The jolt sent through construction and other industries from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids continues to inject uncertainty across workforces in Los Angeles and the rest of the country.
The raids, which began with companies in Downtown Los Angeles’ Fashion District earlier this month, have been captured by bystanders on social media and news outlets everywhere from Home Depot parking lots to the Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet.
Law enforcement most recently hit Dodger Stadium last Thursday, according to the team. The Dodgers said in an X post ICE was“denied entry to the grounds by the organization.” The Department of Homeland Security later clarified in its own X post it was U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the stadium “unrelated to any operation or enforcement.”
There were 330 arrests in Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California between June 6 and June 11, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing a White House spokesperson.
For real estate, the raids have been a gut punch to labor, but questions are being raised on what the worker shortage means in the coming years for new housing supply.
The raids came up Wednesday during a Connect Los Angeles conference at the Intercontinental Los Angeles Downtown.
“I don’t think we should be throwing out of the country hard working, good people that we need in our community,” developer Rick Caruso said to applause from the conference crowd. “They’re creating a terrible problem that’s already affecting business in our region right now and in other regions.”
The sentiment was hardly a surprise with Caruso vocal on the matter on X, calling the deportations of workers “wrong” and “cruel” on June 6.
“Let’s focus on throwing out hardened criminals and keeping good people here,” he went on to say at the conference.
Existing labor shortage
Jamison CEO Jaime Lee also spoke to the raids’ industry impact during a panel at the conference.
“There are construction sites around town where nobody is showing up to work,” Lee said. “They’re closing down construction sites. This is a region that the [city of Los Angeles’ housing element] says we need 456,000 new units. We’re now at our lowest construction starts in 13 years.”
The impact of the raids on the workforce pile onto existing industry headwinds, including tariffs and high interest rates, Lee added.
Jason Somers, president and founder of Los Angeles-based Crest Real Estate, echoed Lee’s take, telling The Real Deal in an interview last week that around the city “job sites have been shut down.” Crest specializes in assisting companies with permitting and entitlements and has been focused on aiding rebuilding in communities such as the Pacific Palisades, Altadena and Malibu.
While numbers and forecasts in terms of impact from the raids aren’t yet available, Somers’ brother Steven Somers, who serves as Crest’s CEO, called the recent events throughout the region “devastating.”
“The immigrant community plays a critical role in the construction of housing throughout Los Angeles and there’s just no two ways about that,” Steven said.
Lack of skilled labor was already among the chief concerns among architects and homebuilders as they assess timelines on rebuilding in fire-damaged areas. Some raised concerns well before June’s raids on whether immigration law enforcement could exacerbate the situation.
The labor shortage was the subject of a study released last week by the National Association of Home Builders, Home Builders Institute and University of Denver.
That research tied construction lags due to the lack of skilled labor to $10.8 billion in economic costs annually in the U.S. The study also found 19,000 single-family homes are not built each year on account of the labor shortage.
Swaying stance
Adding to the whiplash is President Donald Trump himself, who has wavered from towing hard and soft lines when it comes to immigration policy enforcement.
Last Thursday the president recognized the raids’ toll on industries such as farming and hospitality.
“Our great farmers and people in the hotel and leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long-time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote in a June 12 Truth Social post.
The president appeared to suggest a compromise of some kind, when he continued to write in that same post, “We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”
Three days later, it seems consideration of changes appears not applicable to major cities when Trump posted to Truth Social a reminder that ICE’s mandate is to carry out “the single-largest mass deportation program” in the country.
“In order to achieve this, we must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside,” Trump wrote.