New Mexico homebuilders say federal immigration raids on home construction sites across Albuquerque and Santa Fe have sharply increased in recent weeks, arresting workers in groups, delaying projects and frightening crews away from job sites during a statewide housing shortage, according to reporting published Thursday, November 12, by Source New Mexico and carried by Santa Fe public radio station KSFR.

Miles Dylan Conway, chief executive of the New Mexico Home Builders Association, told Source NM he has received approximately 20 calls or texts from developers in the last week alone reporting that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrived at construction sites, often in unmarked SUVs, and arrested multiple workers at a time. “The level of activity I’ve had on my phone, the calls from members who are sometimes calling on behalf of their subcontractors, are telling me that the pace and intensity of the immigration enforcement is significantly escalated,” Conway said.

Source NM’s interviews with home developers, immigration advocacy groups and homebuilder organizations suggest at least five such operations, netting more than a dozen arrests, have occurred at construction sites over the last month. Social media video has also shown ICE agents leading handcuffed workers away from partially built homes in Santa Fe and Albuquerque in recent weeks. The operations have hit large multi-family developments as well as at least one small project site in a low-income Albuquerque neighbourhood.

On Tuesday morning, ICE agents arrived in Albuquerque’s San Jose neighbourhood as workers were pouring concrete for driveways on two nearly complete single-family Habitat for Humanity homes, Bill Bidal, chief executive of the Greater Albuquerque Habitat for Humanity, told Source NM on Wednesday. “Out of the blue, the federal authorities showed up,” said Bidal, who arrived at the site shortly after workers fled. “We’ve heard rumors all over town for the last couple weeks about activity, but to have it hit home like this was very, very sudden.” ICE did not detain any Habitat for Humanity contractors, Bidal said, and the two low-income families the homes are built for will likely be able to move in after Thanksgiving, but he said he remains “in total shock.”

Sales employees from Twilight Homes, which is developing several large subdivisions in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, told Source NM on Wednesday that ICE targeted their subcontractors in recent weeks, and those of other developers at adjacent sites. Pauline Hansen, a sales counselor for Twilight Homes in Mesa Del Sol, south of Albuquerque, said ICE detained four subcontractors doing concrete work for Twilight Homes several weeks ago, and that she witnessed an additional raid last week at another company’s site during which ICE arrested four more workers.

Builders say the deeper damage is fear. Conway said concern about ICE arrests has prompted workers not to show up at job sites, even at locations ICE has not targeted. “A lot of projects this week are not operating,” he said. “It’s oftentimes even folks with documentation — visas and work permits — are not coming to work because the potential for them to get swept up in one of these actions is very real.”

Johanna Gilligan, chief executive of nonprofit developer Homewise, told Source NM on Wednesday that workers on Homewise projects, particularly those contracted for stucco work, have shown up at low rates over the last month or so, and that her organization is anticipating at least weeks of delays in completing projects. “It has the potential to have a knock-on effect, just out of people taking an abundance of precaution,” Gilligan said. “So we are definitely concerned about how this could be exacerbating what’s already a hard process of building homes.”

Background: enforcement was already climbing in New Mexico

Thursday’s reporting builds on an earlier development this site covered: on November 5, federal agents in unmarked vehicles descended on a neighbourhood construction site on Rosemary Court near Coors and Sage Road in Bernalillo County’s South Valley, and video showed at least one man removed in handcuffs. A recent report from the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center found that immigration arrests in New Mexico surged from 20 in July 2024 to 729 in July 2026. Nationally, the National Association of Home Builders estimates the construction industry relies on a workforce that is approximately 30 percent foreign-born, and housing-industry reporting has warned that job-site enforcement is adding delays and costs on top of an existing labour shortage.

ICE officials did not respond to Source NM’s emailed request for comment on Tuesday about whether the agency is stepping up activity at home construction sites or how many people it has detained, so the agency’s own account of the operations is not yet public. Conway noted that the administration has revoked millions of immigrants’ work permits in the last two years, including in the construction industries, but he also pointed to President Donald Trump saying he was open to making a deal on work permits in certain industries in an interview shortly after last week’s midterm elections, in which Democrats reclaimed control of both chambers of Congress.

For immigrant communities far beyond New Mexico, including Punjabi families working in construction, trucking and the trades across the United States, the Albuquerque and Santa Fe reports carry a familiar warning: enforcement is reaching into ordinary workplaces, and even documented workers are changing their behaviour out of caution. Builders, meanwhile, warn that every stalled subdivision pushes move-in dates back in a state already short an estimated 58,000 affordable homes.