Officers of the Polk County Sheriff’s Department responded this week to a construction site in Davenport, Florida, after they received reports of the death of a worker there, WOFL-TV reported.
Upon arrival, officers reported finding the body of an employee identified as Jose Lopez. He had apparently been inspecting or repairing the mechanism of a front-end loading bucket tractor when his head was crushed between the frame and the bucket of the tractor.
A police report says officers questioned a site worker named Angel Bautista Martinez, 29, who said he was nowhere near the tractor when Lopez was killed. However, officers observed blood on Martinez’s pants and investigated his story further.
Other employees reported seeing Martinez working on the tractor with the deceased man. Some said Martinez was in the tractor’s cab running the machine. Martinez has also reportedly been a regular operator of the tractor, the investigators said.
Officers arrested Martinez and charged him in the death of his fellow worker. He was initially charged with second-degree manslaughter, but prosecutors are likely to upgrade his charges to a first-degree felony because he is in the country illegally.
Along with the state charges, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has also filed a detainer against him in the Polk County Jail.
The death of Jose Lopez is not a lone example of the dangers illegals represent in the workplace. Unfortunately, the numbers of illegal aliens killed on the job — especially in construction — has soared in the last few years after the Biden administration threw our borders wide open to tens of millions of illegal migrants.
Last year, it was reported that illegal aliens made up more than 60 percent of the victims of workplace deaths.
“Foreign-born Hispanic or Latino workers accounted for 63.5 percent (792) of total Hispanic or Latino worker fatalities (1,248),” in 2022, according to a December release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Fatalities in the construction industry accounted for 316 [or 40 percent] of the 792 foreign-born Hispanic or Latino worker deaths in 2022.”
The following year was just as bad for migrant workers. According to the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, deaths of migrant workers added up to two-thirds of the reported fatalities.
While total workplace deaths fell slightly in 2023 over the rate from 2022, the number still exceeded 5,000 deaths and figured right in among the highest years. Between 2016 and 2023, only one year, 2020, had fewer workplace deaths — and that can be attributed to the widespread COVID workplace shutdowns that occurred that year.
Migrants are especially at risk because many have less on-the-job experience, nor do they have industry certifications and training, and they are often under age as well.
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