Republicans finally fix the labor shortage by scaring off everyone who works
America’s construction industry is running out of people to actually build things, thanks to convicted felon Donald Trump’s “law and order” obsession with arresting the same workers who keep the country’s infrastructure from collapsing. Immigration crackdowns have turned job sites into ghost towns, checkpoints into daily hazards, and skilled Latino crews into targets. Even U.S. citizens are getting detained because their last name sounds inconvenient.
For years, the construction industry — in which on average one in three workers is foreign-born — has struggled with a yawning labor shortage that President Trump’s immigration crackdown is making worse, industry officials warn. In D.C., for example, that has meant Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) checkpoints that have swept up Latino workers on their way to and from work.
“I personally saw a checkpoint here on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway,” Palomino says. “All construction pickups. So, it’s happening.”
“People are scared,” he continues.
As ICE agents fan out to detain and deport undocumented immigrants, their enforcement actions are creating unease among both undocumented and documented workers on building sites across the U.S., deepening the already severe labor shortage, slowing the pace of construction and driving up costs, industry officials and contractors say.
Under Trump’s second term, ICE has turned its attention from the border to the backbone of the economy. Raids near Home Depots, highways, and job sites have left contractors scrambling for labor while bridges and housing projects grind to a halt. The irony, as one builder told NPR, is that the same administration demanding more roads, walls, and factories is deporting the people who make those things exist. This is what is colloquially known as stupid.
White House stooges like Karoline Leavitt insist that deportations will “open up jobs for Americans.” But no one’s lining up to pour concrete for $25 an hour in the rain. You can’t make a labor shortage great again by deporting the labor.