Undercounting an at-risk population of unauthorized Latino/a immigrants: How Hurricane Katrina made an invisible population visible

Hurricane Katrina, like most disasters, exposed the most vulnerable in our society. One group which was exposed was the rapid response labor force of unauthorized Latino/a immigrants who came to participate in the recovery of New Orleans and other devastated areas of the Gulf Coast. This highly mobile population is difficult to count using federal survey samples and censuses because of their mobility and their desire to remain unobserved. In the summer of 2007, while New Orleans was still rebuilding, I surveyed immigrants attending the Brazilian, Mexican, and Nicaraguan mobile consulates and the Honduran permanent consulate. They sought national identity documents which unauthorized immigrants use to send money to their families in their origin countries and in the case that they are apprehended and detained by U.S. law enforcement authorities. Therefore, the consular surveys reach a difficult to count population.

The survey results show that those attending the consular visits were especially vulnerable to wage theft, in which their employers deny them earned wages, and crime victimization, especially street robbery. Many also experienced on-the-job injuries and lacked access to health care. These health outcomes result in part from their fear of deportation and the cooperation of law enforcement officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Through interviews with Latino immigrants I discerned a “deportation threat dynamic” that operated in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, which is generalizable throughout the U.S. Such as dynamic keeps unauthorized immigrants legally marginalized and leads to preventable injuries, victimization, and other unfavorable health outcomes.