Homebuilders in New Mexico say federal immigration agents have sharply stepped up raids at home construction sites across Albuquerque and Santa Fe in recent weeks, arresting workers in the middle of the workday and leaving housing projects stalled in a state that is already tens of thousands of affordable homes short.

Source: Source NM via 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 have descended on 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.

At least five operations and more than a dozen arrests in a month

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 taken place at construction sites over the last month. Social media video has also shown ICE agents leading handcuffed workers away from partially built homes in both Santa Fe and Albuquerque in recent weeks. The raids have hit large multi-family developments as well as at least one small project site in a low-income Albuquerque neighbourhood.

ICE officials did not respond to Source NM’s emailed request for comment on Tuesday about whether the agency is stepping up its activity at home construction sites, or how many people it has detained.

Agents arrive at a Habitat for Humanity build in Albuquerque’s San Jose neighbourhood

On Tuesday morning, November 10, 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. Bidal said he arrived at the site shortly after workers fled.

“Out of the blue, the federal authorities showed up,” Bidal said. “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 being built for will likely be able to move in after Thanksgiving — but he said he remains “in total shock.”

Four concrete workers detained at Mesa Del Sol, four more in a second raid

Sales employees from Twilight Homes, which is developing several large subdivisions in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, told Source NM on Wednesday that ICE has 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, said agents have been out “several times” in the last few weeks to sites in the subdivision south of Albuquerque. ICE detained four subcontractors doing concrete work for Twilight Homes several weeks ago, she said, and she witnessed an additional raid last week, for another company, during which ICE arrested four more workers on a different development. “They’re going everywhere, apparently,” she said. “It’s quite disturbing.”

The pattern matches what Albuquerque television station KOB 4 has reported from the ground: agents arrested at least one person at a southwest Albuquerque construction site near Coors Boulevard and Sage Road, in an incident captured on widely shared video, and immigrants’ rights attorneys have told a state legislative committee that arrests like these are becoming routine on New Mexico jobsites.

Source: KOB 4 via Wisevoter

A week earlier, on November 5, federal agents in unmarked vehicles descended on a neighbourhood construction site on Rosemary Court near Coors and Sage in Bernalillo County’s South Valley: at least a half-dozen men in tactical gear marked “POLICE ICE” rushed into homes under construction, and at least one man was removed in handcuffs as residents filmed, The Paper and the New Mexico Political Report reported.

Source: The Paper / New Mexico Political Report via abq.news

Workers with papers are staying home too, builders warn

Fear of arrest has prompted workers not to show up to job sites at all, even at locations ICE has not targeted, Conway said — including workers who hold documents. “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 the 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,” she said. “So we are definitely concerned about how this could be exacerbating what’s already a hard process of building homes.”

The legal backdrop in New Mexico

New Mexico law bars formal agreements between local agencies and ICE, but informal cooperation remains legal — a gap that immigrants’ rights attorneys, testifying before the state legislature’s Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee in Santa Fe, say needs to be tightened as enforcement grows, KOB 4 reported. The New Mexico Immigrant Law Center has counted immigration arrests in the state surging from 20 in July 2024 to 729 in July 2026.

A national squeeze on building crews

New Mexico’s builders are describing a local version of a national problem. The National Association of Home Builders said in a September 25 statement that enforcement actions were discouraging even legally authorized workers from reporting to jobsites, delaying construction and raising costs, and research published October 8 by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found immigrants accounted for 35 percent of the nation’s construction trades workforce in 2024, HousingWire reported. The Trump administration has revoked millions of immigrants’ work permits in the last two years, including in the construction industries — though President Donald Trump also said, in an interview shortly after last week’s midterm elections, in which Democrats reclaimed control of both chambers of Congress, that he was open to making a deal on work permits in certain industries.

Source: HousingWire

What happens next

Conway said he hopes New Mexico homebuilders will speak up more in the coming days to pressure the administration to make that deal. “When I get that many calls and texts, there just seems to be an overwhelming energy to try and find a strategy forward,” he said. “We just really need a strategy forward that’s different than what’s happening now.” For immigrant workers across the US building trades — including the Punjabi workers who form part of construction crews in many American cities — the immediate question remains unanswered: ICE has still not said whether construction sites are now a standing target, or how many people the New Mexico operations have taken in.