'South Texas will never be red again': Home builders warn GOP over Trump's immigration raids

[In It to Win It]

Home builders are warning President Donald Trump that his aggressive immigration enforcement efforts are hurting their industry. They’re cautioning that Republican candidates could soon be hurt, too.

Construction executives have held multiple meetings over the last month with the White House and Congress to discuss how immigration busts on job sites and in communities are scaring away employees, making it more expensive to build homes in a market desperate for new supply. Beyond the affordability issue, the executives made an electability argument, raising concerns to GOP leaders that support among Hispanic voters is eroding, particularly in regions that swung to Trump in 2024.

Hill Republicans have held separate meetings with White House officials to share their own electoral concerns.

This story is based on eight interviews with home builders, lawmakers and others familiar with the meetings.

“I told [lawmakers] straight up: South Texas will never be red again,” said Mario Guerrero, the CEO of the South Texas Builders Association, a Trump voter who traveled to Washington last week.

He urged the administration and lawmakers to ease up on enforcement at construction sites, warning that employees are afraid to go to work.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/14/south-texas-will-never-be-red-again-builders-warn-gop-over-trumps-immigration-raids-00781374

[AllyCat]

1. Only at construction sites.

He voted for pedo (and will do it again), so he doesn’t care about anyone else getting illegally kidnapped and imprisoned.

F him.

[ToxMarz]

2. They (falsely) hung their hats on 'he's only going after the worst of the worst'

No one can argue with that can they. But they actually didn't give shit what he did, all they really cared about was just don't touch MY illegals. Did even one of them give shit what happened in say Minneapolis? No, those weren't 'their' illegals.

[James48]

3. We can only hope.

I’d like a solid blue Texas.

[Vogon_Glory]

5. I'd settle for a purple Texas where Democratic

voters know the difference between Democrats and Republicans and party-jumping like the wave of turncoat Democrats-turned-Republicans in the 1980’s is unthinkable.

[Vogon_Glory]

4. Something many DU ers don't know about South Texas

Unlike outdated, racist preconceptions, the area from about 200 miles or so north of the US—Mexican border isn’t neatly divided into brown Mexican-descended people on the Mexican side of the border and Euro-Americans (and maybe a few token Afro-Americans) on the US side of the border: a more accurate description for the last couple of decades is that a MAJORITY of the folks on the US side of the border in that zone are of Mexican descent. And while racists might want to believe that the population shift is due to “ illegal immigration” , much of it is due to the fact that many Mexican-Americans are Catholics and have large families. (Just like Italian immigrants and Polish immigrants and Irish immigrants did generations ago). (It’s called natural increase!)

(Of course the continuing right- wing assault on family planning clinics hasn’t done much to discourage any unplanned pregnancies and more population increase).

Up to now, many Mexican-Americans were rather indifferent about national and local Texas politics, much to the despair of Texas progressives and Democrats. This may be changing, what with the Miller/MAGA rein of terror on immigrants and Mexican-Americans finding that Noem’s and Homan’s goons don’t take pains to distinguish between immigrants and brown-skinned American citizens who’ve been here for generations or even longer.


Considering that Latinos are not only a plurality in Texas as a whole and outnumber European-Americans these days, this might not work out so well for Texas Republicans still pulling out memes and actions from their grandfathers’ racist toolboxes.

[eppur_se_muova]

6. Well, it also has something to do with that area being Spanish territory for longer than it's been American.

Spain claimed Texas in 1519, although it wasn't really colonized until the early-mid 1700s. Texas revolted against New Spain in 1836 and joined the Union in 1845, triggering the Mexican War (1846-8). The treaty ending the war gave the US basically the whole SW quarter of the continental USA.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848)

This treaty, signed on February 2, 1848, ended the war between the United States and Mexico. By its terms, Mexico ceded 55 percent of its territory, including the present-day states California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. Mexico also relinquished all claims to Texas, and recognized the Rio Grande as the southern boundary with the United States.
***
... When the Senate reluctantly ratified the treaty (by a vote of 34 to 14) on March 10, 1848, it removed Article X guaranteeing the protection of Mexican land grants. ... {This cost many Tex-Mexican landowners their property, which was taken over by rich (read: plantation-owning) white settlers. This left many of Texas' Hispanic citizens newly impovershed, and many never recovered. This despite that many fought beside the white settlers for independence, and towns in South TX are named in honor of these war heroes. The white settlers were mostly slaveholders, after all, and they didn't see much difference between black and brown property people.}
***
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/treaty-of-guadalupe-hidalgo

Always remember that there were a lot of brown "Mexicans" living in the Southwest before the US acquired it -- they never crossed the border, legally or illegally. The border crossed them -- and whose fault is that ?


(This map does NOT include Texas, which at the time extended up into present-day Wyoming.)

[Vogon_Glory]

10. I'm aware of most of that, although the cheated grant-holders

Last edited Sun Feb 15, 2026, 01:27 PM - Edit history (1)

And the Latinos then living in what was then Coahuila y Texas weren’t given much mention in my primary-school textbooks if they were mentioned at all.

However the myth that Texas was mostly inhabited by First Nations (I prefer this term over Native Americans) has long been nourished by the people who wrote Texas text books and Anglo politicians of varying stripes. And to be truthful, much of it was still First Nations territory, especially the Plains, Trans-Pecos, and much of the prairie and the wooded areas.

However, I would argue that most Mexican American Texans are descended from people who arrived later, especially after the turmoil of the 1910 Revolution, its aftermath and the Great Depression.. None of which gives the conservative (reactionary) establishment the right to slander Mexican-American Texans’ forebears or their presence in Texas.

It’s been over a century since the end of the most turbulent times of the 1910 Revolution.
That’s within a couple of years of those European immigrants who arrived after fleeing the aftermaths of World War One and the upheavals that followed. The refugees ‘ arrival is of similar age, regardless of the crap spewed by present-day reactionary influencers and BS artists.

[eppur_se_muova]

12. Interesting info. I realized you were more interested in recent history, but past is prologue ...

... and it's hard to know just how far back to look. We do tend to forget the Mexican Revolution was such a recent event.

In the time period you're emphasizing, I believe the US-Mexico border was not even marked for most of its length. It was quite easy to cross the border accidentally.

[Vogon_Glory]

14. The 1910 Mexican Revolution tends to be ignored in US history classes

Or downplayed as late as the early 1990’s (When I went back to school for a while). Admittedly the events leading up to the US getting involved in World War One get more attention, but the turmoil in Mexico was during the war and after was at least as profound as what happened in most of Europe around the same time (World War One and the Russian Revolutions were admittedly bigger events). IMO, the Mexican Revilution should not be dismissed so lightly. Mexico is a lot closer and a lot bigger than Ireland.

[ITAL]

15. It was really successive revolutions

They kinda just say everything from 1910-1920 was just the Mexican Revolution, but there were about five different leaders who took over and many others who had fiefdoms here and there. It was really a mess down there.

I end to agree with the above post that said most of the folks with Mexican descent in Texas probably descend from that rather than the 1800s settlers. There actually weren't many Tejanos really -- what's now Texas was really unpopulated. That's the main reason Stephen F. Austin got permission for Anglo settlements in the first place.

[dalton99a]

7. No worries. Abbott will trot out his Mexican-American wife

[bluestarone]

8. Any chance that Abbott

Could recalled if it turned blue?

[Vogon_Glory]

11. Our much-patched and amended Texas constitution doesn't allow reccall

We do have an election this year, although I’m not greatly optimistic.

[Greg_In_SF]

9. People have been

saying Texas will turn blue for decades.

[Renew Deal]

13. I'd love to see the Democrat win the senate race

Paxon is completely corrupt. Hopefully voters stand against him