A former employee of a road contractor for the state of Florida alleged in court that the company knowingly hired people who were in the country illegally — and retaliated against her after she testified about the practice to federal law enforcement.
Amanda Hull, a Clearwater resident, worked for Archer Western as an administrative assistant starting in February 2022. The company confirmed her employment in legal filings.
As part of her job, Hull onboarded new employees, and realized within weeks that the company was hiring undocumented immigrants, according to a whistleblower lawsuit she filed in federal court. In one instance, Hull “noticed that one new hire looked familiar, so she looked at previous new hires and found his picture on an ID issued under a different name and by a different state,” the lawsuit reads.
When she reported this to her supervisor, Dan Horvath, he told her to shut the door and that “she had to process the hire because the company needed the help,” according to the legal complaint. New hires with questionable paperwork “became a regular occurrence,” it continues, and “employees often joked” about how the workers were not in the country legally.
Archer Western, a nationwide construction firm under the Chicago-based Walsh Group parent company, denied Hull’s allegations in court filings.It did not providedetails. The company didn’t respond to emails seeking comment. Horvath also did not respond to emails and a text messagefrom a reporter.
The lawsuit was filed in September, weeks before the Tampa Bay Times published an investigation into Archer Western that revealed the company’s workers had been dying at a rate more than double the construction industry average. Men were crushed by equipment, buried by a collapsing wall, hit by cars and drowned after falling off a barge — incidents that federal regulators sometimes found were preventable. The Times confirmed that at least three of the victims were undocumented, likely putting them at greater risk since workers without legal status are often too fearful to report safety problems, experts said.
Florida officials knew of at least two of the eight deaths in this period, records show. After an undocumented Archer Western worker accidentally killed a Pinellas sheriff’s deputy providing security to a construction site in September 2022, the federal government launched an investigation into company hiring practices. Officials have since closed that probe.
The state has continued to award Archer Western road contracts worth hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office did not respond to emails asking about the allegations in this lawsuit. The state is not named as a party in the case.
Michael Williams, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Transportation, did not directly respond to the allegations in the lawsuit, but said in an email that state contractors are required to use E-Verify, a federal database check that checks if new hires can legally work in the U.S.
“As FDOT has previously stated, we enforce the rule of law, which includes maintaining high standards and compliance with all applicable state and federal laws,” Williams said.
Hull, in her lawsuit, says that she raised her concerns with Horvath before the killing of the Pinellas deputy. She kept a folder “detailing the inconsistent and conflicting” IDs of Archer Western employees. After the deputy’s death, Hull met with a regional manager, human resources and the company’s lawyers about these issues, according to the suit.
Horvath then asked her about her meeting with the lawyers, and, the lawsuit alleges, assigned her “demeaning tasks” and caused her to be “socially ostracized.” A few months later, Hull says, she was fired.
She successfully contested her firing and got reinstated, according to the suit, until she received a subpoena from the Department of Homeland Security as it investigated Archer Western. Horvath repeatedly asked her about the subpoena, Hull alleges, and told her “that everything they did was legal.” She testified before investigators in June 2024.
Horvath’s “retaliatory behavior” resumed, the lawsuit says, culminating in Hull being required to move office equipment to a new building, during which time she fell and injured her back. Horvath instructed her not to go to urgent care, and she “was forced to wait 6 days to seek treatment,” the complaint says. Hull was let go again after after the company told her she hadn’t provided the right medical documentation to support a leave of absence while she awaited surgery, the lawsuit alleges.
Hull’s suit, which cites the Florida Whistleblower Act, seeks to get her job back, plus lost wages and punitive damages. The case is scheduled for a mediation hearing in August.
Last week, another construction worker on an Archer Western project, named Jorge Eliud Galindo Thompson, died after falling off an overpass in Miami.
Thompson’s son-in-law, Barbaro Vera, started a GoFundMe to help cover funeral costs including sending Thompson’s body back to Honduras, where some family members still live. Vera, who lives in Miami, said Thompson had legal immigration status.
Two months before Thompson’s death, six workers were injured and hospitalized after a concrete beam broke at the same site. As of late March, one of those workers was still in the hospital, according to the Miami Herald.
“There’s something going on there,” Vera said. “Something is not being done correctly … and to just continue as normal like nothing happened and have it get swept under the rug — that’s not right.”
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If you’d like to help Jorge Eliud Galindo Thompson‘s family, you can donate to their online fundraiser at www.gofundme.com/f/honoring-jorges-life-and-legacy-vymte.