TEXAS — Board members from the South Texas Builders Association recently met with representatives of Gov. Greg Abbott’s office in Austin to explain the economic damage that the group says is happening at the hands of ongoing immigration enforcement.

“We’re facing a construction crisis,” said South Texas Builders Association CEO Mario Guerrero.

Prior to meeting with the governor’s office, the Association traveled to the nation’s capital to meet with elected officials, U.S. Department of Immigration and Enforcement (ICE) and Department of Health and Human Services (DHS) heads, and other policymakers.

Since late spring, the group of construction contractors has sounded the alarm, saying ICE enforcement on job sites is killing a big section of the American labor force.

“We’re seeing a huge decline of homes being finished,” said Guerrero.

Numbers released by ICE and broken down by the Deportation Data Project show 9,100 immigrants, many working in home construction, have been arrested in South Texas. Over 45,000 total across the Lone Star State have been arrested since President Donald Trump took office for his second term.

“I think we should give anyone an opportunity who wants to be a part of any work forces they want to be in,” Guerrero said.

The Texas economy stalled in 2025. Job growth was near zero. Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve of Dallas released its 2026 outlook report. Economists found four key factors contributing to stagnant growth: higher tariffs, federal government cutbacks, widespread policy uncertainty, and falling immigration.

“It’s definitely slowed down our projects,” said Alexis Hernandez of Treasure Builders, LLC. “We’re running behind two to three months behind on each project.”

Hernandez has witnessed immigration agents targeting his construction projects in real time.

“In 2025 we got raided about 12 times,” he said.

Dozens of his workers were arrested and no longer helping complete his home construction contracts.

Both contractors, Guerrero and Hernandez, share the same worry. With thousands of workers rounded up in this region alone, labor is harder than usual to come by.

“A house like this usually would be finished in six months,” said Hernandez. “Right now, we’re looking at around eight to ten months.”

“Seven to nine to twelve months to finish a project. We have business owners right now trying to get extensions on their loans because there is a lack of workforce in South Texas,” said Guerrero.

Research collected by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a leading nonpartisan think tank that studies the nation’s economic engine, found that the explosion of the United States labor force between 1994 and 2024 was possible primarily because of immigration. The same study released in April 2025 found that workers in their prime years (age 25 through 54) grew by 13.6 million people. EPI data shows that for the United States, immigrants’ share of total output was 18% in 2023, or $2.1 trillion in 2024 dollars. The breakdown highlights that the contribution of immigrants to economic output is greater than their share of the total population. Immigrants made up 14.3% of the total U.S. population in the same year.

At a Treasure Builders construction project, Hernandez was asked if Americans are filling the jobs left behind by immigrants picked up by ICE

“Nope,” he said.

Guerrero added that something must be done to address the labor shortage and that he’s not waiting on a government fix.

“I am a second-generation builder. This is all that we know, and we have to protect it by teaching people how to build houses,” Guerrero said.