President Donald Trump’s promised immigration crackdown has begun.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said this week it has ramped up efforts to arrest and detain people unauthorized to be in the U.S. It is targeting individuals with criminal backgrounds including minor offenses, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The agency has started posting daily numbers around detentions and arrests on X, formerly known as Twitter, and said it had made around 1,000 arrests each day this week so far. By contrast, ICE arrested approximately 310 people a day during former President Joe Biden’s last year in office, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Construction traditionally has relied on foreign-born employees to deliver projects. About 26% of workers in construction are immigrants and 13% of people employed in the industry are not authorized to work in the U.S., according to Pew Research Center estimates.
But it remains unclear just how Trump' s actions will impact construction’s labor market.
“I can guarantee you things will change sometimes from a day-to-day basis,” said Jorge Lopez, chair of San Francisco-based law firm Littler Mendelson’s immigration and mobility practice group.
Having practiced immigration law through Trump’s first term, Lopez said the start of his second administration lines up with his past experience. The second Trump presidency will likely bring a series of ever-changing legal battles.
“I will be shocked if there’s nothing else but mayhem going on for the next four years,” Lopez told Construction Dive.
But Trump’s top aides are split, Lopez noted. Elon Musk, the leader of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, has championed H-1B visas, for example. On the other hand, Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, is “anti-immigration, period,” Lopez said.
EB-3 and H-1B visas generally apply to positions that require college degrees, meaning they are less likely to be appropriate for construction workers coming to the U.S. for blue collar jobs, while H-2B visas provide temporary foreign workers access to industries, and are more likely to connect employers to potential construction workers.
Logistics and questions
While Trump campaigned on deporting anyone unauthorized to live and work in the U.S., doing so would be monumentally expensive, said Anirban Basu, chief economist for Associated Builders and Contractors. Basu said that estimates indicate it would cost $88 billion to deport 1 million people in one year.
“You're spending $88 billion to reduce your workforce. That, in my mind, doesn't make a ton of economic sense,” he said.
Meanwhile, the president issued an executive order on Jan. 20 to end birthright citizenship, a move which has since been temporarily blocked by a federal judge. States and civil rights groups filed suit against the ruling, and a long legal battle may await to see if it can go into effect.
The birthright citizenship question would raise logistical hurdles for determining which people born in the U.S. qualify for citizenship, lawyers told the Washington Post. The system to check citizenship status could also result in delays or errors in proving citizenship, even for those who qualify, the Post reported.
“[Increased scrutiny and audits are] also extremely disruptive to workers, whether they’re work authorized or not,” said Marisa Diaz, immigrant worker justice program director for the New York City-based National Employment Law Project. “We see workers who do have work authorization, but are also sometimes fired as a result of audits given complications and re-verifying their information.”
John Dorer, CEO of eb3.work, agreed that Trump’s policies are tough to predict, noting that the president employs people on work visas at his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago. Dorer’s company helps employers connect with foreign-born workers and aids those workers with obtaining EB-3 visas, which permit permanent residence and work in the U.S.
“The optimist in me says that Trump is a pro-business leader, and right now the legal immigration process is very inefficient in relation to the needs of businesses,” Dorer said.
It’s possible Trump’s second administration leads to more immigration reform rather than the staunch anti-immigration stance of his first term, Lopez acknowledged. Nevertheless, Dorer said, there could be a chilling effect from Trump’s rhetoric and actions.
“If a company just sees or feels that it's going to be hard to sponsor a worker and it’s just going to be a general nightmare under this administration, they're not going to do it,” Dorer told Construction Dive. “Same with workers.”
