In a 27 November letter addressed to William P Joyce, the New Orleans field office director of Ice, Dejoie implored the agency to release Ramirez Palma, stay his deportation and “commit to neutrality in ongoing labor investigations for all witnesses and victims”. The LWC is responsible for enforcing labor laws in the state. This week Ava Dejoie, secretary of the Louisiana Workforce Commission (LWC), also advocated for Ramirez Palma’s release, citing his role in the Hard Rock investigation and, more generally, the need to protect whistleblowers from retribution.

Osha did not respond to a request for comment on Ramirez Palma’s role in the investigation. Osha and the New Orleans police department are investigating the hotel collapse. Mary Yanick, a senior lawyer at the New Orleans Worker Center for Racial Justice, an advocacy group, said Ramirez Palma had been interviewed by the whistleblower division of the US government’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) on Monday. King Company, Ramirez Palma’s supervising company at the Hard Rock site, did not respond to interview requests from the Guardian. The arrest and planned deportation drew widespread criticism from immigration advocates and some state officials in Louisiana. The timing and circumstances of his October arrest raised suspicions among his lawyers and advocates that his detainment was connected to the hotel collapse and his previous safety complaints. Two days later he was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), while fishing with his family in a national wildlife refuge, because he lacked identification documents. Immediately after the accident, Ramirez Palma was interviewed by the local Spanish-language media outlet Jambalaya News.

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