Iliana Troya had no option but to work and work as she looked at the mountain of debris and the dense ball of smoke that rose from the ruins of the World Trade Center. As she did her work, it was clear to Troya, an Ecuadorian, that New Yorkers faced a tragedy of enormous proportions.

Troya worked 12-hour days, seven days a week. “We had to clean the white powder off the buildings,” commented the immigrant mother, who worked at Ground Zero for a year-and-a-half without any protective gear. “I started to work on the area, but little by little, I lost my strength until I couldn’t work anymore,” she said.

Years later, Troya suffers from a series of maladies including chronic asthma, and nose, throat and stomach problems. She has been assigned to a care program at Mount Sinai and Bellevue Hospitals, where her health is closely watched.

“My illness has gotten worse. I suffer a great deal from my stomach and throat and I cannot work. What’s worse, I cannot sleep and I have nightmares,” she said.

For now, Troya makes ends meet with a donation she received from the Red Cross, although she is uncertain what will happen to her as her health deteriorates daily. Troya has filed a suit against the companies that hired her to do cleaning work, while seeking help from several government agencies, so far without success.

The same is happening to Piedad Castillo, also from Ecuador, who has been diagnosed with asthma, sinus problems and gastritis. Like Troya, she cannot sleep and when she does, she has nightmares. Although Mount Sinai is studying her case, Castillo claims that the medicine she is getting does not alleviate the strong pain in her stomach.

“I can’t go on, but I must so I can support my daughter,” she explained with a faltering voice. “I am suing the city and the companies, but they laugh at my health. The courts say that I have nothing. Do they need to see me dying before they believe me?”

Castillo, who was employed to clean the buildings surrounding Ground Zero, worked in the area for two years in 12-hour shifts. “No one ever warned us about the dangers of breathing in the white powder and none of the companies gave us cleaning equipment. Imagine, we ate in the very offices covered with powder,” she said. “But now that we are ill, no one wants to give us a hand. We are the forgotten heroes.”

Arturo Tochti, who directs the Front Table 9/11 Program at Asociacion Tepeyac [a grassroots Mexican immigrant organization in New York City], characterized the situation now faced by thousands of immigrants who helped in the cleanup effort at Ground Zero as “delicate”.

“We are dealing with more than 60 cases, but we are sure that there are thousands of people who are sick because of their work in the area,” he said.

Michael Andrade, from Break the Chase, that has documented hundreds of cases of sick persons who worked at Ground Zero, commented, “We have exerted a lot of pressure so that these people get help, but everyone says that since they are undocumented, they can’t be helped. When they needed to clean up the disaster area, these workers were valuable. Now they are not and that’s not just.”