ICE is sending a chill through the construction industry

toggle caption Tony Gutierrez/AP

As cars and trucks zoom by, Rurick Palomino points to the underside of the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge that spans the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., where his crew of about 30 workers is doing demolition work and pouring concrete as part of a $128 million federally-funded refurbishment.

A Peruvian immigrant who came to the United States 25 years ago, Palomino — a U.S. citizen — built his construction firm from scratch after earning an engineering degree and learning the trade firsthand. He once employed 45 workers but has since scaled back. "There's plenty of work — a lot of mega-projects coming — but I'm afraid to take more because I don't have the manpower," he says.

toggle caption Scott Neuman/NPR

For years, the construction industry — in which on average one in three workers is foreign-born — has struggled with a yawning labor shortage that President Trump's immigration crackdown is making worse, industry officials warn. In D.C., for example, that has meant Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) checkpoints that have swept up Latino workers on their way to and from work.

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"I personally saw a checkpoint here on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway," Palomino says. "All construction pickups. So, it's happening."

"People are scared," he continues.

As ICE agents fan out to detain and deport undocumented immigrants, their enforcement actions are creating unease among both undocumented and documented workers on building sites across the U.S., deepening the already severe labor shortage, slowing the pace of construction and driving up costs, industry officials and contractors say.

From the first day of his second term, Trump began issuing executive orders and proclamations aimed at reversing the flow of migrants at the southern border — apprehending and deporting undocumented individuals and seeking to end birthright citizenship . In September, the Department of Homeland Security said that ICE had deported 400,000 people since the start of Trump's second term and