to implement a wide range of transportation system projects in the Travis and Williamson counties, under the Texas Transportation Code Chapter 370 in 2002.

In 2009, the CTRMA selected Colorado River Constructors as the design-build team on the the 183 South Project, which entails the construction of six toll lanes on an 8-mile stretch of 183 South, between Hwy. 290 and Hwy. 71. The entire project, projected for completion in 2020, is costing taxpayers $743 million.

Pustelnyk confirmed that he had heard about recent ICE raids and audits on projects the agency is building, but since the projects are being designed and built by contractors, CTRMA receives no written notification if contractors they hired for publicly-funded projects are found to be in violation of immigration policy.

This is where things get complicated.

Central to the construction industry is the use of subcontracting. While general contractors are responsible for the overseeing of a construction project, they hire subcontractors responsible for specific trades that then hire individual construction workers. While subcontracting is essential to the industry, it can diffuse accountability for unauthorized laborers and widespread industry issues, such as wage theft and misclassifications.

When it comes to publicly funded projects, agencies that select and commission design and build teams with taxpayer dollars, like the TCRMA, add another layer to an already confusing web of authority.

“When it comes to immigration issues, for us, that is more of an issue that the companies themselves and the appropriate authorities are dealing with,” Pustelnyk said. “The company we hire has the first requirement to ensure that people are qualified and legal and whatever to work.”

In a state that claims to be the best place for business, it is not all that surprising that when the CTRMA selects design, build, or design-build teams for publicly-funded projects, past history of immigration violations and worker exploitations factor very little into the decision making process.

“Thirty percent is scored by a committee based on their qualifications and then the other seventy percent is a scoring of the price that they submit,” Pustelnyk said.

The 30 percent of the total score, based on contractor qualifications, is predominantly related to the management team’s history. While past history related to immigration violations on other jobs could be considered, Pustelnyk doesn’t believe it plays much of a role in the selection process, if any.

“There is a possibility that we look at incidents where you’ve been sited for not complying with the immigrant laws, I suspect not, but that is a possibility,” Pustelnyk said.

A step down the ladder, at the CRC design-build level, Krien, who oversees construction and hiring of subcontractors on the 183 South Project, said that Balfour Infrastructure, Inc. and Flour Daniels — the two companies that make up CRC – are equally intertwined. Yet, when it comes to worker authorization, both companies are not involved.

When asked about the alleged ICE audit, Krein said “I think something happened, but I stay out of that because I’m on the Flour side and Balfour handles all the payroll for all craft, field labor and foreman people.”

The employment verification office at Balfour Beatty US that handles such payroll was contacted for this story, but the secretary said that the authorization is done on the jobsite so the department wouldn’t be involved in the process. She directed the call to human resources, who declined to be interviewed.

The construction industry in Texas accounts for 10 percent of the national construction output and one in every twenty dollars generated by the state economy. The state and nation at-large are currently facing significant labor shortages in construction.

Due to labor shortages and a dependency on undocumented workers, some contractors try to figure out ways to keep unauthorized employees after their documents are found to be falsified. Balfour Infrastructure, Inc., according to McDowell, is one of them.

Back at the 183 South Project worksite, on the day McDowell was notified of the audit by multiple foreman, he says he witnessed them scramble to come up with a way to keep the unauthorized. While some workers were arrested by ICE and others fled the worksite immediately, in fear that law enforcement would return, some stuck around and tried to find new documents.

“[The foremen] definitely encouraged it,” McDowell said. “They were making jokes about it, laughing about it — they were laughing about the ‘same face, new name.’”

Workers found unauthorized to work were given until the end of the week on the job, but according to McDowell, many never left.

“When they [the foremen] found out that they were looking for knew names, they let them stand there on the phone. There was not a lot of work production being done that week at all,” McDowell said. “I didn’t watch them go re-apply, but a lot of the guys didn’t miss a day of work.”

Audits run by ICE for employment verification are not new. In fact, ICE audits peaked in 2013 under the Obama administration, but began steadily declining when the agency shifted focus from worksite enforcement to deporting undocumented immigrants with serious criminal backgrounds. In December of 2017, however, ICE director Tom Homan said he wanted to see a 400 percent increase in worksite operations at a White House press conference. The 2018 federal spending budget included a 10 percent budget increase, or $641 million to ICE, for 65 agents.

When ICE audits an employer, the agency works with the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) to verify 1-9 employment verification documents that employers are required to submit, along with other paperwork. In relation to falsified documents, if a company is found to have knowingly employed undocumented workers or continues to employ them after being notified of the violation, the employee faces fines and the undocumented works see an increased risk in deportation.

Falsified documents in the construction industry are the main pathway for undocumented immigrants to find work. When found unauthorized, undocumented workers are forced to decide if they should continue risking their lives in an industry where they are more likely to experience workplace abuse than their US-born counterparts, according to the WDP’s Build a Better Texas report (see infographic 2).

(Infographic 2)

Matt Gonzalez, business manager of the Laborers’ International Union of North America’s regional Local 1095, worked his way up from an unskilled laborer to a foreman position before moving to the administration side of the industry. In his experiences, he has found that undocumented workers tend to be used for expendable work.

“We often find it’s the fly-by-nights that utilize undocumented workforce and expose them to misclassification, wage theft, health and safety issues on the job site and so that kind of creates that race to the bottom,” Gonzalez said. “All for the sake of making a profit, at the expense of the individual.”

Race to the bottom is a socio-economic phrase used repeatedly by people in the construction industry. Technically, it describes government deregulation of the business environment or reduction in tax rates, in order to attract or retain economic activity. In the construction industry, the phrase is characterized by an extensive deterioration of standards that has lead to a rapid decline in the prevailing wage. Loose employer accountability is just one of many factors that play into the race to the bottom mentality.

“The enforcement comes down on undocumented people themselves, not on the employers. Employers find that when they hire undocumented people and they get punished, it is a little more than a slap on the wrist,” Bianca Lopez, a senior University of Texas at Austin student said.

Lopez works at the Center for Public Policy Priorities. She has been researching and writing about policies that enable widespread injustices to continue in the construction industry for nearly a year. Her senior thesis, which is in its final review, looks at construction practices during Hurricane Harvey clean up in Houston, Texas.

When Lopez talks about her research and employer accountability in the construction industry, she gets visibly shaken up.

"You get what you pay for and we don't pay for it in Texas. We don't pay anyone to actually go monitor worksites and enforce regulations so you have to start to question what progress can really be made," Lopez said. 

REPORTERS NOTE: ICE Audit records on Balfour Beatty US are currently being sought under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for an updated version of this story.

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Mental health access means lack, loss for minorities

By Chelsea Moreno

AUSTIN — When Angela Bonilla walks across the stage in a couple of weeks, it will mark an end to four years at The University of Texas at Austin. It is a time for the 22-year-old to celebrate being the first in her family to go to a university for an undergraduate degree and overcoming a myriad of obstacles. 

But that’s not all. 

Earning her diploma means an end to her insurance covering her treatment for anxiety and depression. 

“Now it’s just going to be difficult,” Bonilla said. “I was under my dad and for Tricare in the military you could only have it until you graduate college.

Bonilla has had her medication covered for the past five months but she said she is used to the help getting snatched away. 

Her insurance stopped compensating the $26 co-pay just two months after she started going to counseling at Austin Medical Plaza. 

On top of that, the company placed a limit on the number of months she could get treated.

Bonilla could continue being covered under her dad’s plan, but she has to go to graduate school. Even then, once she turns 26, the coverage stops. 

“Luckily I went to the doctor and she gave me like a three months supply of my pills,” Bonilla said. She takes Zoloft and Bupropion for depression and Hydroxyzine for anxiety. “My mom was like before your benefits end in May, go back again so she can give you three months and you’ll be good maybe for the rest of the year or until you get a job.”

This is what Bonilla and many others have resorted to just to get treatment for mental health. 

In a study published in 2016 by the The Journal of Behavioral Health Services & Research, 40 percent of Latinos said cost was a significant barrier for why they had not received formal mental health treatment.

The North Austin center was not the only place Bonilla sought help from. 

She looked for help at UT Austin’s Counseling and Mental Health Center during her 2017 spring semester when her grandfather passed away in Puerto Rico. 

But there was a limit on those appointments too. She was only allowed four individual counseling sessions. 

“The decisions about providing the type of services that we provide are made by our counseling center administrative team in consultation with our staff, and with other folks at the university who would have a vested interest,” said Katy Redd, who is the associate director for prevention and outreach at the UT counseling center.

Redd said there is not a set limit of individual counseling appointments that they provide but that psychologists and counselors at the center generally won’t see students on an ongoing basis.  

“We simply have more demand than we are able to fill,” she said. 

The number of students attending counseling sessions at UT’s center has increased for the past three school years. In the 2016-2017 school year alone, 26,997 students attended counseling sessions, up by 1,662 more than the previous school year.

With the number of counselors varying from 30 to 35 at the center, Redd said the demand is just too high for what they can keep up with. 

At the other seven academic institutions within the UT system, the structure at their centers are similar with most offering short-term counseling, except some offer more appointments. 

The University of Texas at Arlington’s center offers up to six sessions. The University of Texas at El Paso’s center offers up to 10 per semester to each student. 

“What we can do is kind of get them set up on their short term needs, help them problem solve the situation that they’re in and then if they’re interested in ongoing therapy then we can connect them to someone in the community,” Redd said. 

On top of that, Bonilla said she felt those appointments were a waste of time and money. 

She said the 10 dollar charge for each session was an inconvenience. 

“It’s part of your groceries or even your rent,” she said. 

Session fees were eliminated last January when UT President Gregory Fenves announced in an email to students that all counseling appointments would be funded through the university’s partnership with ESPN on the Longhorn Network.

Though it’s convenient for students to go to the counseling center on campus, experts argue that there are always other options. 

“While it’s great to offer services on campus, if you are a student in Austin, that means you have access to all the other resources in Austin,” said Karen Ranus, the executive director of Austin’s National Alliance on Mental Illness.

She said she often refers people to Integral Care, a Travis County mental health authority whose representatives direct people to places that offer low cost mental health services and also will serve people with no insurance. 

Bonilla went to the North Austin center because of a referral from her insurance, but she hopes once she gets a job, her care will be covered. 

Another struggle Bonilla had at the UT counseling center was that she just couldn’t connect with her counselor.

“It’s better to have a Latino psychologist or therapist ‘cause they would understand better your culture,” she said. 

Mental health experts agree. 

“There’s something really powerful about about a therapist or provider of any kind understanding the culture from which you’re coming from because that does impact your recovery path,” Ranus said. 

For Jose Miranda, a licensed psychologist at Austin Child Guidance Center, it’s been easier to work with his same population group because he said he understands the obstacles and conflicts in his community. He identifies as Latino.

“I came to this country when I was four-years-old and I have some of those experiences,” he said. “When you have some of those experiences, you can relate a little easier but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t relate to someone who hasn’t had similar experiences.”

It’s all about understanding. 

But experts say the issue is the shortage in the mental health workforce altogether. 

“We not only don’t have enough folks, but a lot of times we don’t have enough people who are from different cultural backgrounds,” Ranus said. 

William Lawson, a recently retired mental health professional, echoed what Ranus said. There’s simply not enough counselors for ethnic matching. 

“For African Americans, it’s about two percent,” he said. “Latinos, it’s even smaller.”

According to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges, only five percent of students who graduated from medical school in 2015 were Hispanic, compared to fifty-eight percent of those students who were White.

Getting even more specific, Lawson said he can count the number of Puerto Rican psychiatrists on his hand.

“The number of providers are so small that to find somebody that’s a minority professional is just impractical,” he said. 

He has worked in the field for 30 years and previously served as Associate Dean for Health Disparities at Dell Medical School. Making moves for minorities in the mental health field is his life passion. But he said the data shows that Latinos are pursuing other careers. 

“There are other opportunities for different groups now in terms of high income,” he said. “Mental health services do not pay as much as technology, business and others.”

He said it’s a major problem though. 

“When there’s only one group involved in these kinds of issues, their perspective dominates and you just don’t get the kinds of perspectives or views that would be useful to better understand how to deal with these problems,” he said. 

For Bonilla, it’s important to have people who look like her represented in her community. Though she never asked to be paired with a Hispanic psychologist, experts said it is ok to ask. 

“For some that’s really important,” Miranda said. “It’s really important for them to find that person that they’re going to relate to and so it’s really good when you know that there’s people around.”

Bonilla has struggled with her mental health since she was five-years-old. That was when her family moved from Puerto Rico to Fort Stewart in Hinesville, Georgia because her dad joined the military. 

“I only knew Spanish so I couldn’t talk to anyone and I remember I think I had a breakdown in the class,” Bonilla said. “The only thing I could think of was to cut a piece of my hair to get help.”

In elementary school the bullying started.

“They would make fun of my mustache ‘cause I was hairy,” Bonilla said.  

“When someone has that constant bullying and they haven’t resolved it, they many times get a sense of helplessness because they are faced with this chronic stress with school and they haven’t been able to resolve it and they internalize it as well,” Miranda said. 

He primarily works with children who are struggling with mental health and said the effects of childhood bullying are long-lasting. 

“If they haven’t processed that bullying experience they may grow up and internalize that worthlessness later as adults,” he said. 

At the same time, Bonilla’s dad returned from his deployment in Iraq with PTSD. As a result, her parents would fight a lot and Bonilla reached her peak. She almost committed suicide. 

“It was the bullying and I couldn’t say anything ‘cause obviously the girl was White, I’m Hispanic,” Bonilla said. “They would believe her saying I was bullying her rather than the other way around.” 

She couldn’t bring herself to tell her teachers, her parents or family what she was going through for years. 

“So often when people are struggling they feel feel like other people won’t understand or that they’re worrying about things that don’t really matter and people are going to sort of not diminish them but sort of sweep it away and not want to talk about it,” Ranus said. 

As a mental health advocate, Ranus maintains that when she is doing presentations out in the community, everyone always expresses that they either know someone or they themselves have been impacted by mental health.

According to data on the alliance’s website, one in five people experience mental illness every year. Ranus said if they could break the stigma of embarrassment that when people are struggling with mental illness, there is something wrong with them, more people would talk about it. 

Bonilla told her mom what she was struggling with for the first time just four months ago.

“I remember trying to talk about it, but my mom would be like all in Spanish, ‘Ay Angela, you’re being crazy, stop being dramatic,’” she said.

Bonilla has also tried to stay strong for her family still back in Puerto Rico, now without power again seven months after Hurricane Maria. They live in the more rural areas of Puerto Rico and have lived without basic needs like water and electricity since the storm hit the island. 

“There’s still a lack of help,” Bonilla said. “There’s still people without electricity and hurricane season is coming up.” She worries about her family’s safety. 

Though she has been afraid to share what she is going through, this past March she wrote a blog post. It helped her express what her mental health journey has been like and also gave her a sense of empowerment.

My Depression Will Not Win by Angela Bonilla

“Don’t let it stop you from completing your goals in life and talk to someone because obviously my depression and anxiety isn’t going to stop me from being a journalist,” Bonilla said.  

She hopes to one day be a multimedia journalist at The New York Times. 

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Slipping Through the Cracks: Mental Health and Access to Guns

Mass shootings are a fact of life in the America of 2018. Mass shootings continue to happen in our society, and we as a society continually fail to address this problem. After the shooting massacres in Las Vegas, Sutherland Springs, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, this nation’s high profile problem with firearms cannot be denied.

In all of these attacks, the perpetrator obtained their firearm legally. How is it that people who are capable of such horrific crimes were able to get around the barriers specifically put in place to stop them from obtaining guns? What exactly are these barriers, and how effective are they?

Steven Haddock, the perpetrator of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, the deadliest mass shooting in American history, purchased all of his firearms legally, never drawing any suspicion to himself or triggering any flags during the the many, many different trips to gun stores and shows it took to amass his huge collection of rifles.

Nikolas Cruz, the perpetrator of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, also purchased his firearms legally. Although there were multiple complaints lodged against him for his violent behavior both in and out of school, and he had documented mental health issues, Cruz faced no difficulty cleanly purchasing a firearm legally because he bought only the rifle he would later use to attack, eschewing any ammunition or accessories in order to not draw attention to himself.

When he attacked the church in Sutherland Springs, outside of San Antonio, Devin Patrick Kelley killed 26 and injured 20 more. He was also ostensibly barred from purchasing or  owning firearms. While kelley was in the air force, he was court martialed for domestic violence. In the United states, it is federally illegal for a person convicted of any form of domestic violence to purchase or own guns. Legally, Kelley should have been barred from acquiring the weapons he used during the attack on sutherland springs church.  Essentially he slipped through the cracks, as the air base where he was convicted failed to properly enter his information into the National Crime Information Center database, which in turn meant that no red flags appeared when he purchased his guns.

All of these killers had mental health issues. Anyone who commits a crime of this calibur does. The gun control system as it exists in America failed both them, and the victims they would later murder. These three show the different degrees at which the system failed. Haddock was able to escape suspicion by his lack of a record. Cruz consciously concealed himself when purchasing, meaning that despite his the radical beliefs he espoused on his social media, in person threats he had made to others, and tips provided to law enforcement about him, he was also able to legally purchase his guns. Kelley, unlike the others, legally should have been barred from obtaining his firearms. It was a clerical error that allowed him to purchase them.

Texas has one of the most lax gun control agendas in the country. Open carry of a pistol is prohibited, but after that there is almost no regulation. The law simply states that to buy a gun, the customer must be over 18 years of age and a legal resident of the state. A person convicted of a Class A felony or misdemeanor is legally barred from purchasing or owning firearms.

When it comes to mental health, access to support is paramount. Overcoming severe mental health issues requires medical assistance, and providing that access is necessary. But, as we have seen through the mass shootings that have become a normal part of our society,  the crossroads of firearms, mental health, and access is unsustainable. It is too easy to get a gun when suffering from mental health issues. It is far too easy to slip through the cracks.

As a result of these terrible crimes, activism is at a high in regards to gun control. “With recent shootings, I would say after Las Vegas and certainly Sutherland Springs the media activity has just been astronomical” said Ed Scruggs, Vice Chairman of the gun control organization Texas Gun Sense. “Awareness has increased.”

Since the Parkland shooting on valentines day, there have been three different, successful marches organized within Austin alone calling for reasonable gun control. The largest was a part of the national March for Our Lives movement, started by survivors of the parkland school shooting. In addition to these large scale protests, there were several school walkouts in the Austin area, including at Small Middle School and at Anderson High, where over 300 students walked out to protests the ease with which a potential killer can buy guns legally.

In response to these walkouts and to the growing movement to restrict access to guns, Scruggs said “We understand why kids would walk out, because we as adults have failed them. That's understandable.”

(data from https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data)

(data from http://time.com/4965022/deadliest-mass-shooting-us-history/