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By Giulia Carbonaro
Senior Reporter
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Construction executives are warning President Donald Trump that his aggressive anti-immigration crackdown is hurting their industry, making homebuilding more expensive, and could eventually turn his voters against the GOP.
Several sources within the construction sector told Politico that they held meetings with the White House and Congress over the last month to discuss the negative impact mass deportations have had on their industry, which heavily relies on the immigrant community.
According to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), immigrants make up one in four workers in the construction industry, while they are 32.5 percent of construction tradesmen.
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Their growing unhappiness might reflect badly on Republicans this upcoming midterms, they warned.
“I told [lawmakers] straight up: South Texas will never be red again,” Mario Guerrero, the CEO of the South Texas Builders Association and a Trump voter, told Politico this week.
Newsweek contacted the White House for comment by email on Monday.
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Scaring Off the Homebuilding Workforce
While Trump returned to the White House with the promise of lowering the cost of housing for Americans struggling with years of rising home prices, his efforts to implement the “largest deportation operation” in the history of the nation have undermined this goal.
The Trump administration claims to have deported more than 605,000 undocumented migrants since the president’s inauguration in January 2025, with an additional 1.9 million “self-deporting.”
For years, the U.S. construction sector has been grappling with labor shortages which U.S.-born workers alone do not seem able to fill.
These mass deportations might worsen chronic labor shortages in the country and reduce the country’s ability to build and remodel homes, according to researchers at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS).
Homebuilders have reportedly warned that the Trump administration’s anti-immigration crackdown, with its raids on job sites and residential communities with a high concentration of immigrants, is also scaring off their workforce.
But in a comment to Politico, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson spoke of filling up jobs with American workers.
“There is no shortage of American minds and hands to grow our labor force, and President Trump’s agenda to create jobs for American workers represents this administration’s commitment to capitalizing on that untapped potential while delivering on our mandate to enforce our immigration laws,” she said.
Hispanic Voters May Turn on Trump and the GOP
According to Politico's exclusive reporting, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and a group of Republican lawmakers met at the White House last week to discuss eroding support among Hispanic voters, especially in those regions that swung in Trump’s favor in 2024.
Among the reasons discussed, there were ongoing affordability issues and the administration’s immigration policies.
There are signs suggesting Republicans are growing uncomfortable about the backlash against Trump’s anti-immigration approach and its potential effect at the November’s midterms.
GOP Representative Monica De La Cruz, who is running for reelection in the Lone Star State’s 15th Congressional District, was among two South Texas leaders who attended the meeting at the White House on Wednesday.
She held two additional meetings in the same week “to discuss her proposals for new policies to address worker shortages, including legislation to streamline visa programs and address the need for workers in the agriculture and construction industries,” Politico reported.
Texas, according to a 2023 NAHB survey, is one of the four states where more than half (53 percent) of the 3 million immigrant construction workers in the country reside, together with California, Florida, and New York. In the Lone Star State, 38 percent of construction workers come from abroad.
“I will continue to focus on what matters: delivering common-sense policy solutions for the hard-working immigrants who strengthen our communities and making homeownership affordable for all Americans,” De La Cruz said in a statement to the newspaper.
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