Texas losing construction, farm workers as fears of Trump’s mass-deportation plan loom

Although President Trump’s mass deportation plans haven’t played out at the scope and scale he promised, the fear spread by his rhetoric is still disrupting Texas construction sites, farms and school districts, experts maintain.

“We’ve been hearing stories over and over again where people are panicking right now, and because of that, they’re not only not showing up for work, they don’t want to be on the streets, they don’t want to be in public,” American Immigration Council Texas organizer Chelsie Kramer told the Current.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 37,660 undocumented migrants during Trump’s first month in office — below the nearly 60,000-a-month average under the Biden Administration. Even so, the effects of the Trump administration’s fear mongering — including posting online images of “violent criminals” detained by ICE and the spread of disinformation on social media — has stirred panic among Texas’ 1.6 million undocumented workers, Kramer said.

Faced with concerns about deportation, many of those workers are skipping out on construction jobs, abandoning work on farms and pulling their kids out of public schools — all of which are likely to hurt the Lone Star State economy, Kramer warns.

Undocumented migrants make up just 5% of Texas’s population but account for roughly 7% of workforce, according to American Immigration Council data. A quarter of Texas’ construction workers are undocumented.

Those undocumented laborers aren’t just working on small jobs, according to Kramer. Many of the state’s biggest construction firms regularly subcontract out major projects, not to intentionally skirt immigration law but because of a labor shortage, she explained.

There are more than 500,000 vacant construction jobs across the nation due to the tight labor market, according to the U.S. Bureau Labor Statistics.

“Those subcontractors, especially [work site] leads, may then go hire a bunch of folks under the table to fill these job orders,” Kramer said. The big construction companies may not even be aware of the immigration status of people hired by subcontractors, she added. “All they know is that they’re getting that work done.”

Absences by Texas’ undocumented farm workers have also increased since Trump took office, according to Kramer. That creates problems getting agricultural products to market.

Out of Texas’ 60 main crops, only five can be mechanically harvested, Kramer said. That means farmers face the prospect of losing product as it dies in the fields or hiring more expensive workers to replace migrant labor.

“It’s going to take a little bit of time for us to actually see [the effects] because of how delayed these economic reporting numbers are,” Kramer said. “But if people are already feeling it on their job sites right now … then it’s just a matter of time until we start seeing our housing and food prices continue to rise.”

The American Immigration Council has also received reports of undocumented families pulling their  kids out of schools because of concern immigration agents could detain them up while on campus, according to Kramer.

Statewide, nearly 5% of children have at least one family member who’s undocumented. Closer to home, San Antonio Independent School District confirmed it has at least 3,000 undocumented students.

SAISD board member Ed Garza, a former San Antonio mayor, recently told Current the district’s high number of undocumented students may explain a sudden uptick in absences in the weeks following Trump’s inauguration.

“If it’s not the flu, if it’s not some other external issue, then one would conclude that it’s got to be something else,” Garza said. “And the only external factor that seems to be on the minds of many families and students is a visit by law enforcement agencies to remove a student or talk to a student.”

Absences at Texas work sites and schools are likely to increase if the White House steps up the pace of immigration enforcement actions. This week, a Trump administration official told USA Today that deportations are poised to rise in coming months as it works to expedite removals.

Should that become reality, an economic downturn is likely to follow, according to the American Immigration Council.

The organization estimates that Trump’s mass deportation plan — deporting one million undocumented migrants annually until none remain — would slash the nation’s gross domestic product by 4.2% to 6.8%. The effects would be felt hardest in Florida, California and Texas, the group predicts.

“Our [state’s] biggest asset is that Texas-Mexico border and our access to a very large labor force that’s willing to do a lot of work that native-born U.S. citizens just are not willing to do,” Kramer said. “We benefit from cheap food, cheap housing — across the board.”

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This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2025.