Homebuilders are warning President Donald Trump that his aggressive immigration enforcement efforts are hurting their industry. They warned Republican candidates could soon be hurt, too.
Construction industry executives have held multiple meetings with the White House and Congress over the last month to discuss how the influx of immigrants at work sites and communities is scaring away workers, making it more expensive to build homes in a market desperate for new supply. In addition to affordability concerns, executives have made electability arguments that have raised concerns among Republican leaders who worry that support among Hispanic voters is declining, particularly in areas that have shifted to Trump in 2024.
Hill Republicans held separate meetings with White House officials to share their own election concerns.
This story is based on eight interviews with homebuilders, lawmakers and others familiar with the meeting.
“I told [lawmakers] Let’s put it bluntly: South Texas will never turn red again,” said Mario Guerrero, CEO of the South Texas Builders Association, a Trump voter who traveled to Washington last week.
He urged the government and lawmakers to relax enforcement on construction sites and warned employees not to go to work.
The construction industry is one of the latest and clearest examples of how the president’s agenda of mass evictions continues to conflict with his economic goals of lowering prices and his political goals of maintaining control of Congress. Even the president’s allies worry that the destruction of labor-intensive industries will undermine the gains Republicans have made among Latino voters in recent years, driven in large part by Trump’s economic agenda.
Those concerns were at the center of a White House meeting this week involving Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Speaker Mike Johnson and a group of Republican lawmakers, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. The group discusses growing concerns about Hispanic voters abandoning the Republican Party in droves, and the policies — immigration and affordability issues — that are driving those losses.
Rep. Monica de la Cruz (R-Texas) was among the lawmakers in attendance Wednesday. She joined South Texas leaders, one with Johnson and another with the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, to discuss new policy proposals to address worker shortages, including a streamlined visa program and legislation to address worker needs in the agriculture and construction industries.
Asked about the meeting, De La Cruz said in a statement to POLITICO: “I will continue to focus on what matters: providing common-sense policy solutions for hard-working immigrants who strengthen our communities and make housing more affordable for all Americans.”
This month, the White House held meetings with lawmakers and later with builders and trade groups. Some industry representatives held a meeting at the White House in early February, and the South Texas Builders Association traveled to Washington last week to meet with lawmakers, including Reps. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), Andy Harris (R-Md.) and Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), as well as an ICE official. All three are members of the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee, where Amoday and Cuellar are the top Republicans and Democrats.
“They started by saying, ‘Hey, we’re all Trump supporters, we thought he was going to secure the border and get rid of criminals, we just didn’t expect they were going to go after our people, our workers in this,'” Cuellar recalled of the information he shared when he first met with the builders. “They’re builders, contractors, lumber companies, cement companies, involved in the financial part of this. This ripple effect hurts their economy. Not just individuals, but their economy.”
Cuellar also said he had asked ICE acting director Todd Lyons to create an operational liaison to work with builders, an idea he said the director was receptive to but had stalled due to immigration-related conflicts in Minnesota.
A spokesman for Amodei was briefed by Cuellar’s office, while a spokesman for Harris did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the meeting.
A White House official did not comment on the meetings but pointed to the president’s efforts to develop and update plans to help Americans fill jobs in key fields. The official also highlighted the creation of the Labor Department’s Office of Immigration Policy, which was created to help industries by streamlining the visa process for temporary workers.
“America does not lack talent and hands to grow our workforce, and President Trump’s agenda to create jobs for American workers represents this administration’s commitment to harnessing untapped potential while fulfilling our mandate to enforce immigration laws,” White House Press Secretary Abigail Jackson said.
Danielle Alvarez, senior adviser to the Republican National Committee, said Trump won over Hispanic voters in 2024 because “his policies align with the priorities of our community.”
She cited multiple policies, including eliminating the tip tax, as well as the president’s efforts to lower prices “at grocery stores and gas stations” and bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. to create “good-paying jobs and a path to upward mobility.”
“We see our priorities reflected in an agenda focused on higher wages, lower costs and more opportunity,” she said in a statement.
The meeting this month comes after Democrats defeated Republicans in a special runoff for a state Senate seat in a pro-Trump district in Tarrant County that includes much of Fort Worth, rattling national Republicans. New research from the American Business Immigration Alliance and Comité de 100 shows that declining support among Latino voters could affect Republican-leaning districts in Texas, Pennsylvania, Florida and California.
Trump, whose own businesses rely on immigrant labor, has expressed sympathy with some of the concerns of industry leaders, including in hospitality and agriculture. The president changed his immigration policy last summer after raids on meatpacking plants and dairy farms in rural communities.
Still, Trump, Vice President Vance, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner and congressional Republicans blamed rising home prices on immigrants. (An analysis by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies does indeed push up demand for housing, with a spike in home prices and rents that precedes a recent surge in immigration in 2022 and 2023.)
Builders are continuing to push for targeted enforcement and have the White House and lawmakers examine policy solutions to help their industry find workers, including the creation of a new temporary visa program and legislation providing a path to citizenship.
Guerrero and others interviewed for this article complained about former President Joe Biden’s “open border policies” and argued that they did not support amnesty for immigrants who entered the country illegally, a key reason why many of them supported Trump. But they do want policies to help them hire legal workers.
At some meetings this month, attendees discussed the Dignity Act, a bipartisan bill spearheaded by Reps. Maria Salazar (R-Fla.) and Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) that would strengthen border security while modernizing work visas and providing legal status to illegal immigrants who meet certain criteria. Another bill introduced by Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.), sponsored by De La Cruz, would create new visa programs for certain industries, including construction and hospitality.
Johnny Vasquez, executive officer of the Rio Grande Valley Builders Association, noted that Hidalgo County will turn red with the presidential election in 2024 — and he believes Republicans will lose gains if policies don’t change.
“For me and our association, we need workers, whether they are American or not,” he said. “We just need workers.”
Mia McCarthy and Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.