Edgar Becerra and Josue Arana (center) join ULA for Friday's protest.
Edgar Becerra and Josue Arana packed their belongings into a total of two mid-sized suitcases and a backpack. On Friday morning, they stepped one last time out of the house at 200 Peck St. where they’d lived for the past year. They did not know where they would be sleeping that night.
The eviction culminated a months-long court battle revealing the triple power of one local business’s role as an employer, landlord, and visa sponsor to the temporary migrant workers it hires.
The founder of MDF Painting and Power Washing has officially kicked out Becerra and Arana from a company-affiliated house in Fair Haven. The two ex-employees are currently fighting an injury compensation case against the company.
On Friday, Becerra and Arana gathered outside the house with 20 activists from local immigrant workers rights coalition Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA), calling attention to allegations of migrant exploitation at the company.
“Ya es tiempo que las agencias de gobierno nos escuchen como trabajadores,” Becerra said to the crowd. It is time for government agencies to listen to us as workers.
Becerra: "¿Cuántos atravesamos largos caminos porque tenemos una ilusión en el corazón de mejorar nuestro estatus de vida?”
MDF Painting and Power-Washing hired Becerra and Arana to come from Guatemala to the United States as temporary workers, sponsoring their H‑2B visas and allegedly paying a wage of $16.95 an hour.
MDF arranged for the pair to live in the three-family Peck Street house alongside between 16 and 19 other Guatemalan workers. Mark DeFrancesco, the founder of the Branford-based painting company, co-owns the house with his wife.
Becerra and Arana have both alleged that they did not receive adequate safety training or equipment from MDF. They said that they sustained injuries on the job, that they were subsequently fired, and that the company tried to lock them out of the house prior to filing a legal eviction.
They have argued that the eviction was an attempt on MDF’s part to encourage the two men to go back to Guatemala — and potentially abandon workers’ compensation cases filed against the company, which have seen hearings continually delayed for months.
MDF did not respond to a request for comment in time for this story. In housing court, DeFrancesco denied that MDF deliberately locked Becerra and Arana out of the house prior to the legal eviction. (A police report indicates that Arana and Becerra were given the codes to the apartment after a police officer told an MDF associate to do so.)
DeFrancesco and his lawyer, Joshua Brown, suggested that MDF treated its employees well. They argued the workers’ compensation hearings could still take place remotely from Guatemala.
Their second eviction attempt, filed on the grounds that the tenants’ right to occupy the house had been terminated, was successful.
Brown noted in court that the company plans to house a new group of migrant workers in the house this summer.
“We unfortunately couldn’t appeal the judge’s decision,” Becerra’s lawyer, Tyrese Ford of New Haven Legal Assistance, wrote in a text message on Friday. “Edgar and Josue would have been required to pay use and occupancy (rent) during the pendency of the appeal which they simply could not do.”
Judge Walter Spader signed an order on May 15 to enforce the eviction.
The morning of Friday, June 7, was the day that State Marshal Al Paolillo, Sr., arrived to cut off Arana and Becerra’s access to the house.
For an hour, they stood outside 200 Peck St. with ULA protesters, chanting and calling for accountability.
“¿Cuántos atravesamos largos caminos porque tenemos una ilusión en el corazón de mejorar nuestro estatus de vida?” Becerra asked the group of ULA activists, many of them also immigrants. How many of us have traveled long roads because we have an illusion in our hearts of improving our lives?
“Pero muchas veces ignoramos que venimos a la boca del lobo,” he said. But many times we ignore that we are entering the mouth of a wolf.
Meanwhile, at least one MDF employee looked on from the house’s backyard, before eventually driving away in a truck emblazoned with the company’s website: paint4america.com.
At one point, two police officers came by and asked the protesters to clear away from the driveway.
Then, a massive moving truck parked briefly in the backyard of the house. Four people loaded a few stacks of chairs into the back of the truck, and then climbed into the truck to drive away.
“That’s what was left in the apartment,” Paolillo later explained. “We have to take everything that was left there.”
He said that the furniture would be stored for a little over two weeks at the city’s Public Works headquarters at 34 Middletown Ave. for the tenants to pick up.
According to ULA organizer John Lugo, the chairs did not belong to Becerra and Arana.
Printed on the back of the moving truck driver’s T‑shirt were the words “Don’t pay, can’t stay.”
Meanwhile, a group loads a moving truck with chairs, behind a patriotic MDF van.
After about an hour, the group packed up to head to the New Haven People’s Center on Howe Street, where ULA is based. Lugo said the group is hoping that a GoFundMe for Becerra and Arana will help them find a temporary apartment as they continue to advocate for workers’ compensation.
They left the house behind — but made clear that they would not be leaving MDF alone.
Norma Rodríguez-Reyes helped with translations for this article.
Edgar Becerra.
200 Peck St.