NEW REPORT: America’s Voice “End the ICE Tax” Finds Mass Deportation Is Gutting Construction and Driving Up Costs Across Texas

Rio Grande Valley construction jobs post their largest quarterly drop on record as ICE arrests surge in South Texas

TEXAS – A new report from America’s Voice,”End the ICE Tax,” details how the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda is raising prices, costing jobs, and hollowing out local economies, with Texas among the clearest examples of the damage: 

• Construction jobs in the Rio Grande Valley just posted their largest quarterly drop on record. Employment fell 5 percent in the third quarter of 2025. “Business is down significantly,” said Ronnie Cavazos, board president of the South Texas Builders Association. “If we continue on this trajectory, we will see a lot of businesses fail.”
• Single-family home permits fell 9.3 percent across the South region since the enforcement surge began, the same regional pattern showing up in the Rio Grande Valley’s construction slowdown.
• Nationally, consumer spending drops 6.2 percent and foot traffic falls 2.7 percent at the average business the weeks after ICE enforcement hits a metro area — and the damage doesn’t fade over time.
• Immigrants make up 26 percent of the construction workforce nationally, about half of them undocumented — exactly the workforce ICE has targeted hardest in South Texas.
• ICE arrests in Laredo spiked more than 133-fold. Monthly arrests rose from an average of 6 to 803 after operations began.
• Brookings data show San Antonio was one of 86 U.S. cities where ICE enforcement surged in 2025 — the same surge-city dataset highlighting national jobs-loss findings. Monthly arrests there rose from an average of 123 to 692, a 462 percent increase.
• The Rio Grande Valley has absorbed nearly a fifth of all ICE arrests statewide. More than 9,100 people have been arrested in the region.

To read the full “ICE Tax” report, click here.

The report calls that cost the “ICE Tax”: the price families pay every day because the government is choosing mass deportation led by ICE agents over the economic well-being of everyday Americans. While Texas doesn’t rank among the five states with the highest overall immigrant share of the workforce, the report finds the same pattern playing out region by region: where ICE goes, construction slows and homebuilding stalls. 

The campaign calls on the Trump administration and Congress to reverse course and end the “ICE Tax” by ending the mass deportations that are squeezing American families in every corner of the country.

Statement from Joanna Kuebler, Chief of Programs at America’s Voice:

“Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s mass deportation agenda is leaving communities broken and poorer. Monthly ICE arrests in Laredo went from six to 803, and now construction jobs across the Rio Grande Valley are falling at the fastest rate on record, builders are warning businesses won’t survive, and Texas families are left paying more for homes that take longer to build. Instead of working to bring costs down, they’ve chosen a deportation machine that terrorizes our communities, guts our industries, and sticks every family with the bill. It’s time to end the ‘ICE tax’ and put Texas families ahead of a reckless policy that has caused costs to rise.”

Read about the report in Spanish here.