Fence Crew Returns to Undo Entire Job After Alleged Payment Dispute
A newly installed backyard fence did not stay upright for long after an Illinois contractor said the homeowner reportedly refused to pay for the work.
César Diaz of Diaz Fence Company shared footage of his crew returning to the property and dismantling the wooden fence they had recently built.
“We’re about to take away a fence because somebody didn’t want to pay,” Diaz says in the footage posted to Instagram.
Then the crew gets to work undoing its own labor.
The property sits outside Joliet city limits in unincorporated Will County, Newsweek reported on Sept. 15, citing Joliet officials. The outlet said it had not identified the homeowner and therefore had not been able to independently confirm their side of the payment dispute.
The Video Shows a Heated Dispute — But Not Everything Claimed Online
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The footage shows Diaz and other workers removing fence panels as the homeowner repeatedly orders them off the property and threatens to call police.
Diaz asserts that the homeowner refused to pay after the job was completed. His original Instagram post, shared on Sept. 11, describes the dispute simply: “Customer didn’t want to pay after we already finished the fence.”
A second claim quickly became attached to the viral story: a Sept. 14 Reddit post claims that the crew removed the fence “when the homeowner reportedly wouldn’t pay and mentioned involving ICE.” That detail has since appeared in various headlines.
However, the caption of Diaz’s original Instagram post does not directly mention ICE. It reads only “Customer didn’t want to pay after we already finished the fence 😂 Wait till you see how this ended #FenceLife #Tradesman #ConstructionLife #WorkStories.” In that same Instagram post, a Community Note, attributed only to “an Instagram user,” does allege ICE involvement was threatened.
Illinois Gives Unpaid Contractors Another Route
Watching a crew dismantle an entire fence makes for undeniably compelling video. Legally, however, disputes over unpaid construction work have a more formal path.
Under the Illinois Mechanics Lien Act, a contractor may stop work when an owner fails to pay money that is due under a contract. If the breach continues for 10 days, the law allows the contractor to abandon the work and pursue a lien for the value of the work that has been completed.
The statute separately says people who supplied material that has not yet been incorporated into an improvement may remove it.
Newsweek reports that on Tuesday, requests for comment were left with the Will County Sheriff’s Office, as well as Diaz, and the Department of Homeland Security.
