TX Construction Industry In Panic Over Deportations

November 23, 2024 Business, Housing

Texas’ business and economic sectors say mass deportations could upend some of the state’s major industries that rely on undocumented labor, chief among them the booming construction industry.

“It would devastate our industry, we wouldn’t finish our highways, we wouldn’t finish our schools,” said Stan Marek, CEO of Marek, a Houston-based commercial and residential construction giant. “Housing would disappear. I think they’d lose half their labor.”

That Texas relies on undocumented labor is one of the state’s open secrets, despite Republicans’ tough-on-immigration stances. In 2022, more than a half million immigrants worked in the construction industry, according to a report by Texans for Economic Growth. Nearly 60% of that workforce was undocumented.

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Texas will be on the front lines of Trump’s mass deportation of immigrants as a logistics hub, with much of US immigrant detention capacity and longest border. Should his plan be fully carried out, Texas economy and Texas families could face devastation https://t.co/zFdkS97BHB

— Alfons López Tena 🦇 (@alfonslopeztena) November 18, 2024