Rhetoric or reality?

Trump has not detailed how his proposed “whole-of-government” effort to deport up to 20 million people – far more than the undocumented population – would work, but he has made them the focus of his housing proposal. The Republican candidate claims mass deportations will free up housing for U.S. citizens and drive down prices, although few economists agree. The idea was also met with skepticism on logistical grounds, with some analysts saying the costs would be “astronomical.”

There are also great doubts among house builders that Trump would keep his promise.

“They don’t think it’s going to happen,” Stan Marek, CEO of the Marek Family of Companies, a Texas-based specialty supplier firm, said of industry colleagues. “You would lose so many people that you wouldn’t be able to put together a team to build a house.”

Bryan Dunn, an Arizona-based senior vice president at Big-D Construction, a large Southwest firm, called “the idea that they could actually drive that many people” out of the country “almost ridiculous.” The proposal has caused the industry to “find out how big the political scaremongering is,” he said.

But while Trump has a history of tossing around outlandish ideas without seriously pursuing them — such as buying Greenland — he has also embraced other once-radical measures that, despite intense criticism and litigation, have set the terms of the political debate redefine. That's particularly true on immigration, where his administration has redirected Pentagon funds to build a border wall, banned travel from several Muslim-majority countries and separated migrant children from their parents.

Trump has emphasized his deportation case on the stump, at times using racist rhetoric, such as claiming that thousands of immigrants commit murder because “it's in their genes.” This month he accused immigrant gangs of “raiding and conquering” towns like Aurora, Colorado, which local authorities deny and said they needed government support but did not want to take part in mass deportations. Still, recent polls have found broad support for deporting people who entered the U.S. illegally.

“President Trump’s mass deportation of illegal immigrants will not only make our communities safer, but it will also save Americans from footing the bill for years to come,” Taylor Rogers, a Republican National Committee spokesman for the campaign, said in a statement referred to undocumented people using tax-funded social services and other federal programs.

Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that the former president's comments about genetics “clearly referred to murderers, not migrants.”

Tobin said the NAHB has real concerns about the deportation proposal but is participating in both campaigns. She urged policymakers to “let developers build” by easing zoning and other regulatory hurdles and improving developers’ access to financing.

“The rhetoric on immigration is at 11,” Tobin said. “We need to have a serious conversation about immigration policy and reform in this country, and we can’t delay it any longer.”

Marek, who has long advocated for more opportunities for undocumented people to work legally in construction, said reforms are decades overdue. As an employer, “I do everything I can to make sure everyone is legal,” he said, even as the industry's hunger for low-cost labor has created a shadow economy that he said often exploits the undocumented workers they rely on is instructed.

“We need them. They are building our houses – and have been doing so for 30 years,” he said. “The loss of workers would devastate our businesses, our industry and our economy.”

“The math just isn’t right.”

There is evidence that foreign-born construction workers help keep the housing market under control. An analysis published in December 2022 by the George W. Bush Institute and Southern Methodist University found that U.S. metropolitan areas with the fastest-growing immigrant populations had the lowest construction costs.

“Immigrant construction workers in Sun Belt metropolitan areas such as Raleigh, Nashville, Houston, and San Antonio have helped these cities maintain their housing cost advantage over coastal cities even as demand for housing grows rapidly,” the authors write.

But builders need a lot more workers anyway. “The math just doesn’t add up” to absorb the blow of mass deportations, said Ron Hetrick, a senior labor economist at workforce analytics firm Lightcast. “That would be incredibly disruptive” and would have “a very, very significant impact on housing,” he said.

According to the contract processor ADP, private employers have created new jobs in this area over the last decade. Employment is now over 8 million, more than 1 million more since the pandemic. But as Hetrick noted, “the average high school student doesn’t aspire to do this work,” and the existing workforce is aging—the average home builder is 57 years old.

Undocumented workers are likely fleeing national deportation efforts, Hetrick said, even though many have been in the U.S. for well over a decade. He assumes that such a policy would also trigger an exodus of people with legal authorization.

“That’s exactly what happened in Florida,” he said.

Past as prologue

Last year, the state's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, enacted a series of restrictions and penalties to prevent the employment of undocumented workers. Many immigrant workers hastily left the state even before the measures took effect, and videos on social media showed some construction sites standing empty.

“These laws show they have no idea what we do,” said Luciano, a carpenter originally from Mexico who has worked on residential buildings throughout South Florida for a decade.

“No one else would work in the conditions we work in,” the 40-year-old said in Spanish, asking to be identified by his first name because he does not have legal immigration status despite living in the United States for more than 20 years . Workers on construction sites “have an entry time but no exit time” and often spend 70-hour weeks in rain and extreme heat, he said.

Taylor recalled the panic of his colleagues in Florida at the time of the nationwide raid, but said he reassured them: “Look, just give it six months. We don’t have enough people to enforce it, so they’re coming back.”

Republican Rep. Rick Roth, who voted for the measure, later acknowledged that Florida was unprepared for the destabilization it would cause and urged immigrants not to flee, saying the law was “not as bad as you.” have heard”.

Some workers returned after realizing the guidelines weren't being strictly enforced, Taylor said: “Of course, things are more normal now.”

DeSantis' office did not respond to a request for comment.

When Arizona enacted some of the country's strictest immigration restrictions at the time in 2010, Dunn was working in Tempe as an executive at a construction management firm. When the legislation took effect, he said, “a lot of people moved away and just never came back.”

When much of the law was repealed in 2012, he said, Arizona “had a bad reputation” compared to other states that were “much more open and just less difficult to work in.”

Dunn, a Democrat, said he “definitely” supports Vice President Kamala Harris, but other construction executives sounded more divided. Marek, a “lifelong Republican,” declined to reveal how he votes, but noted that “many Republicans are not voting for Trump.”

Taylor also wouldn't say which candidate he supports, but praised Trump's ability to “get things done.”

“We struggle with many other economic issues every day that have nothing to do with immigration reform,” he said. “I’m not a one-policy voter.”