Turns out that ICE raids aren’t so popular there either.
Leaders within the construction industry in South Texas delivered a clear message to lawmakers: Stop the mass deportation of workers or risk losing in November.
During a gathering Wednesday hosted by the South Texas Builders Association and the American Business Immigration Coalition Action, industry leaders discussed possible solutions for immigrant workers. Lawmakers who don’t engage with their concerns or don’t support worker protections, the group warned, will lose their races in the November midterm elections.
The South Texas Builders Association had been for months raising the alarm on how immigration enforcement by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had scared immigrant workers from showing up to work sites, causing a labor shortage and a delay in construction projects.
After the death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a construction worker in Houston who was fatally shot by an ICE officer earlier this month, ICE’s targeting of immigrant laborers has once again come into focus, and now, the builders association is demanding worker protections, such as permits that would allow immigrants to work legally in the country.
“I want to send a clear warning to every political leader: If you don’t stop the worksite raids, the mass deportations, if you don’t pass the work permits for long-term, law-abiding immigrants, or citizens, or our Dreamers, you will lose,” said Massey Villarreal, CEO and president of Precision Task Group, a business solutions firm based in Houston.
Villarreal, a Republican, serves as co-chairman of the Comité de 100, a bipartisan group of Latino business leaders who advocate for immigration policies that enable border security alongside a pathway for legal status for workers.
He said that Latinos in Texas should take it personally when ICE targets people like Salgado Araujo because he said it’s an attack on the community.
“I won’t tolerate it, even in our own party,” he said.
Ronnie Cavazos, chairman of the South Texas Builders Association, said his own father was an immigrant and a hard worker. He imagined that Salgado Araujo, who was killed on his way to work, was similar and questioned why the community had supported a presidential administration that would shoot and kill a worker like him.
“Let’s be real, we voted for it,” Cavazos said. “So whose fault was it?”
He would take the blame, but he and the organization are paying attention now, he said, adding that the only way to change things is to vote.
“When I go to that ballot box in November, Lorenzo’s name is going to be in my mind,” Cavazos said.
Not the first time that the immigration crackdown and ICE raids have been bemoaned by representatives of the home building industry, which relies heavily on immigrants not just to do the work but also to buy the finished products. I appreciate Ronnie Cavazos for recognizing where the fault lies, but I would like to press him about what he means by what he says about when he votes this year. Because honestly, nothing short of straight-ticket Democratic will carry any weight. Not after 2024 and everything that has happened since then.
Meanwhile, there’s this.
Just miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, Ken Paxton is trying to inherit President Donald Trump’s historic gains with Hispanic voters.
The Texas GOP Senate nominee, speaking to hundreds of supporters last week at his first campaign rally in this region that’s almost entirely Latino, revealed how Republicans believe that’s possible: by touting Trump’s closure of the border and hitting Democrats over the head with the culture war — while ignoring the drag his mass deportations have had on the region.
The GOP faithful, clad in signature MAGA red and a few scattered Trump 2028 hats, gathered at a beer hall outdoors in 100-degree heat to greet the Republican Senate nominee and other candidates. Attendees ate up the Republicans’ constant jabs at Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico. Eric Flores, the challenger to Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, called Talarico a “low T.” Paxton belittled Talarico, a seminarian student and critic of Christian nationalism, for referring to himself as a “Christian who hates Christianity.”
It’s an approach key to Paxton’s strategy, as Republican Senate nominee, to slice into Talarico’s widening polling lead with Hispanic voters, who could prove decisive for who wins the competitive Senate seat and a litany of other races that will determine which party takes power in Washington come November.
“Once this community knows what [Talarico’s] views are on transitioning boys into girls, and girls into boys, and boys and girls sports, they’re not going to support it,” Paxton told reporters after the rally, in response to a question of how he intends to keep Hispanic voters in the fold after they swung toward Trump in 2024.
This has worked before for the Texas GOP. Sen. Ted Cruz blitzed the airways in the 2024 Senate race with attack ads against former Rep. Colin Allred about transgender youth participation in sports. Republicans branded Wendy Davis “abortion Barbie” following her successful protest against an anti-abortion law in the state legislature.
But outside the carefully choreographed event is a community getting pummelled by the president’s increasingly unpopular immigration agenda — a reality that’s given Democrats a strong opening with Latinos as they attempt to end a decades-long losing streak in statewide races. Interviews with local lawmakers, business leaders and voters on both sides of the aisle reveal that Democratic candidates like Talarico and gubernatorial nominee Gina Hinojosa have so far been successful at appealing to Hispanic voters feeling the economic strain under Trump.
I try not to have too much faith in people’s ability to see through bullshit and propaganda – it works for a reason – but this is one of those times. It’s partly because the attacks sound so pathetic and desperate, partly because they’re harder to land when people have bigger fears, and partly because Paxton and Abbott have the charisma of MLM drones as well as the yoke of being the establishment in Texas. None of this means that they won’t be able to drag themselves across the finish line – they do start out with big advantages and a long Republican winning streak. I just don’t think that this year they’re starting out as being the big kids on the block, at least not as they would have been in elections past. And while they have Donald Trump to blame for that, they have no one but themselves to blame for Trump.
“I appreciate Ronnie Cavazos for recognizing where the fault lies, but I would like to press him about what he means by what he says about when he votes this year.”
Yeah, usually the trumpers protest “I didn’t vote for this!” Yes they did. Knowing that nazi-ghoul Stephen Miller was going to be running this anti-immigration show told you everything you needed to know about what was going to happen. If you looked the other way, that’s on you. The bare minimum to prove that you really mean it that you hate what ICE is doing, is that you do not vote FOR any Trump enablers, ie, Republicans. Voting for Democrats is better, but if that is a bridge too far, abstain or vote 3rd party. Otherwise you are lying about your concern.