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Two men were found shot to death in an apartment in East St. Louis on Wednesday night, and Illinois State Police are leading the investigation.

St. Louis police said several off-duty officers from other departments were working secondary at The Wheelhouse and were attempting to break up a large fight outside the bar.

ST. LOUIS - Clouds are back Thursday, with highs set to be in the low 40s. A small storm system will move across Missouri and Illinois late in the day. This will likely bring some snow closer to the Missouri/Iowa border and into western Illinois. Closer to St. Louis, precipitation chances get spottier, and temps [...]

Senator-Elect Kurtis Gregory makes his debut on Politically Speaking. The Blackburn Republican, who has served two terms in the Missouri House, speaks to St. Louis Public Radio's Sarah Kellogg and Jason Rosenbaum about his decision to enter Missouri politics, his Senate race and his thoughts on the upcoming 2025 Missouri Legislative Session.

Last year was a very eventful one for Peter Frampton, most notably because he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and it sounds like he’s not about…

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by Nicole Foy

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Early last year, President-elect Donald Trump promised that when he got back into the Oval Office, he’d authorize the U.S. Navy to build more ships. “It’s very important,” he said, “because it’s jobs, great jobs.”

However, the companies that build ships for the government are already having trouble finding enough workers to fill those jobs. And Trump may make it even harder if he follows through on another pledge he’s made: to clamp down on immigration.

The president-elect has told his supporters he would impose new limits on the numbers of immigrants allowed into the country and stage the largest mass deportation campaign in history. Meanwhile the shipbuilding industry, which he also says he supports and which has given significant financial support to Republican causes, is struggling to overcome an acute worker shortage. Immigrants have been critical to helping fill the gaps.

According to a Navy report from last year, several major shipbuilding programs are years behind schedule, owing largely to a lack of workers. The shortfall is so severe that warship production is down to its lowest level in a quarter century.

Shipbuilders and the government have poured millions of dollars into training and recruiting American workers, and, as part of a bipartisan bill just introduced in the Senate, they have proposed to spend even more. Last year the Navy awarded nearly $1 billion in a no-bid contract to a Texas nonprofit to modernize the industry with more advanced technology in a way that will make it more attractive to workers. The nonprofit has already produced splashy TV ads for submarine jobs. One of its goals is to help the submarine industry hire 140,000 new workers in the next 10 years. “We build giants,” one of its ads beckons. “It takes one to build one.”

Still, experts say that these robust efforts have so far resulted in nowhere near enough workers for current needs, let alone a workforce large enough to handle expanded production. “We’re trying to get blood from a turnip,” said Shelby Oakley, an analyst at the Government Accountability Office. “The domestic workforce is just not there.”

In the meantime, the industry is relying on immigrants for a range of shipyard duties, with many working jobs similar to those on a construction site, including on cleanup crews and as welders, painters and pipefitters. And executives worry that any future immigration crackdown or restrictions on legal immigration, including limits on asylum or temporary protected status programs, could cause disruptions that would further harm their capacity for production.

Ron Wille, the president and chief operating officer of All American Marine in Washington state, said that his company was “clawing” for workers. And Peter Duclos, the president of Gladding-Hearn Shipbuilding in Somerset, Massachusetts, said the current immigration system is “so broken” that he was already having trouble holding onto valuable workers and finding more.

There is no publicly available data that shows how much the shipbuilding industry relies on immigrant labor, particularly undocumented immigrant labor. Both Wille and Duclos said that they do not employ undocumented workers, and industry experts say undocumented workers are unlikely to be working on projects requiring security clearances. However, reporting by ProPublica last year found that some shipbuilders with government contracts have used such workers. That reporting focused on a major Louisiana shipyard run by a company called Thoma-Sea, where undocumented immigrants have often been hired through third-party subcontractors.

The story reported on a young undocumented Guatemalan immigrant who was helping build an $89 million U.S. government ship for tracking hurricanes. When he died on the job after working at Thoma-Sea for two years, neither the company nor the subcontractor paid death benefits to his partner and young son.

ProPublica also reported that executives at Thoma-Sea, which declined to comment, had made tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to Republican candidates. However, if Trump’s last time in office is any guide, the shipbuilding industry wouldn’t be exempted from any future crackdown. One of the final workplace raids under Trump’s first administration was conducted at an even larger shipbuilder in Louisiana called Bollinger.

In July 2020, federal immigration agents arrested 19 “unlawfully present foreign nationals” at Bollinger’s Lockport shipyard, according to a story in the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate. Immigration and Customs Enforcement refused to provide information on the raid. According to Bollinger’s website, that yard produces U.S. Coast Guard and Navy patrol boats. Five of the workers arrested were sent to an ICE detention center and 14 were released with pending deportation cases, according to the news report.

Bollinger denied any wrongdoing following the raid. Four years later, there’s no evidence in publicly available federal court records that Bollinger executives faced any charges in connection to it. Meanwhile, federal electoral records show that the company’s executives donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican elected officials last year, including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, both Republicans from Louisiana. The company did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.

President Joe Biden’s administration ended workplace raids like the one at Bollinger, saying that it would instead focus on “unscrupulous employers.” Department of Homeland Security officials did not answer questions or provide data on how many employers had been prosecuted since then. However, Trump’s designated “border czar,” Tom Homan, has signaled that the incoming administration will return to carrying out the raids. When asked how the second Trump administration will increase shipbuilding while limiting immigration, a spokesperson for Trump’s transition team only doubled down on the president-elect’s deportation promises, saying they would focus enforcement on “illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers.”

A few days after Trump won the election, a group of undocumented shipyard welders leaving a Hispanic grocery store near the port in Houma, Louisiana, expressed a dim view when asked what they thought lay ahead. One man, who declined to provide his name, broke into a nervous laugh and blurted, “Well, we could be deported.” Another man, a welder from the Mexican state of Coahuila who’d been working in the U.S. for about two years, also declined to give his name but said he worried about losing the life he’d managed to build in this country.

“When they grab you,” he said, “they’ll take you, and you’ll have to leave everything behind.”

Do You Have a Tip for ProPublica? Help Us Do Journalism.

Do you have information about undocumented immigrants in the workforce? Contact nicole.foy@propublica.org or reach her on Signal 661-549-0572.

To achieve its climate goals, the city helped finance the largest solar farm east of the Mississippi.

From Construction Equipment Guide:  The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) has received Statements of Qualifications (SOQs) from teams interested in competing for the contract to design and construct the third project of MoDOT’s statewide Improve I-70 Program. Improve I-70: Blue Springs to Odessa will add a third lane each direction on Interstate 70 from just […]

From West Newsmagazine:  The city of Twin Oaks has announced that the first phase of a multi-year project to enhance street safety and pedestrian infrastructure within its boundaries is complete. The Board of Aldermen started exploring ways to make Twin Oaks more pedestrian-friendly and give better access to Twin Oaks Park in 2018. Through public […]

From Newsweek:  Construction fatalities hit their highest number in more than a decade, according to a new report released by the U.S. Department of Labor. In 2023, there were 1,075 deaths in the construction industry, which had the highest number of fatalities that year. It was also the highest number of fatalities the industry had […]

Beloved wife of Jerry Maloney. Dear mother of Jerome Jr., Tim and Keith Maloney. Our dear mother-in-law, grandmother, sister-in-law, aunt, cousin and friend.

Buhr, Julie — O’Fallon, MO

Christine Stinson Gibbons passed away unexpectedly on December 29, 2024. Chris passed peacefully with her daughters by her side. She was born in Rolla, MO on August 17, 1955.

A dear friend to all. SERVICES: Memorial service will be held at Nazareth Living Center (#2 Nazareth Ln., St. Louis, MO 63129) on Thursday, January 16th at 10:00 AM, with a reception to follow immediately after. See full obituary at…

Mary Ann Pexa Honti, 92, of Saint Louis, MO, passed away, Saturday, December 28, 2024, at her home in Saint Louis, MO.

Beloved son, brother, uncle-to-be, grandson, nephew, cousin, and friend. Celebration of Life, Saturday, Jan. 4th, 3-6 p.m. at Sunset Hills Community Center, 3915 S. Lindbergh, 63127. See stlouiscremation.com for details.

We remember our cherished loved one, Julie Elizabeth Woodside Buhr, whose spirit departed from us suddenly on December 19, 2024, at the age of 42. Julie was a friend to all, was the life of the party, and was a…