By Virginia Allen | The Daily Signal
Cathy Lindberg Jarosz drove down the street of her newly purchased home but could not find her house.
Lindberg, a lawyer from Maryland, had purchased the home in Destin, Florida, in April 2023 to be closer to her daughter who had just had a baby. She turned the house over to contractors for a couple weeks so they could do renovations on the home while she was on vacation. When she returned, she expected to find her new home ready to settle into, but this was far from the case.
“I drive to the house and see all this trash and debris and stuff, bad landscaping—really no landscaping on this house,” she told Independent Women’s Features.
“I drive by it and I go, ‘God, where’s my house?’ You know, it was a new house,” Lindberg recalled. “So I go back and forth, trying to look for my house number, and I realized that thing is mine!”
When Lindberg went inside her home, wires were popping out of the walls, there was a gaping hole in the ceiling, and most of the furniture she moved in had been stolen along with her clothes, kitchen ware, and even her grandson’s toys.
The contractor Lindberg hired to do the work on her home while she was away had come highly recommended from her real estate agent but the contractor, Ray Badillo, was operating an unlicensed business, as Lindberg soon found out.
Inside her disheveled home, Lindberg called her husband in Maryland and the couple began what ultimately turned into a long legal battle.
Lindberg told IW Features that she and her husband spent thousands of dollars cleaning up the home that the contractors appeared to have lived in while she was away. Worse still, the contractors continued to come back to her home and some even attempted to get inside the house.
“One morning, when she opened her bedroom curtains, a worker was sitting on her porch,” IW Features reports.
When she reached out to local law enforcement, Lindberg was told that because the men were likely illegal aliens, there was little police could do unless the men committed a crime.
Local and state law enforcement officials are traditionally not authorized to enforce immigration enforcement duties unless federal or state leaders grant them such authority.
In February, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order granting Florida law enforcement the authority to perform immigration enforcement duties. A federal judge has blocked the order, but Attorney General James Uthmeier says he believes Florida law enforcement can continue “to enforce Florida’s new illegal entry and reentry laws.”
Lindberg took legal action against the contractor and real estate agent who recommended the contractor to try and recoup some of the cost of her stolen property and damage to her home, but Badillo did not show up in court for six months.
The Walton County state’s attorney’s office launched an investigation and found that Badillo was operating without a license and eventually, in 2024, Badillo was arrested, found guilty, “and ordered to pay partial restitution,” according to IW Features.
Lindberg says she wishes leaders in Florida would do more to address the issue of illegal immigration.
“It’s a nightmare,” she said. “I have nothing good to say about it. DeSantis, he says, ‘I don’t like illegal migrants.’ But really? You’ve got so many, bud, even in the Panhandle. I see them in front of me!”
Illegal immigration into Florida remained high through July 2024 but started to see a noticeable decline at the end of last summer, according to Customs and Border Protection Data. In April for example, CBP encountered 1,991 illegal aliens in the Miami Sector or through the Miami Field Office, down from 26,880 in April 2024.
Now, under the Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is conducting large scale immigration operations in Florida aimed at arresting and removing criminal illegal aliens, according to ICE.
Lindberg did succeed in restoring her home and enjoys staying in the small house when she visits her grandchildren. Her legal case against the contractor and the real estate agent is still moving through the courts. The next hearing is scheduled for February.
