Immigration Crackdown Undermines Trump Supporters’ Businesses

Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign highlighted a “largest deportation” pledge, promises to close the border and restrict birthright citizenship, and claims that tighter enforcement would lower living costs for voters. After taking office, the administration expanded detention facilities and intensified ICE operations, especially in South Texas. The shift from rhetoric to enforcement has produced outcomes that many of the same voters did not anticipate.

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Texas businessman David Reyna, who runs a lumber yard and a real-estate venture in the Rio Grande Valley, reports that construction projects have stalled and a home he was building remains unfinished. ICE arrests in South Texas rose from roughly 400 in 2024 to more than 9,000 by 2026, with nearly 80 % of those detained lacking criminal records. Construction payrolls in the Brownsville-Harlingen area have fallen 5 % from a year earlier, while Cameron County’s labor force has contracted by almost 2 %, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal data. Restrictions on commercial driver’s licenses for some immigrants have also strained the regional trucking sector.

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A new Associated Press-KFF survey of over 2,000 rural voters—many of whom supported Trump in 2024—found that four in 10 now say the president has “gone too far” on legal immigration limits or deportations. A Cook Political Report-TelevisaUnivision poll shows more than one-fifth of Hispanic Trump voters in Texas would refuse to back a generic Republican House candidate, and nearly two-thirds say deportation policies make them less likely to support any Republican.

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• “We didn’t think this administration was going to crack down on undocumented workers that hard,” — David Reyna

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• “I don’t think anybody saw that coming,” — David Reyna

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• “It’s easy to see a lot of jobsites aren’t moving the way they normally do,” — David Reyna

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