This report comes from ABC News:

Sanchez, one of three Mexican nationals among the trapped miners, has three daughters and a son. The longtime miner’s nephew Julio said that the family was waiting and hoping for the best. “I’m worried.”

Raymond Rivas, 20, is friends with Sanchez’s daughter, 16-year-old Arianna. “He’s our next-door neighbor. He was a good guy, really nice, a good father. I only talked to him a few times. &133; He’s worked at the mine for a long time.”

Some of the Mexican nationals may be illegal immigrants, according to Barbara Stinson Lee, a spokeswoman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City who talked to the Rocky Mountain News. She reportedly asked photographers not to take pictures of families who attended a Mass Tuesday night.

“It is a request from the families that there be no photographs. It’s not grief. It’s an immigration issue. They don’t need pictures on the front page of newspapers,” Lee told the News.

I found this story via Greg Pollowitz of NRO’s Media blog. He makes this very important point:

I can understand why the media is avoiding this now, as really the only thing that matters is trying to get these guys out safely. But, with today’s latest tragic news that three rescue workers were killed last night, at some point their immigration status will have to be addressed. Soon, questions will be asked of mine owner Bob Murray, and rightly so, that if he hired illegal immigrants to work in his mine, what other employment, mining or safety laws might he have broken as well?

The immigration status doesn’t matter in regards to getting them out safely. It does, however, matter in the sense that, should they be illegal, what else isn’t the mining company telling us?