Big Easy Leaders Upset Over Cleanup Jobs - By ADAM NOSSITER, AP via ENR
Labor investigators say that many of the workers in New Orleans are illegal immigrants who are being exploited and subjected to harsh living and working conditions.
An investigator with the Laborers Union, Rafael Duran, said that outside the New Orleans Arena, he had encountered Mexican teenagers perhaps 15 or 16 years old who had been removing excrement-fouled carpets.
While some cleanup workers in New Orleans are staying in hotels, Duran said the teenagers on the carpet-removal job told him they were sleeping in a field under a tent, and had gotten bitten by mosquitoes.