A fencing contractor in Illinois has gone viral after tearing down a near-completed fence when the property owner allegedly refused to pay and threatened to call immigration enforcement. In a video shared on Instagram, Cesar Diaz and his workers are seen breaking panels down as a man shouts at them just outside Joliet, Illinois, an area just southwest of Chicago. Diaz suggested that the homeowner may have believed he could call U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) because the workers were immigrants. Officials in Joliet told Newsweek that the home in question was outside the town's limits in unincorporated Will County. Newsweek has not yet been able to identify the homeowner in order to confirm his side of the story.
Requests for comment were left with Diaz, Will County Sheriff's Office and the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday. "We're about to take away a fence because somebody didn't want to pay," Diaz says in the video. "So this is going to be fun." A white man in a white tank top and grey shorts, whose face is blurred, is heard yelling at the workers to get off his property, with multiple expletives used.
After finding out that the man was refusing to pay, Diaz begins knocking fence panels off their supports and waves over his team to join him, with the footage showing a joint effort to take back the newly placed fencing. At one point, the unidentified owner is seen allegedly taking two power tools owned by the workers. The footage quickly gained attention online, with over 32,000 shares and around 1 million likes on the original post alone.
Those commenting on the incident criticized the owner for seeing the project through before allegedly refusing to pay, some praised the actual work on the fence, while others congratulated the contractors for the action they took. It remains to be seen which side has legal standing on the issue of the work and payment, with Illinois state law allowing withholding of payment in some circumstances, such as incomplete or unsatisfactory work. However, if the payment was withheld for other reasons, the company may have a case.
The situation in Illinois appeared to echo events in Cambridge, Maryland, in March, when a homeowner used contractors for improvements on her land before calling federal agents out as they arrived to work for the day. Video from that incident, originally shared as a livestream, showed workers on a rooftop, with ICE agents arriving and bringing workers down before arresting six alleged illegal immigrants. The woman was reported to owe the workers $10,000 for a three-day job, according to Univision, a local TV network.
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