Ground Zero Workers Still Hide From ICE 25 Years Later

Twenty-five years after they rushed into the toxic ruins of the World Trade Center, thousands of undocumented immigrants who cleaned up Ground Zero are once again in hiding — this time from U.S. immigration agents. Many are now in their 50s and 60s, battling cancer, respiratory disease and post-traumatic stress tied to their work at the site, even as a long-stalled bill that would grant them citizenship remains mired in Congress.

According to NPR, as many as 6,000 of the cleanup workers were undocumented. Advocates put the total somewhere between 2,000 and 6,000. A quarter-century later, they are among the tens of thousands whose health was permanently damaged by the hundreds of tons of toxic debris released when the towers collapsed.

A Van, a Job, and a Danger Zone

Lucelly, a Colombian immigrant who asked NPR to withhold her last name because she is undocumented, arrived in the United States in 2000 and picked up cleaning jobs on a street corner in Queens. On the morning of September 12, 2001 — the day after the attacks — a van pulled up.

“Come on, let’s go!” she recalled the driver yelling. The offer was $8.50 an hour to clean the wreckage.

“If the driver had told us: ‘We’re going to a danger zone,’ people would not have rushed in,” she told NPR.

She went armed only with her house-cleaning gear: a paper mask and rubber gloves. The hours were long. “We would have lunch in the rubble, in the dust,” she said. “Then we’d go home wearing the same clothing we’d been working in.”

Social worker Rosa Bramble Caballero, who runs a Queens support group for the cleanup crew, described a hiring chain that routed day laborers into the disaster zone without telling them where they were headed. “The city hired multiple contractors for the clean up,” she told NPR. “In turn these contractors subcontracted, and those subcontractors subcontracted, and hired day laborers who were standing in street corners in Queens.” She noted that these were companies that had received millions of dollars from the city.

A Health Legacy That Keeps Growing

The health consequences have only deepened with time. According to the World Trade Center Health Program, there have been more than 57,000 cancer cases linked to 9/11 exposure, alongside a range of other conditions. Cancer certifications have risen from 3,204 confirmed cases in 2015 to over 57,000 as of 2026 — an increase of nearly 1,700%.

That toll was underscored in the days before the anniversary, when Northwell Health reported a 75% spike in 9/11-related cancers over just three years, with 132 new cases in the first half of 2026 alone. As The New York Post reported, the hospital system logged 800 new cases in 42 months. “The past is a prologue for a slow-motion health disaster as cancer cases have exploded,” a hospital spokesperson said.

Overall, roughly 10,000 first responders and survivors have died of 9/11-related illnesses, according to September 11 Victim Compensation Fund data as of July 31, 2026 — including 5,892 deaths from cancer alone, more than double the 2,753 people killed in the attacks themselves.

”A New Pain on Top of an Old One”

The psychological scars may run just as deep. Rosa, a Guatemalan demolition worker who is legally in the U.S. but asked NPR to withhold her last name out of fear of stepped-up enforcement in Queens, described finding an arm in the debris. “I… I can’t forget it. I will never get over it,” she said.

She recalled being blindfolded with a sleeping mask and escorted to a sifting area, where she sorted found objects — jewelry, wallets, IDs — into separate bags. She believes the blindfold was tied to concerns about looting. The experience left her with panic attacks. “You might not have noticed this,” she told NPR, “but I’m sitting in this chair because I need to see the exit.”

For Lucelly, the fear of deportation now compounds the trauma. “I am scared. We are all scared,” she said. “My daughter lives in New Jersey, and I don’t even go visit her, because I am scared of immigration. It is a new pain on top of an old one.”

Many in the group face an impossible choice. Returning home could mean losing access to the specialized medical care that keeps them alive; staying means living under constant threat of detention. Undocumented workers are legally entitled to workers’ compensation and to assistance under the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, but advocates say many are too frightened to apply. For those who do receive compensation, it is typically around $80,000 — an amount Bramble Caballero says “dries out” once declining health makes work impossible.

A Bill That Never Moves

The legislative remedy has been on the table for nearly a decade without result. The 9/11 Immigrant Worker Freedom Act was first introduced in 2017, reintroduced in 2021, and introduced again in 2025 as H.R. 5333 by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with Reps. Grace Meng and Adriano Espaillat. The bill would provide a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who performed rescue, recovery, demolition or cleanup work after the attacks.

No Republicans have signed on, and each version has stalled in the House Judiciary Committee. “This legislation genuinely should be bipartisan and non-controversial,” Ocasio-Cortez told NPR. “These heroes, many of whom sacrificed their lives, are people who are absolutely deserving of citizenship.” In a 2025 press release, she said the country has “virtually abandoned” the workers. NPR said it reached out to the White House for comment and received no response.

A Long-Running Fight

The struggle for recognition is not new. In 2021, the Associated Press profiled Franklin Anchahua, a Peruvian immigrant who cleared dust from lower Manhattan offices, apartments and a chapel for weeks, treating his heartburn and reflux with herbs before finally seeking care at Bellevue Hospital a decade later. “It is hard to find a job here without immigration status,” he said then. “Attorneys who helped us years ago told us we would get immigration papers but, look, 20 years have passed and we have nothing.”

The NBC News report noted that more than 112,000 people have enrolled in the federal World Trade Center Health Program, which offers care regardless of immigration status — but that many workers never signed up out of fear. One cleanup worker, Luis Soriano, put the sentiment plainly: “We need to be remembered. We were all immigrants who contributed to the U.S. We worked hard there, paid taxes, grew old there. Some cleanup workers I knew died of cancer.”

What to Watch

As the 25th-anniversary ceremonies unfolded at the memorial site, the workers’ support group in Queens marked the day far from the cameras. The immediate legislation appears unlikely to advance in a divided Congress, and the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement shows no sign of easing. For Lucelly and her peers, the question is not whether the nation remembers 9/11 — it is whether the country remembers who cleaned it up.

“We gave it all,” Lucelly said. “No one ever asked to check out immigration status. Oh no, they treated us like we were real important back then. It was: ‘Go in Lucelly. Go Lucelly. Get in there.’”