NPR reports President Donald Trump’s policies are clearing out whole sections of the U.S. construction industry and upsetting the Trump voters who work it.
Maryland-based plumbing and heating contractor Kenny Mallick says he voted for Trump and agrees with the president's stance that people who have committed crimes should be deported. But he added that Trump’s immigration crackdown is hurting business.
"We can't do what we do in this country without these people," Mallick told NPR. "They're stitched into every element of our fabric — from the people cooking in restaurants to the ones pouring concrete or laying brick." In return, he says, "we exploit the s—— out of these people."
“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,” reports NPR.
In D.C., business owner Rurick Palomino can’t ignore the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) checkpoints that have swept up Latino workers on their way to and from work
Palomino, a U.S. citizen originally from Peru, tells NPR that ICE agents are deliberately targeting the Washington, D.C. construction industry for easy arrests, and it’s having an impact.
"I personally saw a checkpoint here on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway," Palomino told NPR. "All construction pickups. So, it's happening. People are scared.”
Even before Trump returned to the White House in January, the U.S. was suffering a “severe labor shortage,” said NPR. But now ICE agents are fanning out to detain and deport undocumented immigrants, causing unease on building sites across the U.S. and “slowing the pace of construction and driving up costs,” according to industry officials and contractors.
A survey by the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) conducted over the summer found that 92 percent of construction firms struggle to fill positions. And in the past six months, 28 percent of surveyed firms said they were impacted by immigration actions. Five percent said ICE agents had visited a job site, 10 percent said they had lost workers due to actual or rumored ICE raids. Twenty percent, however, reported that the fear of ICE agents stalking work sites had caused subcontractors to lose staff.
"Firms say it's extremely disruptive when workers fail to show up or leave in the middle of a task," says Ken Simonson, chief economist at AGC a construction industry trade association. And while MAGA voices on X cheer arrests they also mean jobs get completed more slowly, driving up costs for the owner and contractor.
"A building project is step by step. So it's fine if you get the foundation poured and the beams up to hold up the building. But if you can't put on the roof, you're not going to be able to finish things off," said Simonson, adding he is concerned that "this is just the cusp of what we'll be seeing” under Trump.
NPR reports Mallick has worked in the construction industry for 30 years, but plans to step back from the business — in large part because of his frustration with the labor shortage.
He told NPR that he and other contractors need to stand up and tell the government: "Stop taking our people. We need them."
Read the full NPR report at this link.