FORT MYERS, Fla. — The wives of Fort Myers’ construction workers, painters, roofers, landscapers and electricians and their families gathered at the food pantry of Jesus the Worker church on Thursday, as they had every day that week.
Some came to help. Others came to receive help. All were struggling in one way or another.
In the kitchen, the mostly Mexican and Guatemalan women formed an assembly line. Claudia Francisco, a clerk at Florida Southwest state college, which is closed for repairs, stood at the front of the table, packing boxes and giving orders, while several other women who were out of work because of the storm spooned Mexican spaghetti with sour cream and vats of chicken and vegetables into to-go containers.
“It’s the poor helping the poor,” said Sister Rosa Gonzalez, who oversaw the day’s operations, as she watched and ate. “This is what I call the work of mercy.”
It is Fort Myers’ poor immigrant workers who will soon help rebuild the city from the ground up, removing the debris from people’s lawns, painting their homes, and fixing their roofs. Yet they do not have the same means to rebuild their own homes, even as they repair the homes of others.
While much attention has been paid to the devastation of Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel Island, the poor immigrant communities like the one surrounding Jesus the Worker Catholic Church were also destroyed. Yet because of their legal status, many will not receive assistance from the government. Even those who might qualify are “too afraid” to ask, Gonzalez said. They rely on each other, and on their churches, for aid instead.
After packing the hot meals into the car, the women from the church headed up the road to a nearby stretch of houses and trailers by the Caloosahatchee River, which had flooded during the storm. They said the neighborhood had received little attention from rescue workers.
The road was lined with ruined furniture and clothes, the homes hollowed out. Some people were inside, trying to repair what was left. Many others had gone.
“Food and water?” they called into people’s homes.
Some came out to take the meals, then went back in without saying a word. One woman came out with her son and grandson. When they asked her to take the meals, she began to cry.
Hurricane Ian arrived only weeks after Gov. Ron DeSantis flew migrants seeking asylum to Martha’s Vineyard to show that Florida does not welcome “illegals.”
The Category 4 Hurricane made landfall near Cayo Costa on Sept. 28, and the death toll is close to 100 in the state and growing. The storm tore through Fort Myers’ rich and poor areas indiscriminately, tearing apart and flooding homes, leaving a city of unlivable buildings, its streets filled with debris. Some have said that the area will likely take years to recover.
In the days since Ian crossed the state, DeSantis has visited some of the communities hit hardest by Ian, but he has not said how or whether those without full legal status will receive government assistance.
“To be honest, I don’t even know if he’s giving help,” said Beatriz Cruz, who has three kids to take care of in addition to her mother, Cristina. Before the hurricane, she had worked mowing and trimming hedges at mansions. But those homes have flooded, so she may have to turn to restaurant work — if she can find a job in the fraction that are still open.
She worried it would require “lots of paperwork” to apply for federal assistance.
In the dim light of the donation center outside the kitchen, Cruz helped volunteers organize mounds of clothes that overflowed onto the floor while others delegated cans of tuna fish to those in need, as mothers with babies strapped to their backs inspected those clothes and filled plastic bags with those cans.
The two groups blended so thoroughly together that it was difficult to tell who was supposed to be fortunate and who was not.
Nearly all of them had lost vital income from work because of Hurricane Ian, and already struggled to pay rent. One family in the community was evicted a week before the storm, Gonzalez said, because the landlord had decided to sell the house. Many others rent mobile homes that sustained damages that their landlords haven’t said anything about fixing.
Eriselia Cruz’s husband paints buildings for a living, so he’ll have plenty of work soon. But the couple and their son and baby daughter have been living in a shelter since their mobile home park off Bonita Beach flooded, Cruz said.
The shelter was hot and dark, the noises of other people’s pets filling the night.
“My little girl got sick,” Cruz said. She hopes FEMA will help pay her rent. Since the storm hit, their landlord hasn’t reached out to them.
She came to the church because they need food that isn’t spoiled and clothes that don’t smell like mold.
“Thank God there’s places like this,” she said.
Immigrant workers not only in Fort Myers but across Florida, from the farmlands of Arcadia to Kissimmee in Central Florida, will face an uphill battle when it comes to rebuilding their own homes and lives as they work to rebuild for others.
“These are communities that don’t have the resources generally to build back and do all the things you need to do,” said Nezahualcoyotl Xiuhtecutli, a coordinator for the Farmworker Association of Florida. “They live paycheck to paycheck essentially.”
In Arcadia, where the farms that grow produce were flooded with widespread crop damage, many may be out of work for a while, Xiuhtecutli said. In Kissimmee, the flooding is still so bad in some immigrant communities that they are stuck in their homes.
Marisela Ramos Guzman and Michele Rodriguez, whose fathers work as a roofer and an electrician, shared the stories they’d heard of those killed in the storm as they handed out canned goods.
“Some people died because they were so stressed,” Rodriguez said.
Guzman’s uncle cleans up lawns, she said. His trailer flooded, so she planned to take him leftover canned food and water after she was done at the church.
“There will be three years’ worth of work,” she said. She was more worried about other things, like going back to school, so she can obtain a Bright Futures scholarship and attend Johns Hopkins.
Many of the local schools were used as hurricane shelters or sustained so much damage that it will take several days more to reopen; Lee County has said that it plans to reopen schools no sooner than Oct. 17.
Anita Jose said her whole family went to a shelter when the hurricane hit. When they came back, there was sand in the house, but luckily no major damage.
In the following days, her husband, a landscaper, hasn’t worked. Instead, he went to Cape Coral to volunteer, cleaning houses of ruined mattresses and clothes. Their income for those days was the tip money he received from the residents.
While new work opportunities after Ian will help those who need the income, others might leave them worse off. After disasters, immigrant workers brought in to help with repairs are often vulnerable to exploitation.
“In the thousands of people who are doing things right, there are always unfortunately people who are in it to take advantage,” said Julia Perkins, a staff member at the Coalition for Immokalee Workers. “What we see is often there’ll be workers who go to work and won’t get paid.”
As Maria Mejia picked through clothes, she hugged her daughter to her side. Like many of the other women, Mejia doesn’t work, but her husband does landscaping.
For the past week, they had no money coming in, and they still have no electricity, so she couldn’t cook for her six children, who have no school to go to. But at least her husband would get a paycheck soon. Today, she said in Spanish, they finally called him to mow lawns.
Where to get help
As of Friday, southwest Florida residents can visit these state-run points of distribution for food and water:
DeSoto County
—Nocatee Elementary School, 4846 SW Shores, Arcadia, FL 34266
—Save A Lot, 1325 E. Oak St., Arcadia, FL 34266
Lee County
—Old Bonita Springs Library, 6876 Pine Ave., Bonita Springs, FL 34135
—Cape Coral Sports Complex, 1410 Sports Blvd., Cape Coral, FL 33991
—Cape Coral Leonard Street, 4820 Leonard St., Cape Coral, FL 33904
—Estero High School Ballfield Park, 9100 Williams Road, Estero, FL 33928
—North Fort Myers Rec Center, 2000 N. Recreation Park Way, North Fort Myers, FL 33903
—Fleamasters Fleamarket, 4135 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Fort Myers, FL 33916
—Veterans Park Rec Center, 55 Homestead Road S., Lehigh Acres, FL 33938
—Coral Oaks Golf Course, 1800 NW 28th Ave., Cape Coral, FL 33993
Charlotte County
—Muscle Car City, 10175 Tamiami Trail, Punta Gorda, FL 33950
—Charlotte Sports Park, 2300 El Jobean Road, Port Charlotte, FL 33948
—Tringali Park, 3460 N Access Road, Englewood, FL 34224
Collier County
—Everglades City, 603 Collier Ave, Everglades City, FL 34139
