Afrasianet - Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was building wooden structures for homes before he was killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Countless other Latino construction workers live in Texas and fear facing a similar fate.
The British newspaper "The Guardian" publishes a report on the repercussions of the mass deportation campaign carried out by the administration of US President Donald Trump, through the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) administration, on Latino construction workers in the state of Texas, and its economic, social and political repercussions.
The article highlights that migrant construction workers have become prime targets of arrest and deportation campaigns, with the accompanying breakdown of families, rights abuses, and fear among workers, leading to severe labour shortages, disruption of construction projects, and high costs and prices of house construction.
The text of the report is as follows:
Every morning, long before dawn, as America falls asleep, an army of Texas construction workers put on their phosphorus jackets, put on their helmets, carry their ladders and tools onto their trucks, and drive across highways to begin another day of hard work in the hot sun.
Elsewhere, before the first strands of light creep into Texas' urbanization and concrete, other armies move in a fleet of shiny, unscrupulous SUVs They wait for opportunities at gas stations, scour the perimeter of convenience stores, and lurk along highways. These are also on their way to work, but the federal agents who make up this second army are carrying out a different kind of mission.
Unlike the construction workers, they do not contribute to the future of the United States by building new homes; their job is to go after those who do the construction work; they follow the structural workers, they track the roofers, and they chase the conch workers and the pouring concrete. They are hunters!
Jacob Monti, a lawyer who specializes in immigration cases in Houston, says, "In Texas, you go out hunting deer early in the morning. And that's exactly what they do; they hunt construction workers early in the morning, just like you hunt an animal." Texas and its construction workers are the main focus of Donald Trump's latest mass deportation campaign, dubbed ICE 2.0, and after the US president switched from his military "invasion" tactics last year in Los Angeles and Minneapolis to "catch and search" tactics – which seem less visible but no less destructive – he has found "abundant catch" in Texas.
Texas has the highest number of arrests by ICE nationwide, with more than 12,000 arrests in July alone, double the number of arrests in the next states, Florida and California. Many of those arrested are Latino construction workers. Four out of every 10 construction workers in Texas were born outside the United States, most of whom are Hispanic and undocumented.
Monti notes that this process is "an easy target; if you target Latino workers in Texas in their trucks, you have a great opportunity to trap someone who is not legally documented, and thus feed the mass deportation machine."
But there is a heavy price to pay for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) dumping Latino neighborhoods and construction sites in Texas as it strives to achieve its new goal of 3,000 arrests a day. These arrests on the streets are causing turmoil within the state, damaging its economy, and driving up housing prices and the cost of food. Latino families are also fragmented, with hard-working people being forced to live in hiding, while others disappear either to flee the country or as a result of forced deportation.
As the midterm elections approach, which feature crucial congressional races and the governor's office, there are also political ramifications: Trump appears to be putting himself in trouble with Texas' Latino voters. Texas' Latino population who was born in the U.S. or who have citizenship and are eligible to vote is increasingly angry and bewildered.
Many of them voted for Trump two years ago, driven by his promises of a stronger economy and securing borders to prevent the entry of "criminal" immigrants. They gave Trump a historic victory, even in Latino-majority districts that have been Democratic strongholds for more than a century.
Among those voters was Sergio Benavides, a 44-year-old construction company in the Rio Grande Valley border area of Texas. Benavides, a naturalized U.S. citizen, voted for Trump in the 2024 election because he liked his campaign promises to lower prices and secure the border. When some warned him that things could go wrong, he heeded their warnings.
Now, he is taking notice: the prices of houses, food, and fuel have soared. He has also had to pay higher wages to workers, as large numbers of them have been deported. One of his contractors and his wife disappeared after they were arrested by ICE, leaving behind three children who are U.S. citizens. "It's sad. "We're here to protect our families, and we send our kids to college, to learn and grow. That's not what I expected when I voted for Trump."
Benavides is part of a backlash that is beginning to show up in the polls, as Latino voters are beginning to change their attitude toward the president because of the very issues that drew them to him in the first place: the cost of living and immigration enforcement policies. A poll conducted by Equis Research last month showed that dissatisfaction with Trump rose to 63 percent among Latino voters in Texas.
In a crucial race for the U.S. Senate — a race that could determine which bipartisan will dominate the chamber in the final two years of Trump's presidency — 58 percent of likely Latino voters intend to support Democratic nominee James Talarrico, while scandal-ridden Republican candidate Ken Paxton has the support of only 33 percent.
This comes in a state that has not seen a Democratic nominee win a U.S. Senate seat since 1988. Latinos make up one-third of registered voters in Texas, the second-largest of its kind nationwide, and they are well aware of their impact. Among them are construction workers.
Marco Antonio Osorio starts his day at 5 a.m., following the same routine six days a week. A member of his team comes to pick him up from his home in Houston, then drives around in their shared white van to pick up the rest of the team, before heading to a new apartment complex, where they spend the next 10 hours laying fiber optic cables for TV and Wi-Fi services.
This is their area of specialty, and they are proficient and in high demand, even if they are left alone to continue their work in peace. This year, Osorio, 50, has noticed an uptick in ICE activity on the streets. "There were a lot of police officers, highway security forces, and immigration agents; they were moving between cars on highways and checking license plates," he says.
As an undocumented Mexican citizen living in the U.S. — where he arrived in 1993 at the age of 17 — he knew he was in a precarious situation. But he thought he had some kind of His daughter Gabriella, who was born in the United States, is currently serving in the Marines at Camp Pendleton, California. She helped him apply for residency, and the paperwork is still being processed.
Still, Osorio didn't want to take the risk, so he changed his lifestyle: he left home only for the most necessities, and stopped going out at night to go to the movies. He couldn't stop working, or how would he pay his bills? But he wore a plain shirt on his way to work, instead of his bright yellow jacket; he didn't have to be noticed as a construction worker in the face of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's crackdowns.
He told his company that he no longer wanted to work outside of Houston, because the highways to Austin and San Antonio were crowded with police cars. But the company replied, "There's no business here; either you go to work out of town, or you stop working altogether."
So he had to accept a job in Austin. On June 10, as he was returning home from a 10-hour shift, a car belonging to the sheriff's office made a turn on the highway and forced him to stop. The policeman claimed that it was because of a faulty taillight on his truck, but Osorio wondered how they knew this when the two cars were going in opposite directions. Within two minutes of his arrest, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vehicles surrounded his truck from the front and back.
Osorio realized that the speed of their appearance indicated a pre-coordinated operation. He told them that his daughter was serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, and offered them a receipt proving that he had applied for residency. One of the agency officers replied, "That's not credible."
They took him to a very cold cell — known as "las hieleras" — From there, he was transferred to a migrant detention centre near the border. Osorio spent 40 days in harsh conditions in the administration's detention centers, until Monti succeeded in obtaining a decision to release him due to the lack of due process.
While he waits for a decision on his appeal, Osorio continues to work: bills are piling up, and his children need food. On his way to work in Houston, he thinks of his daughter serving the country, while the government of that country itself seeks to fire him. He worries about his youngest child, who has autism, and wonders what fate awaits him.
He also imagines returning to Mexico, a place he hasn't set foot in 33 years. As he drives, he glimpses around the city of apartment complexes he helped build, and he is filled with a sense of pride. "Look at those buildings; I worked there 10 years ago. And that's too, we built 15 years ago." "This is my home," he says to himself.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican citizen, had been living in the United States for 35 years — two years before Osorio arrived. As a skilled worker who builds wooden structures for new homes, he spent his days on a regular routine: he left his house at 5 a.m., took his team, and then spent 10 hours working hard. He then relaxed on the porch of his self-built home in Houston, listening to Tierra Caliente music with his beloved dog, Neo. Ñoño), named after a stocky character from a Mexican comedy series that aired in the 1970s.
When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began ramping up street arrests in February, Salgado saw an opportunity: Many workers were afraid to leave their homes, halting work on many new homes while they were still in the early stages of construction. Thanks to his bold entrepreneurial spirit, Salgado began to accept tasks that other undocumented migrant workers had not dared to think about.
But he took precautions, replacing his construction jacket Wearing a formal jacket on his way to work, he removed the pile of engineering drawings, invoices and receipts that filled the dashboard of his white truck. It was his mobile office, but it revealed his identity as a construction worker, so he made sure to clear it of anything that might indicate it.
As time went on, and the ICE's practices became more and more intense, his three children became worried. Since they were all U.S.-born U.S. citizens, Salgado had high hopes for them: he didn't want them to work in the construction industry like him, but wanted them to get a good education and pursue their own "American dream." Already, his eldest son, Ronaldo Salgado, became a history teacher, while his second son, Lorenzo Salgado Jr., studied at the prestigious Tufts University and is now an engineer in Washington, D.C., and the youngest is still an engineering student.
The children got together and made a plan for their father, providing him with a phone number to call them in case the authorities arrested him, and making sure that he had a card in his wallet stating his "legal rights." They also took a pledge from him that he would never sign any document provided to him by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department, lest he be deceived and pay to sign papers leading to his voluntary deportation.
But Lorenzo Jr. had one more reason to worry. On October 29, 2025, he was on his way to work in Washington, D.C. It was early, which is when his father usually starts his road trip. That day, Lorenzo had to make an important presentation to one of the government agencies, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). As he was walking down Georgia Avenue toward the White House, he caught sight of two cars with no markings approaching him.
They passed him and then turned abruptly, stopping on either side in a pincer-like motion. At first he thought he was about to be robbed, but he soon realized they belonged to federal agents. They asked him his name and destination; as soon as they heard his fluent English, noticed his tidy shirt, and knew he was on his way to the Federal Aviation Administration, they backed down and said, "Well, you can go ahead."
Lorenzo Jr. had no doubt that he had been targeted because of his ethnic background. He was traumatized by the experience, and deeply worried about his father: If they had stopped him — an engineer who graduated from Tufts University and was on his way to advise the U.S. government in the nation's capital — what would they do with his father, who works as a structural engineer and has no legal credentials?
On July 7, Lorenzo Jr. received a call that his father had been stopped by ICE. The son hurried to the airport and boarded his first flight to Houston. During the flight, he saw a news report about an undocumented person in the city who had been shot by an ICE agent. While the plane was still in the air, Lorenzo Jr. updated the news page to find that the headline had been changed from "shot" to "shot and killed."
I met Lorenzo Jr. and Ronaldo Salgado at a café about 10 minutes away from where their father had been shot through the window of his truck, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers mistakenly thought he was a Guatemalan citizen they were looking for. In one corner of the café, a small memorial to the father was erected, with his portrait placed in the middle, surrounded by lit candles and pools, along with some of the construction tools he was using, a Mexican sombrero hat, and the Mexican flag. The two sons were still in shock, but at the same time they were immersed in contemplation and reflection.
Ronaldo spoke of how his father was prosecuted by ICE "because he didn't look a certain way, he didn't fit the stereotype of what an American should look like." He bitterly wondered how cruel that was, especially since his father had spent his entire life trying to embrace core American values. "Working hard, paying taxes, starting a family, educating your children, and if you do that, you're going to do good," Lorenzo Jr. recounted how his father was killed by a government agent just three days after the U.S. celebrated its 250th anniversary.
On July 4, he himself had attended a fireworks display in Washington, D.C., and he felt proud to be an American. He recalled what he had learned about historical figures such as Frederick Douglass, Du Bois, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and his greatest hero, Abraham Lincoln; he felt he was on steady steps toward achieving his own "American dream." Three days later, he suffered what he described as a "violent national shock" (or "radical reversal of his patriotic feelings"); today he has only one goal: justice for his father.
If you travel 350 miles southwest of Houston, you'll reach the border area of the Rio Grande Valley. Here, Mexican and American cultures blend into a unique blend known as Tejano. The valley has a hot and dusty climate, with midday temperatures often reaching 105 degrees Fahrenheit (40.5 degrees Celsius) and can go as high as 110 degrees Fahrenheit. On the day I visited a construction site in Harlingen — about 10 miles from the border — the temperature had already exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit, while the sun was very bright.
Four workers were working under clear skies, constructing the wooden structure of the second floor of a double house. They wore loose-fitting clothes to protect them from the sun, with heavy tools hanging around their waists. They didn't seem to have any problems, but it was actually part of their daily routine: they worked 10 hours a day, six days a week.
The oldest of these workers is Joaquin, who wears a sombrero hat, who is the same age as Salgado when he was killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Two months ago, Joaquin's wife was arrested and taken away on her way to work at a restaurant, and is now in detention awaiting deportation to Mexico. Speaking in Spanish, Joaquín said: "Now I'm afraid they'll arrest me too. We have 3 children born here, who will take care of them? "
His teammate, 38-year-old Fortino – who hid his face behind big skateboards – also has no legal identification papers. Two of his uncles have disappeared. "At the moment, nothing is safe. In Mexico, we have learned to put our trust in God and go about our business. But we live every day in a state of anxiety and anticipation, wondering if this is the day they will arrest us."
The third member of the team, Alexis, 33, holds a green card, but that doesn't stop him from feeling anxious. For now, he only goes to work in ordinary civilian cars, avoiding trucks or white vehicles altogether, making sure no work tools are clearly visible, and regularly changes routes.
I asked him what he thought of Trump's argument to the American people that jobs in America are a right for Americans, not for those who live in the country illegally. Alexis laughed and said in Spanish, too, "Well, that's okay. But most Americans don't do this kind of work; they reject it. It's hard work in the hot sun, without any shade.
Educated Americans demand office jobs with air conditioning, so we Latinos are the ones who do it." Joining the conversation was Isaias, a 20-year-old staff member who is a U.S.-born citizen. He said Americans are used to a comfortable and easy life; "they were born with spoons of gold in their mouths."
The 4 workers filled the site with the noise of knocks, hammering, and sawing. To my inexperienced ears, this noise seemed a sign of vitality; a new living voice and a new community in the making.
But for Ronnie Cavazos, the 49-year-old site manager, the noise is just a symptom of a cause: it is too low, and it should have been much higher. Instead of the four workers currently working on the construction of the house, there should have been three times as many. Last week, the site was completely empty, unable to find any teams, after all of its subcontractors had stopped working.
"We don't have enough workers to get the job done; some of them have been arrested, others are afraid to leave their homes, while a third team has given up and decided to go back to Mexico," Cavazos said. Projects that used to take 6 months to complete now require 10 months, and overhead costs are rising. In the summer, he had to halt construction work for 60 days because he could not find skilled workers in wooden structures to help them.
Cavazos is doing his best to protect his workers and encourage them to return to the work site; he has erected a fence that completely surrounds the 16 duplexes he is building to prevent ICE agents from entering. Although the fence alone will cost up to $30,000, he thinks it is worth it if it will give him some peace of mind. He took me inside a building under construction and showed me a secret door hidden under the stairs, leading to a space where workers could hide if ICE agents arrived.
On one occasion, the site manager called him to tell him that an immigration agent was trying to enter the site, and Cavazos said, "I told him, 'Get out of my land immediately! Many of my workers ran away, while others hid behind that secret door.'"
A few months ago, one of the teams had to stay overnight on site; they were so afraid that the authorities would stop them on their way to work, so they decided to sleep on concrete bases until the job was done. Shaking his head regretfully, Cavazos said: "Damn! Is this really America? "
Cavazos is president of the South Texas Builders Association (STBA), the largest coalition of its kind in the Rio Grande Valley. He and his fellow construction industry leaders have decided that the flood has reached its peak and that the situation is no longer sustainable. "It's time to raise our voices," he says. "Many people are so scared of Trump's reaction that they prefer silence. But silence is not American's fault; if we can't tell the truth, what the hell are we doing?"
In July, the association organized an event in collaboration with the American Business Immigration Coalition Action, which advocates for a comprehensive reform of the immigration system — an event they called "Rally in the Valley." The rally, held near the border in the Texas city of Farr, concluded with a warning to Trump and the Republican Party: If you continue to go after our people, you will face our wrath.
Penny Melendez, the owner of a small construction company in Weslacco, Texas, is in charge of government relations for the South Texas Builders Association (STBA). Although he voted for Trump in 2024, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has since detained 10 of his workers. As a result, the pace of his homebuilding projects has halved, and the cost of completed homes has risen by $30,000 or more than their usual prices.
As part of his political lobbying duties for the League, Melendez began collecting smartphone-taken videos of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and posting them on social media. These clips show masked police officers and agents of the agency storming construction sites without a warrant and arresting workers. In one clip, a construction worker is seen fleeing the site while being chased by agents, in a scene that resembles a hound chase to hunt them down.
In another clip, a policeman is seen taking a number of workers with their hands tied behind their backs outside a site. "We'll come back for the guys on the roof," the policeman threatens, adding, sarcastically, "It's hot up there." One worker replies, "We're used to it, this is our job. We might be the ones who built your house."
In addition, Melendez has made a video of his own to add to the group, in which he expresses his anger, and he has already voted for Trump in a previous election. At the beginning of the clip, Melendez is shown wearing a mask and covering his body in a black tactical uniform, then removes the mask and throws it to the ground, saying, "Only cowards hide behind masks."
He then takes off his heavy protective vest and replaces it with an orange construction worker-type vest, with a helmet, adding, "These are the tools we need to make America great again." Speaking to The Guardian, Melendez described the Trump administration's actions in the Rio Grande Valley as amounting to a humanitarian crisis, noting that "the dignity of our community is being violated."
Earlier this year, STBA officials decided to take the letter directly to the Trump administration, demanding that a delegation of seven STBA leaders — including Melendez and Cavazos — meet directly with representatives of the Department of Homeland Security in Washington. I wanted to know the details of that meeting, so I visited Guerrero at his construction company's headquarters in Edinburg, Texas. There was no doubt about his loyalty; his desk was overshadowed by U.S. and Texas flags.
Guerrero describes himself as a fourth-generation Mexican-American, a proud patriot, who voted for Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024. "I'm probably more American than J.D. Vance, more than Marco Rubio, and certainly more American than that damn Steven Miller," he says. He voted for Trump because he was upset by the record numbers of illegal immigrants who crossed the border under Joe Biden, and because he believed Trump, as a businessman, would boost the region's economy.
But he has been disappointed since Trump's return, because of rising prices and the administration's detention of a number of hard-working, law-abiding immigrants. Guerrero told me what happened when he joined the STBA delegation on their trip to Washington, D.C., where they were given only 15 minutes to speak to senior DHS officials, who sat stiffly on one side of a long mahogany table.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement was spreading terror throughout the valley, which prompted the Texans, who lined up on the opposite side, to start talking. Agents were breaking into construction sites without warrants, arresting people with work permits, using unmarked SUVs to chase concrete trucks, and then driving all the workers away while they poured the foundations. Toward the end of the allotted time, the Texans had a chance to make their closing remarks.
Guerrero seized the moment, fixed his gaze directly into the eyes of the senior administration official sitting across the table, telling him that he had voted for Trump every time his name appeared on the ballot. "Man, we're not getting what we voted for. You are aware of the meanness of what you are doing. If you continue like this, your administration will inevitably lose."
• Author: Ed Pilkington
• Source: The Guardian
