A McAllen builder says immigration enforcement has delayed homebuilding projects, while a national poll found 59% of Hispanic registered voters said the Trump administration was trying to deport more people than they expected during the 2024 campaign.
Benny Melendez, who owns a construction company in the border city, told CBS News his company’s typical home project has stretched to about a year from an average of four months before the administration’s crackdown began. CBS reported that some workers had been detained and others feared arrest if they went to work; Melendez installed fencing at job sites to deter U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from entering without judicial warrants. CBS also said Melendez backed former President Joe Biden in 2020, voted for Trump in 2024 and now regrets both choices.
The CBS News/YouGov survey found that 34% of Hispanic registered voters thought the effort was about the same as they had expected, while 7% expected fewer deportations. The poll interviewed 2,166 U.S. adults from Sept. 30 to Oct. 2, 2026; its Hispanic registered-voter subgroup had a weighted sample of 204. The overall margin of error was 2.5 percentage points, with no separate margin reported for that subgroup. The question measured views of the administration’s efforts, not the number of completed deportations.
MPI’s analysis puts deportations by ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at about 980,000 from Jan. 20, 2025, through July 31, 2026, based on Department of Homeland Security (DHS) records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). MPI’s tally includes removals and returns. It said 69% involved people first intercepted at the border, while the share following arrests inside the United States rose from 28% in 2025 to 39% in July 2026.
In an Oct. 20 statement, the White House put its second-term figures at nearly 1.2 million deportations or removals and more than 3 million migrant departures. The statement covers a different period and uses different wording from MPI’s tally, so the figures are not directly comparable.
South Texas business leaders have also raised concerns about staffing. The Houston Chronicle reported that they linked ICE raids to labor shortages. Yanling Mayer, an economist at Texas A&M, told the newspaper the shortages’ contribution to the construction downturn was difficult to quantify.
AP VoteCast estimated that 43% of Latino voters supported Trump in 2024, up from 35% in 2020, while a majority backed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. The Associated Press linked some of Trump’s gains to economic concerns and drew a historical parallel with Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s immigration sweeps in Arizona. The voting estimates do not establish that immigration caused Trump’s election win.
Republican McAllen Mayor Javier Villalobos told CBS that enforcement was the top concern among his constituents. He said many local residents viewed the campaign as a crackdown on the Hispanic community, and he believed it had created fear, including among U.S. citizens. The Texas Secretary of State’s election calendar lists Nov. 3, 2026, as the general election date; CBS reported that Texas State Rep. James Talarico and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton are competing for an open U.S. Senate seat.
