Construction industry ‘hoping like hell’ Trump won’t crack down on undocumented labor force

Construction industry features large share of undocumented people, especially in post-Covid economic recovery

Leaders in the construction business, including Republicans, are worried that Donald Trump’s plans to carry out a mass deportation of undocumented immigrants will crater their industry, given its reliance on migrant workers.

“We will absolutely have a labor shortage,” developer George Fuller, mayor of McKinney Texas, a Dallas suburb that’s undergone a construction boom in recent years, toldThe Wall Street Journal. “Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, these industries depend on immigrant labor.”

Builders are praying they don’t get hit with the kind of dramatic workplace raids the Trump administration has talked about reinstating, Stan Marek, CEO of a Houston interior contracting company, added in an interview with the paper. These businesses are “putting their heads down and hoping like hell it doesn’t happen,” he said.

Studies suggest roughly one-third of U.S. construction workers are foreign-born, and that undocumented workers make up some 13 percent of the overall construction business.

That share of workers is likely even higher in states like Texas, a border state that both has an in-demand construction industry and a worker shortage in building trades. The state has the highest level of unauthorized workers in construction in the country, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

“I know it wasn’t the legal way,” Marco, a Honduran migrant who entered the U.S. illegally and has worked a series of construction jobs, recently told Texas Monthly, “but I was about to fulfill my dream of getting to be in this great country.”

Working in building jobs in the U.S. nets him four times the possible wages in his home country, Marco added. He told the publication that migrant labor is a common theme on Texas construction sites.

 “Everyone, man—even my boss is undocumented,” he said.

In recent years, as The Independent has reported, the state has spent billions fortifying the border and surging state troops to crack down on illegal crossings, with leaders like Governor Greg Abbott accusing the Biden administration of failing to crack down on illegal immigration.

Nonetheless, Texas has avoided passing a bill that would mandate E-Verify, the federal software used to check employee legal status.

Mass deportation would likely have a similar impact on states like California, Nevada, Washington, and Massachusetts, which also have large shares of migrant workers in the construction industry.

Donald Trump has vowed to immediately deport millions of undocumented people once he takes office, in what the Republican said would be a “bloody” operation.

He’s tapped Tom Homan, former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to be immigration czar. Homan was one of the architects of the Trump administration’s highly controversial family separation policy, and plans to use worksite raids to carry out the administration’s goals.