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By Billal Rahman
Immigration Reporter
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A Florida man who voted for President Donald Trump has lost nearly one-third of his employees amid immigration raids.
Six workers for a small roofing company were apprehended by federal immigration agents in the Lower Keys on May 27 after being stopped.
"It's going to be really hard to replace those guys," Vincent Scardina, the owner of the roofing company, told NBC South Florida in an emotional interview. "We're not able in Key West to just replace people as easily as, say, a big city, very limited people to pull from, and then you would have to train them, and that takes sometimes years."
Read More on Politics
Newsweek has contacted Smith and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for comment.
Why It Matters
Trump pledged during his campaign to remove millions of migrants without legal status as part of a hardline mass deportation policy. The White House has said anyone living in the country illegally is considered to be a "criminal." Critics say the immigration raids sow fear into vulnerable communities.
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What To Know
The men, who are from Nicaragua, have valid work permits, according to NBC South Florida.
"They are legally here. They have an authorization to stay," Regilucia Smith, the attorney for the men, told NBC South Florida.
In a defiant message, Scardina slammed Trump's flagship deportation policy.
"What happened here? This situation is just totally just blatantly not at all what they said it was," he told NBC South Florida.
Although Scardina supports most of the president's policies, he believed the Trump administration would focus exclusively on deporting criminals. Now, he says, it feels like immigration officials are simply trying to meet quotas.
ICE has faced ramped-up pressure to increase arrests amid growing demand for more enforcement operations by the Trump administration. The government is looking to remove more than a million immigrants in 2025.
Virgil Scardina, who works for the company, said he believes they were pulled over because "they were six Latino men in a work truck."
What People Are Saying
Roofing company owner Vincent Scardina: "It's not just happening to me. I mean, it's happening across the board to several contractors. I know they're all being hit by this hard. I know of one landscaper that lost nine or 10 of his whole crew he had and he's just totally out of business all of a sudden, just like that."
Attorney Regilucia Smith: "They are legally here. They have an authorization to stay."
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