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Undocumented workers uncounted victims of 9/11

By Edwin Andrés Martínez Tutek | Special to amNewYork

September 7, 2006

The official death toll from the World Trade Center attack is a staggering 2,749, but for many people, that number will never tell the whole story because it is simply not large enough.

Dozens of undocumented Hispanic immigrants died in the Twin Towers, workers who lacked green cards and were never included on the list. This Sept. 11, their names will not be read at Ground Zero, for they are mourned only by their families a half a world away.

Although it is difficult to know precisely how many undocumented immigrants came to lie under the ruins, community groups such as the Tepeyac Association, which helped search for many of "The Disappeared," as they are known, investigated 68 cases, of which at least 28 were never counted on the list. Those families never received federal aid. The majority were Mexicans, but there were also three Colombians, two Peruvians, three Ecuadorians, four Dominicans and two Hondurans.

After the attack, entire families arrived in New York from across Latin America, including some who illegally crossed the border in a desperate attempt to get answers about the fate of their husbands and sons. Most faced rejection of their pleas for help.

"After arduous work we managed to obtain benefits for the relatives of 40 immigrants, but in other cases it was not possible to prove with documents that they worked there," said Joel Magallán, director of Tepeyac.

Workers from Windows on the World were included in the official victims' list because they were part of a union. But in other cases, employeers did not want to acknowledge that the immigrants worked there, since they used false papers.

Magallán said most of "The Disappeared" were reported missing by their friends or girlfriends, their relatives back home having no way to reach them. And those relatives often had skimpy information -- that a loved one worked at a "restaurant in New York."

Nora Elsa Molina of Mexico, the mother of Fernando Jimenez Molina, who was 21 when the attack happened, never succeeded in proving that her son worked in a neighborhood pizzeria. "I only wanted a death certificate, I certainly was not after the economic compensation," she said.

Said Magallán: "The young man worked making deliveries two blocks from the Twin Towers and his room mates alerted his mom on Sept. 11 that her son had no come home, and when they came to report the disappearance, they didn't leave personal information since they were undocumented."

Attack survivor Juan Rodriguez worked at the trade center for a decade.

"It hurts me to know that many Mexicans who worked there are not recognized by anyone. What happened then to the 'deliveries,' the cooks and the dish washers who were there and that nobody ever saw again? Where are those countrymen -- well, dead, and if that's so, then how painful is it that they ended up as ghost people remembered only by their families?"

Edwin Andrés Martínez Tutek is a staff writer for Hoy, from which this article was translated.