One of the workers injured in the deadly collapse Oct. 12 of the unfinished Hard Rock Hotel in New Orleans has been detained for deportation by immigration authorities after he spoke about his experience with a television station, his attorneys said Friday.

Delmer Joel Ramirez Palma, a native of Honduras, is one of five laborers who filed a lawsuit at Orleans Parish Civil District Court on Friday seeking damages for injuries they said they suffered. They sued the main players behind the ill-fated project, accusing them of causing the collapse by using inadequate materials and supports.

Ramirez’s attorneys — Jeremy Pichon, Eric Wright and Daryl Gray — said he requires surgery. But as of the last time they spoke with him, he had not been able to receive necessary medical care at the immigration detention center near Oakdale, Louisiana, where he is being held, they said.

Ramirez was arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents in Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge in New Orleans East on Monday, two days after the building collapse, which killed three workers and sent dozens to the hospital.

A Border Patrol spokeswoman said that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents had summoned officers to arrest Ramirez after spotting him fishing without a license. When pressed for identification, the Border Patrol spokeswoman said, Ramirez had only "foreign citizenship documentation."

Christina Meister, a spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency does not provide any information about arrests by its agents.

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Bryan Cox, a regional spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said an individual with Ramirez's name is being held in ICE custody in Louisiana. Border Patrol does not have its own detention facilities and generally turns over the people it arrests to ICE.

Cox said it was "simply false" to suggest Ramirez's arrest was directly tied to his employment at the Hard Rock Hotel construction site or what Gray described as the Honduran's comments about the catastrophe to a Spanish-language television news network.

A federal immigration judge ordered Ramirez deported in February 2016, Cox said, and he's now in ICE custody "pending removal to his country of citizenship."

Federal authorities held Ramirez overnight at the St. Tammany Parish jail — which immigration agents have long used as a processing center for those arrested in the New Orleans area — before transferring him to an ICE detention facility in central Louisiana, officials said. A St. Tammany Sheriff's Office spokesperson said booking documents for Ramirez showed only that he was held for immigration authorities.

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Besides seeking to compensate Ramirez for his injuries, Gray said, he and his colleagues will oppose his deportation, which he said was set in motion by an arrest that occurred within 24 hours of his "making a statement about the tragic events” at the collapse site to a Spanish-language news network.

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Gray said Ramirez’s case illustrates why he believes some workers who know what was happening at the construction site ahead of the collapse are afraid to come forward.

They “fear … being deported or some other retribution by their employers,” Gray said at a news conference in the lobby of Civil District Court. “Just like all Americans, however, they do have the rights that are afforded to us within this courthouse.”

He also said Ramirez's looming deportation "exposes the underbelly of America."

"Immigrants are exploited for the growth of our great nation," Gray said. "And that does not have to be the case."

Pichon added that workers "complained to many individuals" about problems at the under-construction hotel before it collapsed, but they were ignored.

"We'll find out who did this, we'll hold them accountable, and we're going to make sure nothing like this happens again," Pichon said.

+3 For man presumed dead in New Orleans Hard Rock rubble, retirement and family reunion were next steps After 15 years of working construction in the United States, 63-year-old Jose Ponce Arreola was ready to head back home to Mexico.

With their suit, Ramirez, Juan Fiallos, Tufino Velazquez, Jorge O’Campo and Genssner Alejandro Villalobos Tejada joined a growing list of plaintiffs in what is expected to be a wave of litigation over who is to blame for the collapse. All five asserted that their physical injuries from the disaster were "serious."

Defendants in their suit include a development consortium named 1031 Canal Investments, Citadel Builders, Harry Baker Smith Architects, Heaslip Engineering and other contractors.