South Texas builders say ICE raids are back, mourn death of slain construction worker

The outspoken group of builders along the Texas-Mexico border says U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement work site and truck raids are increasingly dangerous after a 52-year-old homebuilder died in Houston, while legal supporters describe immigrant workers as being hunted across the state. 

About 300 people gathered inside the Brookhaven Event Center in Pharr for a South Texas Builders Association meeting on Wednesday — the third of its kind in the past 12 months. 

The group held a moment of silence for their fellow industry member who died in Houston this month: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. 

Construction industry advocates worry that sweeping immigration reform to enable work permits does not appear to be a presidential priority, nor a priority at the state and local level among political leaders. 

“We have a lot to offer America [as Mexican-Americans]. It’s not going in the direction that we wanted. We’ve got to fix these problems together,” said Ronnie Cavazos, owner of Structure Team, a Valley homebuilder and South Texas Builders Association board member. 

Cavazos said he saw a mirror of his own father in Lorenzo, who also had three sons and sent them to college by working in construction in Texas as an immigrant from Mexico. 

“Hard work, dedication, getting up in the morning early,” he said. “I can imagine Lorenzo saying the same thing to his sons [like work hard] while they were growing up. We shot him? Really? That’s who we’re supporting with this administration? But let’s be real, we voted [for Trump] so whose fault was it? I’ll take the blame.” 

The initial sweep of President Donald Trump administration-backed ICE raids began about a year ago, shaking the confidence of communities without legal documentation to show up for work and leaving construction sites across the Rio Grande Valley empty while videos of masked individuals rounding up workers mid-hammer flooded social media. 

As of mid-year, construction loans at one local lender in the Valley were down 70% for residential homes, as the confluence of a housing glut, unaffordability, high interest rates, tariffs, and the worker shortage amplifies existing industry challenges. 

“Our builders are not asking for special treatment; we are asking for leadership that the Valley doesn’t have,” Mario Guerrero, the executive director of the South Texas Builders Association, said.

In early July, Salgado, the Houston homebuilder and business owner, was fatally shot by ICE agents during an encounter in which law enforcement claims he used a vehicle to ram the officers when approached. Passengers inside the vehicle, who were on their way to a job site, claim that federal agents rammed the homebuilder’s work vehicle instead. The agents did not have body cameras or dash cameras, according to the Texas Tribune. 

Security footage of the incident is available. It does not show agents using emergency lights or sirens during the encounter. Agents were not seeking to detain Salgado himself, a Mexican immigrant of nearly 35 years with no criminal record or deportation order who was a father and grandfather, advocates and family members said on social media. 

“No doubt about it, construction workers are being targeted by this administration; they’re easy to spot: they’re in work trucks, they get up early, and a large number of construction workers are undocumented,” said Jacob Montilijo Monty, a Houston-based immigration attorney representing Salgado Araujo’s family in court. “It’s no longer about finding out the bad hombres; it’s about filling an arbitrary quota of 2,000 people per day nationwide, so they’re just hunting for people that they can arrest and feed into this mass deportation machine, but it’s hurting the construction industry, the economy; it’s making housing take longer to build. Devastating consequences in a community that voted for President Trump.” 

Monty said that there is “no line” for immigrants interested in the path to legalization to get into; if an individual bypasses official checkpoints and enters the U.S., there are required penalties. 

“Our system is broken; they still have families to support, so they are working and there’s nothing that can be done for them until the law changes,” he said. “Masked agents, unmarked cars, that’s very dangerous. For 249 years we’ve had law enforcement in this country without masks; only last year did we institute this mask policy, which cost Mr. Salgado his life.” 

ICE was allocated $75 billion through 2029 for its immigration deportation efforts as part of the Big Beautiful Bill about a year ago. 

Those ICE raids in Texas have shifted strategy since then, as business owners in the construction industry have sought worker protection and private property strategies to require law enforcement to obtain warrants for arrest signed by judges — not administrative paperwork. 

“If there’s a fence around the construction site, ICE can’t just go in there and conduct a random inspection. It does work as long as the site is controlled access and visitor access is limited to everybody,” the attorney said. 

The South Texas Builders Association invited elected officials at the local, state, and federal level to the event. Among those in attendance were U.S. Reps. Vicente Gonzalez Jr. and Henry Cuellar, as well as representatives from the cities of Weslaco, McAllen and Edinburg. Candidates for Texas House District 41 — Make America Great Again Republican Gary Groves and his opponent, Democratic nominee Julio Salinas — also attended. 

“It’s not just construction; I have 200 fishing boats at Port Isabel right now that don’t have labor, and they can’t get visas for immigrant labor,” U.S. Rep. Gonzalez Jr. said. “We have a hotel and restaurant industry that is closing due to lack of labor. We have our agriculture industry here that is also suffering. I spoke to a farmer a couple of weeks ago who said he is going to farm half of his land because he doesn’t have the labor to harvest his own production. This is a problem for our economy; our border is fixed, thank God that’s done. Now we need to fix the immigration problem.” 

Gonzalez has legislation that could enable small businesses to sponsor long-time employees in a new worker visa program. 

The Save the American Workforce Act would open the door for companies to sponsor undocumented immigrants who have been in the U.S. for at least five years and have no criminal record. That includes driving under the influence, or DUI, offenses. Each worker would pay a $1,000 administrative penalty for breaking immigration law. 

The program would not offer any pathway to U.S. citizenship for workers, but rather allow a temporary three-year-long visa and offer temporary legal status to unmarried children of eligible workers under 21 years old. The three-year visa can be renewed at least three times. Any worker who seeks to change jobs during the visa program would have 180 days to have a new employer sponsor them and file the paperwork for that position. 

U.S. Rep. Cuellar co-sponsored the Essential Workers for Economic Advancement Act, which would create a new work visa program, H-2C, that could include construction industry workers. Cuellar is also working on ways to utilize existing visa programs such as those earmarked for agriculture for the construction industry. 

“The meetings that we had [in Washington] helped provide some relief here [last year]; we need to do more,” Cuellar said. 

U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz has also been actively trying to change policy, hosting dozens of meetings with leadership in the Trump administration, including the Department of Labor, and her fellow legislators in the Hispanic Caucus for months. De La Cruz did not attend the event on Wednesday, citing security detail challenges. 

De La Cruz also co-sponsored legislation that would enable Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients to remain working in Texas. In 2025, DACA recipients in Texas whose work authorization expired were barred from renewing it following a ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

Her bill, the Dignity for Immigrants While Guarding Our Nation to Ignite and Deliver the American Dream Act of 2025, was introduced in July 2025, but it has not yet been brought to a vote on the House floor.

Houston homebuilder Luis Emiliano Valencia, CEO of Texas Strong Builders LLC, owner of Super Tortas Refresqueria, and deputy director of the American Business Immigration Coalition, is collaborating with the South Texas builders to push for bipartisan changes. 

Valencia himself is a recipient of DACA, the immigration policy that enabled individuals brought to the U.S. as children to apply for work permits. 

“If I do lose my work authorization, that means I’m not going to be able to have a job, I’m not going to be able to create jobs, not going to be able to pay my mortgage, and I’m going to fall behind. That’s going to hurt the banks and the economy. Imagine the other 600,000 individuals [that] are facing that challenge right now,” he said.

ICE raids over the past year have been devastating, he said. 

“We had at one point 10,000 workers detained by ICE. Why detained? Because they are not deportable, they’re just holding them hostage, having them suffer for no reason; they’re not criminals — if they were, they would be deported,” he said. “Now [ICE] has transitioned between worksite raids to targeting construction vehicles — it’s the same thing. Look at what happened to Lorenzo; that is so unbelievably disturbing, and it’s not American.” 

South Texas Builders say the minimum wage in the Valley for construction labor is closer to $14 an hour, with supervisors earning closer to $30 an hour on residential home construction site jobs. But it’s never going to compare with oil and gas or refinery tradespeople’s wages because it’s a different industry. 

“Cheap labor is a myth; nobody is going to work in the sun for an unworthy wage. Are you sure cheap labor exists? Offer them a job and see how much they’ll charge you,” Valencia queried. “We’re not asking for amnesty; what we want is a work permit program that allows us to vet the individual, make sure they’re contributing their taxpayer money, and give the right way to identify a person so they can work legally. Bracero 2.0 but with more transparency. Both parties need to understand that this is a common sense issue; they need to step up and not worry about the politics — it’s going to help the economy.”