On September 15, 2001 at 7 in the morning Lucelly Gil entered the immense cloud of toxic dust left by the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York. From then on, it would collect rubble there for up to 12 hours a day, every day, for six months.
Today, almost two decades later, this 65-year-old Colombian without papers lives with the consequences of that job: she is a survivor of breast cancer -one of the most frequent in women who were at the site of the attacks-, she has an arm disabled that causes her so much pain that it makes her cry daily and suffers from depression.
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For eight months after the attacks, tens of thousands of people – many of them immigrants – cleaned “Ground Zero” where the World Trade Center stood, emptied and demolished other damaged buildings, and removed 1.8 million tons of rubble from the area to I change from about $ 7.5 to $ 10 an hour, a wage just above the minimum at the time.
They didn’t know it then, but exposure to asbestos and other toxic materials like lead would lead to cancer, asbestosis, and a host of respiratory illnesses, as well as post-traumatic stress, anxiety, and depression.
“I don’t like to remember Ground Zero anniversaries (…) I feel like I’m going backwards,” Gil said in tears at a recent session of the 9/11 Latino cleaner support group “Fronteras de Esperanza,” which still meets occasionally in the borough of Queens.
They find human remains
He remembers that after working so many hours, sometimes finding human remains, “I went home and thought I was still cleaning.” “I almost freaked out.”
Gil still dreams of becoming a legal resident of the United States as a reward for that job that left her unable to work for life.
A former Democratic representative from New York even introduced a bill in this regard in 2017, but it was never debated in Congress.
“In oblivion”
“That the people who cleaned do not have papers is an injustice because they lost the most precious thing, which is health. There is no money there (…) Health is priceless, ”Rubiela Arias, another 57-year-old Colombian cleaner from Ground Zero, tells AFP in the modest room she rents in Queens with the help of her son.
Arias, who has been fighting for years for the legalization of Hispanics who cleaned up “the giant cemetery” of Ground Zero, has since suffered from various respiratory and stomach illnesses, as well as post-traumatic stress, among other mental ailments.
More than 2,000 cleaners, rescuers and police officers died from illnesses linked to 9/11, according to the federal victims’ compensation fund.
In recent years, many undocumented cleaners, some sick, “were deported,” says social worker Rosa Bramble, who since 2010 has led the group “Borders of Hope” on a voluntary basis in her Queens office.
Others returned to their countries to die, because they were sick and could not work to support themselves. “They couldn’t pay rent here,” says this professor from Columbia University, of Venezuelan origin.
Visa rejected
Most of the 9/11 cleaners have full medical coverage through the World Trade Center’s federal health program, but many have not received compensation.
This is the case of Franklin, a 50-year-old undocumented Peruvian cleaner with various respiratory illnesses who decided to return from New York to Lima in 2019 to say goodbye to his sick mother, whom he had not seen for two decades.
When he tried to return to follow the medical treatment guaranteed by the WTC health program, in which he was accepted, and to claim financial compensation, the US embassy in Lima denied him the visa.
In June he twice tried to cross the border between Mexico and the United States illegally with the help of coyotes, but was deported to Mexico both times.
“I practically gave my life to clean Ground Zero and I don’t think it’s fair that they are paying me this way. I don’t even know what to expect from life, ”he then desperately told AFP by phone from a house in Ciudad Juárez where the coyotes locked him up until it was time for the third attempt, finally successful.
To read more: US government could declassify documents on the September 11 attacks
Some workers who sued New York City and the companies that employed them were able to get paid. In addition, Congress approved the payment of federal compensation in 2011, with a maximum of $ 250,000 for a cancer linked to 9/11.
Lucelly Gil received $ 40,000 in 2018, but without being able to work, the money ran out when she paid debts and back rent.
“We were discriminated against Latinos in relation to the other workers on 9/11,” he says.
“We are in oblivion,” agrees Rosa Duque, a 56-year-old Guatemalan cleaner who breathes with difficulty and claims permanent residence for all the undocumented who cleaned Ground Zero.
“When one volunteered to go to work, they didn’t ask ‘Are you a citizen?’ ‘Are you a resident?’
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