Federal immigration arrests reshape home-building labor, builders say

Framing costs more than doubled on a typical home, builders report

Scott Brannock, president of Jacksonville-based Tidewater Homes and the Northeast Florida Builders Association, said crews have largely vanished from his job sites. “We’re almost dead in the water because our workforce is gone,” Brannock said, adding that national builders are missing projections and losing hundreds of thousands of dollars on slabs sitting on the ground without framers to put up walls.

A September survey from the National Association of Home Builders found the cost of labor increased a median of 4.2% from the previous year. The shortages come as the country works to bring down housing costs that have priced millions of Americans out of homeownership and slowed sales.

Immigration enforcement operations have primarily affected trades such as roofers, painters and framers. In some markets, data center construction has drawn away HVAC technicians and electricians with wages home builders say they struggle to match.

Immigration-enforcement advocates argue that deportations will drive down housing costs by removing competition for housing and that builders should hire U.S. citizens instead. “It is an absurd contention that we should stop deporting immigration lawbreakers simply because construction companies want to employ them,” said Matthew O’Brien, deputy executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Last year, immigration arrests had only limited impact on the home-building industry outside a few pockets, such as South Texas. That changed as the Trump administration scaled up immigration arrests to record levels over the summer. Jacksonville became a hot spot, with some subcontractors estimating 70% of their workforce has been lost. The impact has since spread. “It seems to have become ubiquitous,” said Jim Tobin, NAHB chief executive.

Paul Schwinghammer, co-founder of Hallmark Homes and former president of the Indiana Builders Association, estimated that in Indiana immigration enforcement has taken out up to 25% of the residential-construction workforce. In 2024, immigrants accounted for 26% of construction workers nationwide, a record high, according to the NAHB.

“Talking with large shell contractors, large builders, I don’t think they fully anticipated or estimated the amount of immigrant labor that are on our job sites every day,” Brannock said.

Builders report that immigration agents have frequently pulled over workers driving with construction materials and raided building sites. “These operations target illegal employment networks that undermine American workers, destabilize labor markets, and threaten American communities,” a Department of Homeland Security representative said.

David Hacker, owner of Construction Specialties of North Florida, said he has had to pick up trailers from the side of the road after crews were detained. Hacker said he has seen a 70% reduction of crews available for certain jobs, forcing the remaining crews to double their rates. He has launched a recruitment campaign offering significant cash bonuses for applications.

“These are massive hits to the cost to build,” Hacker said, “not to mention the delays.” The arrests have also frightened foreign-born workers with legal status, some of whom have been caught up in operations and detained for days at a time, builders and subcontractors said. Many legal residents have stopped showing up to work or moved to other parts of the country.

“People are afraid. If there’s any wind of anything happening, they’re not coming in for a week,” said Matt Risinger, a builder in Austin, Texas.

A June National Bureau of Economic Research paper found that each single arrest by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement causes an average of seven likely undocumented immigrant men to stop working.

Building a house is largely a linear process, in which one stage cannot occur until another has been completed. “That costs money in interest, site labor, site management, rental equipment, utilities, insurance,” Schwinghammer said. Wages reflect the strain: Brannock said local framers’ wages used to work out to about $20 an hour and now run $40 to $45. For the average 2,500-square-foot house, framing labor that once cost $10,000 now runs $25,000 to $28,000, he said.

For 18 years, Eddy Velazquez did siding, framing, roofing and bathroom remodels in Florida. He typically worked on 10 different homes at any given time and had planned to build his own house to sell later this year. “I really love the construction,” he said. He was pulled over in March on his way to a job. After a month-and-a-half in detention, Velazquez was deported to his native Mexico, leaving the crew he was part of without one of its most experienced workers.

“There’s no one lining up to do a lot of these jobs,” said Josh Putnal, owner of a siding-and-soffit subcontractor in Jacksonville.