Several builders openly acknowledge that the region relies on immigrant workers, many of them undocumented, a number of whom have been working and living there for years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will put us out of business if it continues,\u201d Ronnie Cavazos, president of the South Texas Builders Association and the owner of The Structure Team construction company in Mission, said this month at a luncheon in nearby McAllen, Texas.<\/p>\n
The region has largely avoided clashes between federal agents and opponents of Trump\u2019s immigration policies, despite high immigrant populations. Many support strict border policies and targeted enforcement and deportations.<\/p>\n
But Trump\u2019s mass deportation agenda is taking a toll in this southern swath of a very red state, several business owners said. While the construction industry is the most directly affected, other parts of the region\u2019s economy also are feeling the pinch, including restaurants patronized by workers, real estate agents and some retailers.<\/p>\n Jaime Lee Gonzalez, a McAllen Realtor, said he had an investor lined up to buy over 100 lots who was hesitating because he feared \u201cby the time they start construction they would not be able to complete the project.\u201d<\/p>\n Maria Vasquez, 40, wheeling a cart through a grocery store parking lot, said she\u2019s had to make \u201cadjustments\u201d to her household budget. Since construction has stalled, her husband is working fewer hours building frames for homes and he\u2019s bringing in less money.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously, the payment for water, electricity, rent, those you can\u2019t negotiate. Where you can adjust is in the food \u2014 you remove from your list, juices, things the kids want. Chips? No,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Builders concede other economic factors, such as inflation or interest rates, may also be at work. But Mario Guerrero, executive director of the association, described the immigration arrests and the worker shortage as the knockout \u201cpunch\u201d that could end some livelihoods.<\/p>\n \u201cWe sell flooring. We sell tile to contractors, to custom-home builders, and it\u2019s affecting our business tremendously,\u201d said Luis Rodriguez, a sales manager at Materiales del Valle in McAllen. \u201cI have orders, but my customers aren\u2019t picking them up. They don\u2019t have anybody to install them.\u201d<\/p>\n Xavier Vazquez, owner of the Summit Valley Homes homebuilding company, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested almost all of the stucco crew he uses. As he\u2019s tried to replace them, he\u2019s found out \u201cthis one\u2019s been taken or this one\u2019s been taken.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s getting tricky trying to find people to replace them, since \u201cyou also want it to be a good job,\u201d said Vazquez, whose 3-year-old company builds throughout the Rio Grande Valley.<\/p>\n Paul Rodriguez, CEO at Valley Land Title Co. in McAllen, said he began noticing a slowdown in construction loans for residential properties last summer. Things worsened in the fall. The downward trends didn\u2019t sync with the usual seasonal variations, he said.<\/p>\n What was happening, he said, was that ICE was showing up at his clients\u2019 sites, conducting raids and checking workers\u2019 immigration status. \u201cNeedless to say, they do have a number of individuals at the worksite who may be undocumented,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n When worker shortages slow down construction, the builders have to get extensions, which means more interest on a loan, which means more costs, Rodriguez and others said.<\/p>\n Members of the South Texas Builders Association, which recently traveled to Washington and met with members of Congress, are demanding Trump and his administration back off from detaining its workers who have not committed serious crimes.<\/p>\n Guerrero said his industry is not unlike the agriculture industry, which has long used unauthorized workers \u2014 about 40% as of 2022, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department<\/a>.<\/p>\n The American Immigration Council estimates that about 23% of construction workers in Texas are undocumented.<\/a> Cavazos and others figure the share in the Rio Grande Valley is much higher.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s pretty understood in the Valley. It is a reality of how it works,\u201d Vazquez said. \u201cSome of these people start saying, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s because we\u2019re trying to get away with cheap labor.\u2019 Naw. It\u2019s what we have available.\u201d<\/p>\n In an email to NBC News, the White House countered that Trump signed an executive order<\/a> last April on workforce preparedness that, among other things, would create apprenticeships to address shortages of construction and other workers. The administration also created an Office of Immigration Policy in the Labor Department to help employers with workforce needs, including streamlining the visa processes for temporary workers, the White House said.<\/p>\n White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said \u201cthere is no shortage of American minds and hands to grow our labor force,\u201d adding that 1 in 10 young adults are unemployed and not pursuing college or vocational education.<\/p>\n \u201cPresident Trump will continue growing our economy, creating opportunity for American workers and ensuring all sectors have the legal workforce they need to be successful,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n The Rio Grande Valley shifted right in the 2024 presidential election, handing Trump a win in the historically Democratic, heavily Latino region.<\/p>\n Guerrero said he doesn\u2019t regret his vote for Trump. He blames former President Joe Biden for the large number of immigrants who arrived at the border, including in McAllen. He supported Trump\u2019s campaign promise to focus on the \u201cworst of the worst,\u201d he said. But he said President Barack Obama was the \u201cdeportation king.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy didn\u2019t he ever terrorize people?\u201d Guerrero asked. \u201cBecause he was running actual investigations on who they were going for and he did it right.\u201d<\/p>\n During Trump\u2019s first nine months in office, deportations initiated in the interior of the U.S. rose largely because of a jump in street arrests, a large portion of which targeted people who had not been convicted of a crime, NBC news reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n Isaac Smith, a co-owner of Matt\u2019s Building Materials in Pharr, Texas, and a Republican voter, said his store has had to place a higher volume of liens on customers because of the slowdown over the past eight months.<\/p>\n But a Democratic flip of the Rio Grande Valley is more of a threat than a certainty, he said.<\/p>\n Smith agrees with those who consider all people who have crossed the border illegally to be criminals, as the Trump administration has repeatedly said. (Crossing the border without authorization is a federal Class A misdemeanor.) Smith also said he believes that some immigrants come for tax-subsidized benefits.<\/p>\n But \u201cthe system has been created this way over decades, and you\u2019re not going to reverse it,\u201d he said. \u201cAll we can hope for is people pay their fair share and we are being sensible about how we process people into our country.\u201d<\/p>\n According to a recent NBC News Decision Desk poll<\/a>, 60% of adults strongly or somewhat disapprove of how Trump has handled border security and immigration, compared to 40% approval. In addition, nearly three-quarters of those polled said they want changes to ICE.<\/p>\n Armando Rodriguez, owner of Castle Bridge construction, which does residential and commercial building, does not agree with the builders who he says are \u201cprotesting\u201d the worksite raids, adding it \u201cproves they want to get cheap labor and make more profits for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAll of our people have papers. I had ICE stop by and they\u2019ve been professional. My guys show ID and they leave them alone. I\u2019ve been visited three times,\u201d Rodriguez said. He said he\u2019s been building homes and commercial sites for 22 years, doing $3 million to $4 million a year in construction.<\/p>\n Like the other builders, he uses a subcontractor who he says has workers fill out tax forms and show proof of having a Social Security number.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel real bad about what\u2019s going on, but I got a business to run, so I do the right thing, hire Americans,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n At a site where he\u2019s developing an apartment complex, Guerrero has erected a gate similar to those seen at the entrances of ranches. It\u2019s padlocked and chained and the code on it is changed weekly, he said. A couple of white pickups with hired security are stationed near the entrance.<\/p>\n Guerrero said builders were told by federal agents that if the general public can\u2019t enter their site, they won\u2019t either since it\u2019s private property. Some workers will only agree to work at sites where such security exists, builders said.<\/p>\n Other builders said fences add costs and aren\u2019t enough, because workers have to get to the jobsite and ICE can wait outside to arrest workers or pick them up in traffic stops.<\/p>\n Texas is using state highway troopers to help ICE check the immigration status of people it pulls over, and it requires sheriff\u2019s offices to sign agreements with ICE to help with enforcement. The Rio Grande Valley also has multiple interior Border Patrol checkpoints, and Customs and Border Protection plans to add more<\/a> in the area.<\/p>\n The homebuilders and other business leaders have asked elected officials to provide more H-2B visas for their industry. The visa is for temporary, nonagricultural workers and is often used in hospitality and tourism, landscaping, construction and other industries. <\/p>\n There have not been enough H-2B visas to meet demand in previous years, according to the American Immigration Council<\/a>.<\/p>\n H-2B visas are capped annually at 66,000, but the Trump administration added another 64,716 H-2B visas for this year.<\/a> By Feb. 6, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it had \u201cmore than enough\u201d applications<\/a> for the first of three allocations of the visas through the year.<\/p>\n Guerrero said he\u2019s not alone in his \u201cdisappointment\u201d with the president\u2019s immigration enforcement. And he thinks that sentiment is setting an ominous tone for GOP prospects in the region, both in the midterms and beyond.<\/p>\n \u201cI can guarantee you, the Valley will never be red again,\u201d he said. \u201cAt least not anytime soon.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" PHARR, Texas \u2014 More than a year since President Donald Trump flipped the traditionally Democratic Rio Grande Valley, his deportation agenda is running headlong into the region\u2019s workforce. Several homebuilders who spoke to NBC News said they\u2019re worried about whether they will make it through the year without the framers, foundation pourers, drywallers and other <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5549,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com\/image\/upload\/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best\/rockcms\/2026-02\/260219-rio-grande-valley-tx-policies-bf-1612-e2febc.jpg\")
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