Home builders warn Trump: immigration crackdown is pricing Americans out of homes

Builders bring a warning to D.C.

Construction executives spent the past month meeting with the White House and Congress, and their message was blunt: immigration enforcement at job sites is scaring away workers and driving up the cost of building homes.

The meetings brought together industry leaders, lawmakers from both parties, and an ICE official. Builders said the crackdown is squeezing a market that already does not have enough homes.

They also made a political pitch: Hispanic voter support for Republicans is slipping.

A Trump voter tells the GOP to listen

Mario Guerrero, CEO of the South Texas Builders Association, voted for Trump.

But he traveled to Washington to warn lawmakers that South Texas would not vote Republican again if policies did not change.

Johnny Vasquez of the Rio Grande Valley Builders Association reminded the room that Hidalgo County flipped red for Trump in 2024, gains he said the GOP would lose. Both men support border security.

What they did not expect was enforcement targeting their own workers.

Immigrants fill one in four construction jobs

The numbers tell the story. About 25% of the construction workforce is foreign-born, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). Among skilled tradesmen, that figure jumps to about 33%.

In some trades, immigrants are the majority: roughly 61% of plasterers and drywall installers, 52% of roofers, and 51% of painters.

The two most common construction jobs, laborers and carpenters, are each about one-third immigrant. That dependence has grown steadily and hit record highs in recent years.

Top homebuilding metros rely on immigrants the most

The cities building the most homes lean the hardest on immigrant labor.

Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found that in the seven metro areas issuing the most building permits from 2019 to 2023, about 54% of skilled trades workers were foreign-born.

Dallas-Fort Worth, which led the nation in permits, had a 61% immigrant trades workforce. Houston’s was 63%.

The Washington, D.C., area’s remodeling workforce was 66% immigrant. Even slower-building metros depend on immigrants more than most industries do.

The labor shortage already costs billions a year

Even before the crackdown, the construction industry was bleeding money.

The Home Builders Institute’s fall 2025 report estimated the skilled labor shortage costs homebuilders about $10.8 billion a year.

That breaks down to roughly $2.66 billion in higher carrying costs and $8.14 billion in lost construction, or about 19,000 homes that never get built. The average homebuilder is 57 years old.

The industry needed an estimated 454,000 new workers on top of normal hiring just to meet 2025 demand.

Workers vanish from job sites across the country

ICE has raided construction sites in Florida, South Texas, New Orleans, California, and Pennsylvania. Roofers were among the first targeted because they are easy to spot on job sites.

But the effect goes far beyond undocumented workers.

Contractors say even legal workers with green cards or citizenship are staying home out of fear of racial profiling or worry about family members.

One D.C.-area contractor dropped from 45 workers to 30, not because work dried up, but because workers did.

Florida showed what enforcement fear can do

Florida offered a preview in 2023. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed SB 1718, one of the strictest state immigration laws in the country.

It required E-Verify and penalized employers who hired undocumented workers.

Immigrant workers left the state before the law even took full effect, leaving construction sites empty. One Tampa-area builder told colleagues to wait six months, predicting weak enforcement.

Some workers did return, but the episode showed how fast a labor force can disappear when fear spreads.

The U.S. is millions of homes short

The country lacks sufficient housing, and the gap is enormous. A Zillow analysis of Census data puts the shortage at about 4.7 million units.

Other estimates range from 1.5 million from NAHB to 5.5 million from the National Association of Realtors. Home construction dropped sharply after the Great Recession and still has not returned to pre-2008 levels.

That shortage is the main reason home prices have risen faster than incomes for years. Losing construction workers would make the gap harder to close.

Tariffs pile more costs onto new homes

Labor is not the only pressure. Tariffs on building materials are adding to the pain.

An April 2025 NAHB survey found tariffs had already added an estimated $10,900 to the cost of an average new home. Steel and aluminum face a 50% tariff.

Softwood lumber carries a 10% tariff plus existing duties.

Construction input costs rose about 2.8% overall in 2025, with tariff-exposed materials like copper wire surging 22%.

The Center for American Progress estimated tariff-driven cost increases could mean 450,000 fewer homes built through 2030.

Researchers warn that deportations would cut jobs for everyone

The Economic Policy Institute concluded in a July 2025 report that deporting 4 million people by 2028 could wipe out about 1.4 million immigrant construction jobs. But the damage would not stop there.

The same analysis projected a net loss of 861,000 U.S.-born construction jobs, because removing part of the workforce forces contractors to scale back or shut down.

Research on Trump’s first-term Secure Communities program found stricter enforcement led to lasting drops in construction labor and rising home prices.

The White House says Americans can fill the gap

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Republican lawmakers met at the White House to discuss eroding Hispanic voter support.

Rep. Monica De La Cruz of Texas held separate meetings to propose legislation streamlining visa programs for agriculture and construction workers.

A White House spokesperson said there is no shortage of American workers and that the president’s agenda creates jobs for Americans while enforcing immigration laws.

The White House also pointed to the Labor Department’s Office of Immigration Policy, set up in June 2025 to help industries use the temporary worker visa process.

Two promises collide with no easy fix

The construction industry sits right where two of the president’s biggest promises crash into each other: mass deportation and lower housing costs.

Builders say they do not want open borders or amnesty, but they need a legal path to hire workers Americans have not replaced.

Some GOP lawmakers have discussed the Dignity Act, a bipartisan bill that would update work visas and offer legal status to unauthorized immigrants who meet certain requirements.

Rep. Henry Cuellar said he asked ICE’s acting director to create a business liaison for the construction industry.

Whether the administration changes course before November could shape both housing costs and Republican vote margins.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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