Los Angeles Chief Recovery Officer Steve Soboroff told Hollywood talent agents on Thursday that half of the laborers necessary for construction work in rebuilding fire-damaged areas could be “deported” by immigration enforcement.
Soboroff made the remark during a webinar hosted by the United Talent Agency (UTA), the Creative Artists Agency (CAA), and the William Morris Agency to discuss the rebuilding process in Pacific Palisades after the Palisades Fire.
Mayor Karen Bass named Soboroff, a developer with a history of public roles in the city, to lead the recovery effort, though not without controversy: other leading voices, such as developer Rick Caruso, have started their own efforts.
In the webinar, Soboroff addressed the entertainment industry, many of whose members live in the Pacific Palisades and lost homes in the fire.
He warned: “Every one of you is going to have a gap between what your insurance pays, or what the California FAIR plan [public fire insurance] pays, to what your reconstruction cost is. The reconstruction costs are going to be high, because the demand for commodities is going to be high, the demand for labor — whether or not half our labor gets deported before this happens — is going to be high, so we’re going to be recruiting people from around the country to come and live at Motel 6’s, like the Alaska Gold Rush, so there are subs out here, to do work.”
The idea that “half” of the construction labor force is in the country illegally is an exaggeration. Estimates of the share of illegal aliens in the construction workforce range from around 13% to 23%, with the Pew Research Center putting the percentage at 15%. And while the Trump administration is cracking down on illegal immigration, it has prioritized illegal aliens who have also committed other crimes in addition to illegal entry, not necessarily ordinary workers.
Earlier this week, Soboroff participated in a stage-managed community meeting with L.A. Mayor Karen Bass in which the host warned people not to “politicize” the fires, then attacked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
However, Soboroff told Breitbart News that he wants to work with the Trump administration on the rebuilding effort.
Soboroff envisioned a massive cleanup effort, one that would require 150,000 truckloads of debris to be removed over at least six months to a year, as well as three to five years of construction work before homes were rebuilt.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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