As construction workforce dwindles due to ICE presence, business owner worries about long-term impacts

Operation Metro Surge has hit many industries hard, including the construction industry.

A business owner said her exteriors company will be lucky to survive until summer, and a recent detention of one of her critical and trusted subcontractors has put everyone on high alert.

"We are behind and we're one of many companies quite behind," said Emma White. "Several weeks behind."

White kept a rigorous schedule that she says has gone out the window in recent weeks as her subcontractors say they're uncomfortable going to work amid heightened immigration enforcement in the community.

"How can I as a business owner and a friend to a lot of these people, how can I guarantee you just because you've done things through due process that if you show up to work today, nothing is going to happen to you," she said. "We can't."

And while her customers are understanding, the work has nearly stopped, and the cash flow doesn't add up. She fears that after 15 years in business, this will be her last.

Over the weekend, a longtime friend and roofing contractor was detained by ICE. She says he's also a leader at work, his church and for his wife and kids.

Attorney Krista Hiner, whose daughter goes to preschool with the son of the man who was detained, got in touch with his wife to try and find him.

"The only reason she knew he was taken was because his find my phone location showed he was at the Whipple building," said Hiner.

Federal agents denied her access to him at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building near Fort Snelling. A Department of Homeland Security agent told her that he was not there. 

"There's no real playbook for what should be happening in this situation that I was in, because things really shouldn't get that far," said Hiner.

The man has a pending asylum application and is legally permitted to work in the country. Both White and Hiner said they'd seen his paperwork, which was renewed in September.

Now he's in a Minnesota jail, and a judge has been assigned to the case. And while she says he's being unlawfully detained, Hiner guesses he could be out in a few weeks. She says the system is bogged down and he has to wait his turn.

"He is just one of hundreds, if not thousands that are undergoing this," she says.

She says he leaves behind a wife and four kids including a newborn and teenager with special needs.

"It's just incredible to me, the amount of people that are so invested in him because of the way that he's touched all of their lives," said Hiner. "And that is both heartwarming and heartbreaking."

Back at the job site where he was going to work the day he was picked up, a few members of his crew try to finish the job.

"We don't have very many crews working at all right now, but the ones that we do are taking risks," said White. "When it happens to someone you know and care about it means something different."

White says she is "genuinely afraid of what's going to happen," as she assumes her business will slow and costs for services will rise.