Fourth Street Foods closing could be disastrous for immigrants
Paul Paterra/Observer-Reporter
The potential closure of a Mon Valley frozen food processing plant will create a “territorial disaster” for the 252 workers – many of them immigrants – who are employed there, according to a Pittsburgh immigration attorney.
Facing a lawsuit for allegedly defaulting on $90 million in loans, Fourth Street Barbecue is downsizing at its two Charleroi area plants that operate under the Fourth Street Foods name by the end of the month, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice filed with the state. Closure of the plants is possible, according to the notice.
Immigration attorney Joe Murphy said the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) humanitarian program for the immigrants expires in February. The program allows eligible nationals from countries in crises to live and work in the United States temporarily. The status can be terminated or extended based on conditions of the home country.
“This is a territorial disaster,” Murphy said Thursday. “You’ve got the end of legal status and the end of the job. What are these people going to do? That will happen at the cruelest possible moment, February in Western Pennsylvania. Landlords will be evicting people into the minus-9-degree weather or whatever we get.”
Immigrants from more than 40 countries live and work in the Mon Valley, but Murphy said the Haitian representation is particularly vulnerable because in most cases, they include families with children.
“Other migrant groups may have a person who quietly works at the barbecue and stockpiles cash and lives quietly and modestly,” Murphy said. “With the Haitians, they’ve got kids. They’ve got mouths to feed. As a group they’re not sitting on emergency money. A lot of these people don’t have the cash to move away. It really is a bomb waiting to go off. They don’t know what to do. They have no money to do it with.”
Fourth Street Foods has been in the news previously.
In 2024, federal authorities investigated Prosperity Services, a contractor supplying immigrant workers to Fourth Street Foods. The inquiry focused on allegations that Prosperity knowingly paid undocumented non-citizen employees with cash and transported and housed undocumented non-citizens for employment purposes.
In January, the owner of Prosperity Services pleaded guilty to two counts of harboring illegal aliens for financial gain and for failure to pay unemployment taxes. No charges were filed against Fourth Street Foods, which has maintained that all immigrants working for the company are legal.
Fourth Street Foods’ CEO Chris Scott was not available for comment this week.
Murphy said the business model used by Fourth Street Foods no longer works.
“Employment of people in the grey area of immigration legality – that’s not being permitted anymore. It’s being severely punished by the Trump administration. The business model becomes unprofitable because of regulatory change.”
Getro Bernabe, Charleroi’s immigrant liaison, said the company’s closure will have a detrimental impact on the community.
“I think they’re going to be let go of their jobs and that’s going to affect the town because there are businesses in town that are maintained by the immigrants,” Bernabe said. “Now, we’re just waiting to see what’s going to happen. I’m not 100% sure of the degree of the impact, but I know it’s going to have some impact on the town.”
Bernabe’s first job in Charleroi was in data analysis at Fourth Street Foods, so its closing is personal for him.
“It’s a big surprise,” he said. “It’s one of the biggest companies in town in terms of employees.”