9/11 cleanup workers now terrified to leave their homes over Trump crackdown

Immigrants who rushed into the toxic ruins of the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 attacks are now afraid to leave their homes after President Donald Trump intensified immigration enforcement across the country.

On the 25th anniversary of the attacks, NPR spoke with aging Ground Zero cleanup workers who still suffer from serious illnesses, psychological trauma — and now a new uncertainty under the Trump administration.

Among them was Lucelly, an undocumented Colombian immigrant who has battled breast cancer and respiratory disease.

"I am scared. We are all scared", says Lucelly, who recalled for NPR eating lunch in the rubble of Ground Zero. "My daughter lives in New Jersey, and I don't even go visit her, because I am scared of immigration. It is a new pain on top of an old one.”

Lucelly began clearing wreckage the morning after the attacks for $8.50 an hour. Her only protective equipment was a paper mask and rubber gloves, and she would return home in the same contaminated clothing she had worn all day.

“It's not known how many undocumented workers were involved in the 9/11 cleanup, but advocates say it's somewhere between 2,000 and 6,000 people,” NPR reported Friday.

Many were exposed to toxic debris that has since been linked to tens of thousands of cancer cases. Another cleanup worker, Rosa, is legally in the country but still fears being targeted, NPR reported Friday.

Lucelly said immigration status didn’t matter when workers were urgently needed after the attacks devastated the city. But the threat of being picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement has only added to the psychological trauma for most members of Lucelly’s cleanup-worker support group.

"We gave it all,” she told NPR. “When we got to Ground Zero we felt so much fear. Oh, the fear we felt! No one ever asked to check out immigration status. Oh no, they treated us like we were real important back then. It was: 'Go in Lucelly. Go Lucelly. Get in there.’"