I realized something had changed when I showed up at a job site in Tallahassee one morning.
It was supposed to be a routine site check—hot sun, the smell of concrete and cut pine, and the usual chatter from the guys working on scaffolding. Everything seemed normal until a few white unmarked vehicles quietly rolled up to the curb. Within hours, more than 100 workers had been taken by ICE. Some of them had been with us for years—skilled, reliable, part of the team.
And that wasn’t an isolated incident.
Reports are coming in from all over Florida. In Miami, Brevard County, even down in the Keys, workers are being detained on-site. Some don’t even get the chance to show their paperwork. In one case, six roofers with valid work permits were picked up and sent to a deportation center. No one seems to be spared.
As a real estate developer who’s been working in Florida for over a decade, I can tell you—our industry wasn’t in great shape to begin with. We’ve been battling a shortage of skilled labor for years. Many workers never came back after the pandemic. And now, with ICE raids intensifying, that already thin labor pool is being drained even further.
Just two months ago, we had to delay a midsize residential project because we couldn’t find enough cement finishers or electricians. The delay stretched to six weeks. That alone cost us over 30% more in labor, not to mention the hit in interest payments and client trust. Developers can plan for a lot of risks—market shifts, supply chain issues—but we can’t build homes without hands to build them.
You might be thinking, “But aren’t these undocumented workers?” The reality is more complicated than that. Many of these workers have been living here for years. They pay taxes. They have families. They’re part of the community. Last year, we built a small apartment complex where the lead carpenter—an older Honduran immigrant—taught younger guys how to build cabinetry with a level of precision I rarely see. Now? He’s gone. His phone’s off. No one knows where he is.
For those of us on the ground, the ICE crackdown isn’t a political talking point—it’s a logistical nightmare. Labor is disappearing. Costs are rising. Delays are stretching. And according to the National Association of Home Builders and the University of Denver, large developers who rely heavily on immigrant labor are the most vulnerable right now.
You can pause permits, rework blueprints, renegotiate with suppliers. But you can’t fabricate skilled tradespeople out of thin air. And the ones we had? They’re disappearing by the vanload.
At a recent Miami city commission meeting, when local leaders voted to formalize cooperation with ICE, a resident stood up and called the move a “cultural betrayal.” He said, “Don’t pretend this is still the Magic City. Shut down the cafecito windows. Close Versailles. Pull the roosters out of Little Havana. Tear down the monuments you just restored. Knock down the Freedom Tower.”
It sounded dramatic—but he wasn’t wrong. Florida isn’t just palm trees and pastel-colored condos. It’s built on immigrant labor. It always has been. Without those workers, the skyline doesn’t rise. The neighborhoods don’t get built. The Florida we sell to homebuyers and investors simply doesn’t exist.
These days, what keeps me up at night isn’t financing falling through—it’s not knowing if my crew will show up in the morning, or if another one of them has vanished, quietly and without a trace.
Maybe it’s time we stop framing this as a debate over legality, and start looking at it for what it really is: a question of who actually builds the communities we live in. And whether we’re willing to protect them.