Deportation Fears Complicate NYC's Construction Safety Crackdown

Following a string of construction worksite deaths, the Department of Buildings is stepping up enforcement and outreach — but mounting fears of immigration raids could undermine those efforts just as they begin to take hold.

The city agency ended 2025 with a surprise enforcement sweep of 705 worksites across the five boroughs. Inspectors found violations at 14% of sites and issued 50 stop-work orders, according to the DOB.

The construction industry’s culture can already discourage incident reporting. Now, as threats of Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity spread anxiety across jobsites, what is already one of the city’s most dangerous jobs could become even riskier, raising the stakes on city agencies responsible for maintaining safety. 

“When workers are afraid that speaking up could expose them or their co-workers to immigration consequences, safety becomes secondary to self-preservation,” said Francisco Mundaca, a labor and employment attorney and founding partner of The Mundaca Law Firm. “That dynamic creates risk not just for those individuals but for everyone on the jobsite.”

“Safety systems depend on transparency, and fear undermines that,” he added.

In the New York metro area, nearly half of industry workers are foreign-born, far above the national average of 26%, according to Census Bureau data reported by trade publication Construction Coverage.

ICE has targeted construction sites across the country as the Trump administration has accelerated efforts to deport 3,000 unauthorized immigrants a day. An August survey by the Associated General Contractors of America found that 28% of contractors had been impacted by ICE activities during the previous six months.

That can be problematic for safety officials, who often rely on self-reporting to track violations and accidents. Progress on improving worker safety has been mixed.

There were at least 10 construction-related fatalities in 2025, up from seven reported in each of the prior two years, according to the DOB. 

At the same time, 320 injuries were recorded last year, a 33% drop from 482 in 2024 and the lowest in at least a decade, even below the 502 that occurred in 2020, when pandemic lockdowns shuttered construction sites for three months. 

“In recent years, we've seen real promising improvements when it comes to safety on jobsites, especially when it comes to injuries,” DOB Commissioner Ahmed Tigani told Bisnow in an interview.

Those improvements are the results of new legislation, clearer communication and increased monitoring by the DOB and employees on the ground, he said.

“The requirement to report [accidents and injuries] is all there,” Tigani said. “We take it seriously. The industry knows that we take it seriously.”

In a field like construction, injuries and fatalities aren’t necessarily correlated, said Michael Zalle, the CEO of construction safety firm YellowBird. An isolated wrong move can be fatal, even on the most up-to-code jobsites.

“This whole ‘race to zero’ concept is a pressure cooker,” Zalle said, referring to industry efforts to eliminate all serious injuries on worksites. “Anybody who has a sign that says ‘days since last injury’ is basically doing a silent march to tell anybody, ‘If you get hurt, don't report.’”

In New York City, incidents must be reported to the DOB within three business days, but incident reports can lead to fines and project delays. As a result, some research suggests that the true number of injuries is as much as three times higher than what contractors report. 

Of the 10 fatalities that occurred last year, at least two weren’t reported to the DOB in the time required, according to accident reports filed with the city by construction employees. 

On July 18, a worker in Queens fell from scaffolding and hit their head. They were taken to the hospital, where they received emergency treatment but ultimately died from their injuries. The incident wasn’t reported to the DOB until September, at which point officials issued three violations and a partial stop-work order.  

On Aug. 22, a welder suffered severe burns while completing work without a permit. They were transported to Harlem Hospital, where they died days later. The DOB wasn’t immediately notified, and when the department attempted an inspection on Sept. 2, it was denied access. Inspectors issued two violations and a stop-work order. They followed up on Nov. 20, issuing two more violations and a partial stop-work order. 

“The question is always, if you see a material drop, was it actually a material drop or was it a drop in reporting?” Zalle said.

Sanctuary city laws and other immigrant protection initiatives by New York City and state politicians have prevented ICE raids from happening at the scale they have taken place in the likes of Chicago, Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon. Still, arrests have ramped up in recent months, and there have been reports of ICE detaining construction workers across the state.

Local laws prohibit ICE from entering city-owned or private property without a judicial warrant or employer permission. However, there have been reports of officers entering city shelters, as well as construction sites elsewhere in the country, without warrants. ICE’s website says the agency doesn't need judicial warrants to make arrests. 

“For the city, maintaining safety compliance requires building trust,” Mundaca said. “That means clear communication, strong anti-retaliation protections and consistent enforcement against employers who fail to maintain safe working conditions. It also means ensuring that all workers, regardless of status, feel protected when they come forward.”

NYC enforcement agencies are prohibited from sharing information related to immigrants with federal counterparts. The information that the DOB collects doesn't overlap with what ICE officers are seeking anyway, Tigani said.

“We want to be very clear that our responsibility to help people is there regardless of their immigration status,” Tigani said. “What we are trying to do is figure out why an incident or a noncompliant act has happened, and immigration status is not something that we're interested in when it comes to those questions.”

The city's previous construction safety blitz in 2021 uncovered myriad violations. Following seven construction-related deaths in the first five months of the year, officials implemented a zero-tolerance campaign to address safety noncompliance. Within three months, DOB inspectors visited approximately 7,500 worksites, issuing more than 3,600 violations and 1,499 stop-work orders.

But overall enforcement since then has been sporadic. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has conducted fewer jobsite visits since the pandemic, placing a higher burden on the city. OSHA inspections were down 15% from 2019 to 2023, the most recent year analyzed by the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health. 

The report, published last year, found that public reporting by OSHA has also decreased. 

“Given the inherent danger that comes with construction work, upholding safety on our jobsites is necessary for ensuring the wellbeing of our workers,” Building and Construction Trades of Greater New York President Gary LaBarbera said in a statement. “This includes increased oversight and strong enforcement of these standards upon unscrupulous actors who take advantage of their workers by not establishing and maintaining proper protocol on their construction sites.” 

Nonunion sites, which are more likely to lack resources and regulation, accounted for 77% of deaths statewide in 2023, according to NYCOSH’s report. Small businesses are also at greater risk of fatal falls and other severe accidents for similar reasons.

LaBarbera said the DOB “is implementing policy that keeps worker safety at the forefront of any project and holds violators accountable for their recklessness.”

The city has recently limited the number of worksites overseen by a construction superintendent. The reduction has occurred in phases since the mandate was introduced in 2021. As of the beginning of this year, a superintendent can only take on one job at a time, regardless of size.

Zalle said superintendents often have many responsibilities with not enough training. That can be especially dangerous in a city like New York, where jobs are more complicated. 

“Things happen when people aren't being watched,” Zalle said. “Kids in classrooms don't go throwing spitballs when the teacher is in front.”

DOB safety compliance teams are also increasing education and outreach efforts through training sessions, social media campaigns and conversations with professionals, according to Tigani. Technological improvements are also planned for DOB Now, the department's online portal, to make reporting and tracking compliance easier.

“We're working not just to review but to have active back-and-forth with our partners in the field, learning from them, so our plan examiners are more in the weeds,” Tigani said. “If this stuff lives in an administrative code chapter online or in a book, it's not going to be real for the people who need it.”

Improving training will also create new career paths and grow the workforce, which faces a national labor shortage, he added. Not only could that lower costs and prevent delays, but it could also prevent accidents from happening.

“We need more people and more eyes to make sure that our sites are safe,” Tigani said.