And we start with a story you'll see only on Fox and it begins with a question in this era of surging unemployment Why do you rarely see African Americans or whites working in heavy construction? Good evening everyone. I'm Melinda Spalding. And I'm Don Tegue. You might guess incorrectly that there are so many Hispanic construction workers because they're the only people willing to do that kind of work. Well a whistleblower says it's much more sinister. Fox 26's Greg Grogren reveals a Mexican import that seems to have found a new home on this side of the border. These days it's just something you rarely see. African Americans laboring within the largely Hispanic construction crews working the Gulf Coast heavy industrial projects. Ricardo Charles says he knows exactly why. And after 33 years in the building trades he's blowing the whistle. You're telling me that none of the Mexican click leaders would ever hire an African American. Oh no, no black no, black sorrow out of the question. Black sorrow the question. There's nobody wants a black person in there. He's deeply entrenched discrimination which according to Charles extends to white workers as well. Men and women effectively cut off from decent paying construction jobs by secretive highly organized Mexican labor gangs. They are afraid that the white people I want to put up with are with their unethical acts. He's talking about bribes in Mexico. They call it Mordida the bite. This is like in Mexico. It's not how much you know, but who you know Ricardo Charles contends that on nearly every major industrial construction site in Texas workers are being quietly forced to pay the leaders of Mexican labor gangs hundreds of dollars up front just to obtain a job. What's worse with each weekly paycheck the kickbacks continue. It's not only how much you pay to go in but actually you pay anything from 50 to 70 dollars a week while you are in the project. According to Charles anyone who objects to paying the price is quickly isolated and almost as rapidly cut loose without cause. They have these groups that are going to harass you. They want to insult you. They grade you and they want to make very very hard things on you. They want to make false accusations about you that you don't know how to do the job. You don't know how to talk to them. But they all in the same conspiracy because they are again they are like organized crimes over dozens of years and hundreds of sites across Texas including the giant petrochemical complex in Port Arthur. Charles says Mexican construction clicks have muscled honest workers out of millions of dollars. Money that's made gang bosses rich. Everybody knows who goes on right? Oh everybody knows that yes many people know that you have to be honest with a click in order to work. Mexicans exploiting Mexicans and contractors looking the other way. That's right. Yes that's right. And there's nothing casual about Ricardo's allegations. Everything he's witnessed the paper plate the graft the enforced silence and the corrupt complicity of contractors. It's all recorded in Mexican clicks and construction. The book he paid thousands of his own hard earned dollars to publish. Someone he insists had to take a stand. Many people are victims many of my friends that are honest are victims. Even half of what Ricardo claims proves true law makers and federal authorities may soon have a new fight on their hands against a brand of corruption that's long crippled Mexico and now threatens Texas too. On the east side Greg Groogan Fox 26 news.