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 \u2014 and retaliated against her after she testified about the practice to federal law enforcement.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cnoticed 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,\u201d the lawsuit reads.<\/p>\n
When she reported this to her supervisor, Dan Horvath, he told her to shut the door and that \u201cshe had to process the hire because the company needed the help,\u201d according to the legal complaint. New hires with questionable paperwork \u201cbecame a regular occurrence,\u201d it continues, and \u201cemployees often joked\u201d about how the workers were not in the country legally.<\/p>\n
Archer Western, a nationwide construction firm under the Chicago-based Walsh Group parent company, denied Hull\u2019s allegations in court filings.It did not providedetails. The company didn\u2019t respond to emails seeking comment. Horvath also did not respond to emails and a text messagefrom a reporter.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit was filed in September, weeks before the Tampa Bay Times published an investigation into Archer Western that revealed the company\u2019s workers had been dying at a rate more than double the construction industry average<\/a>. Men were crushed by equipment, buried by a collapsing wall, hit by cars and drowned after falling off a barge \u2014 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n The state has continued to award Archer Western road contracts worth hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.<\/p>\n Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 office did not respond to emails asking about the allegations in this lawsuit. The state is not named as a party in the case.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cAs FDOT has previously stated, we enforce the rule of law, which includes maintaining high standards and compliance with all applicable state and federal laws,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n Hull, in her lawsuit, says that she raised her concerns with Horvath before the killing of the Pinellas deputy. She kept a folder \u201cdetailing the inconsistent and conflicting\u201d IDs of Archer Western employees. After the deputy\u2019s death, Hull met with a regional manager, human resources and the company\u2019s lawyers about these issues, according to the suit.<\/p>\n Horvath then asked her about her meeting with the lawyers, and, the lawsuit alleges, assigned her \u201cdemeaning tasks\u201d and caused her to be \u201csocially ostracized.\u201d A few months later, Hull says, she was fired.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cthat everything they did was legal.\u201d She testified before investigators in June 2024.<\/p>\n Horvath\u2019s \u201cretaliatory behavior\u201d 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 \u201cwas forced to wait 6 days to seek treatment,\u201d the complaint says. Hull was let go again after after the company told her she hadn\u2019t provided the right medical documentation to support a leave of absence while she awaited surgery, the lawsuit alleges.<\/p>\n Hull\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Last week, another construction worker on an Archer Western project, named Jorge Eliud Galindo Thompson, died after falling off an overpass in Miami<\/a>.<\/p>\n Thompson\u2019s son-in-law, Barbaro Vera, started a GoFundMe to help cover funeral costs including sending Thompson\u2019s body back to Honduras, where some family members still live. Vera, who lives in Miami, said Thompson had legal immigration status.<\/p>\n Two months before Thompson\u2019s 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s something going on there,\u201d Vera said. \u201cSomething is not being done correctly … and to just continue as normal like nothing happened and have it get swept under the rug \u2014 that\u2019s not right.”<\/p>\n *** <\/p>\n