This South Texas state turned to Trump. Now it’s red for his immigration policies.

PHARR, Texas – More than a year since President Donald Trump transformed the traditionally Democratic Rio Grande Valley, his deportation plan is moving forward for the region’s workers.

Several home builders who spoke to NBC News said they were worried about making it through the year without framers, foundations, drywallers and other workers arrested in immigration raids or too afraid to work.

Several builders openly admit that the district relies on immigrant workers, many of them undocumented, many of whom have been working and living there for years.

“This is going to put us out of business if it continues,” said Ronnie Cavazos, president of the South Texas Builders Association and owner of construction company The Structure Team in Mission, this month at a luncheon near McAllen, Texas.

The district has largely avoided confrontations between federal agents and opponents of Trump’s immigration policies, despite the high number of immigrants. Many support strict border policies and targeted enforcement and deportation.

But Trump’s mass-deportation agenda is having a negative impact on the southernmost part of the state, several business owners said. While the construction industry is the hardest hit, other parts of the county’s economy are also struggling, including employee-owned restaurants, real estate agents and some retailers.

Jaime Lee Gonzalez, of McAllen Realtor, said he has an investor lined up to buy more than 100 properties who was reluctant because he was afraid “when they start building they won’t be able to finish the job.”

Maria Vasquez, 40, who drives a cart in the store’s parking lot, said she had to make a “change” in her household budget. Since construction is at a standstill, her husband works part-time building house frames and earns a small income.

“Obviously, the water bill, the electricity, the rent, those you can’t negotiate. Where you can fix it is in the food – you take it off your list, the juices, the things the kids want. Chips? No,” she said.

Builders acknowledge other economic factors, such as inflation or interest rates, may also be at work. But Mario Guerrero, the agency’s executive director, described immigration detention and staff shortages as a “punch” that could end some lives.

‘This one is taken’

“We sell flooring. We sell tile to contractors, to custom builders, and it affects our business a lot,” said Luis Rodriguez, sales manager at Materiales del Valle in McAllen. “I have orders, but my customers don’t follow them, they don’t have anyone to deliver them.”

Xavier Vazquez, owner of Summit Valley Homes, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested almost all of the stucco workers. As he tried to close himself, he found out that “this one was taken or that one was taken.”

It’s tricky trying to find people to fill their vacancies, as “you also want it to be a good job,” said Vazquez, whose three-year-old company has been building throughout the Rio Grande Valley.

Paul Rodriguez, CEO at Valley Land Title Co. in McAllen, he said he started noticing a decline in residential mortgage loans last summer. Things got worse in the fall. The downward trend was not consistent with normal seasonal variation, he said.

What was happening, he said, was that ICE was showing up at his clients’ locations, raiding and checking the immigration status of the workers. “I don’t have to say that there are many people in the workplace who probably don’t have books,” he said.

When labor shortages slow construction, builders must get extensions, which means more interest on the loan, which means more costs, Rodriguez and others said.

Members of the South Texas Builders Association, who recently traveled to Washington and met with members of Congress, want Trump and his administration to stop arresting his workers who have not committed serious crimes.

Guerrero said his industry is not like the agriculture industry, which has long used undocumented workers — about 40% by 2022, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

The American Immigration Council estimates that about 23% of construction workers in Texas are undocumented. Cavazos and others see the stake in the Rio Grande Valley as high.

“It is well understood in the Valley. It is true how it works,” said Vazquez. “Some of these people start saying, ‘Oh, it’s because we’re trying to get away from cheap labor.’ Now. That’s what we have.”

In an email to NBC News, the White House responded that Trump signed an executive order last April on workforce readiness that, among other things, will create apprenticeships to address shortages in construction and other workers. The administration also created an Office of Immigration Policy at the Department of Labor to help employers with their workforce needs, including easing visa processes for temporary workers, the White House said.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said “there is no shortage of American minds and hands to grow our power,” adding that one in 10 adults are unemployed and not pursuing college or career education.

“President Trump will continue to grow our economy, create opportunities for American workers and ensure that all sectors have the legitimate workers they need to succeed,” Jackson said.

A challenge to Trump’s red tide?

The Rio Grande Valley swung in the 2024 presidential election, handing Trump a victory in the historically Democratic, heavily Latino district.

Guerrero said he does not regret his vote for Trump. He blames former President Joe Biden for the large number of immigrants who arrived at the border, including those from McAllen. He supported Trump’s campaign promise to focus on “the worst,” he said. But he said President Barack Obama was “the king of deportation.”

“Why doesn’t he ever scare people?” Guerrero asked. “Because he was conducting a real investigation of who they were looking for and he did it well.”

In Trump’s first nine months in office, deportations from the U.S. interior have soared due to a jump in street arrests, much of which targeted people who have never been convicted of a crime, NBC News reported.

Isaac Smith, owner of Matt’s Building Materials in Pharr, Texas, and a Republican voter, said his store has had to put out a large volume of loans to customers because of price drops over the past eight months.

But a Democratic flip in the Rio Grande Valley is more of a risk than a certainty, he said.

Smith agrees with those who consider all people who cross 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 some immigrants are coming to receive tax-subsidy benefits.

But “the system has been made this way for decades, and you can’t reverse it,” he said. “What we can hope for is that people pay their fair share and we are reasonable about how we process people in our country.”

According to a recent NBC News Decision Desk poll, 60% of adults strongly or somewhat disapprove of Trump’s handling of border security and immigration, compared to 40% approval. In addition, nearly three-quarters of those polled said they wanted changes to ICE.

Armando Rodriguez, the owner of Castle Bridge, which makes residential and commercial buildings, does not agree with the builders who he says are “protesting” the raid on the work site, adding that “it shows that they want to get cheap labor and make more profit for themselves.”

“All my people have documents. I got ICE and they were working well. My boys show their ID and they leave them alone. I have been visited three times,” said Rodriguez. He said he has been building homes and commercial properties for 22 years, making $3 million to $4 million a year in construction.

Like other builders, he uses a subcontractor who says he has employees who fill out tax forms and show proof of having a Social Security number.

“I feel bad about what is happening, but I have a business to run, so I did the right thing, I hired Americans,” he said.

Building a fence to protect workers

On the site where he built his residence, Guerrero placed a gate similar to the one seen at the entrance to the farms. It is locked and chained and the code on it is changed every week, he said. A few white maps with hired guards stand near the door.

Guerrero said the builders were told by the agency’s agents that if the general public can’t enter their site, they won’t be able to because it’s a private property. Some workers will only agree to work in areas where such safety is in place, say builders.

Some builders say the fence adds cost and isn’t enough, because workers have to come to the job site and ICE can wait outside to arrest workers or pick them up at stops.

Texas uses state highway troopers to help ICE check the status of immigrants, and requires sheriff’s offices to sign agreements with ICE to help with enforcement. The Rio Grande Valley also has more internal Border Patrol checkpoints, and Customs and Border Protection plans to add more to the area.

Homebuilders and other business leaders have asked elected officials to grant H-2B visas to their industry. The visa is for temporary, non-agricultural workers and is often used in hospitality and tourism, landscaping, construction and other industries.

There have not been enough H-2B visas to meet demand in recent years, according to the American Immigration Council.

H-2B visas are capped annually at 66,000, but the Trump administration added another 64,716 H-2B visas this year. On Feb. 6, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that it had “more than enough” applications for the first three allocations of visas for the year.

Guerrero said he is not alone in his “disappointment” with the president’s immigration laws. And he thinks the sentiment sets an ominous tone for GOP prospects in the region, in the middle and above.

“I can assure you, Sigodi will never be red again,” he said. “At least not anytime soon.”