A lot of Latino voters in Texas have been described as a “swing” story for years. But here’s the fresher, more alarming angle from a new U.S. Hispanic Business Council survey: some of the people who employ others are now saying Trump-era immigration enforcement is destabilizing their businesses, and they are backing Democratic nominee James Talarico instead of Attorney General Ken Paxton.

The headline number in the survey is brutal in plain terms. One in five Hispanic business owners in Texas says they had an employee deported in the past year, according to the poll commissioned by USHBC and shared first with POLITICO. The survey also says fear is not just psychological. Seven in ten Hispanic business owners report their businesses were impacted by Trump’s tariffs, and the combined cost shocks and deportation pressure are reshaping voting behavior among business leaders.

That includes Benny Melendez, a south Texas construction company owner who voted for President Donald Trump in 2024. Since Trump returned to the White House, Melendez says it has become increasingly difficult to run his small construction company. He claims immigration officers have detained workers at job sites and pulled over his company trucks. Since the beginning of 2025, he says more than 10 workers have been deported. The practical effect, according to Melendez, is that the uncertainty has gotten too hard to manage, so he says he is abandoning his support for Trump and Republicans to back Talarico in this year’s U.S. Senate election.

Melendez is not alone. The survey of 1,012 Texas-based USHBC members, conducted from June 2 to 15, includes owners in construction, food services, retail, manufacturing, and other industries. Among these respondents, Talarico holds a seven-point lead over Paxton, the GOP nominee, even though a plurality of respondents self-identify as Republican. The poll also highlights cross-over movement: almost one quarter of those who supported Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary now say they will back Talarico, while over half say they will back Paxton. In other words, the business community is not just “switching teams.” It is also breaking the assumption that brand loyalty will override lived consequences.

Executives should also notice how the poll frames causality. USHBC CEO Javier Palomarez points to the “fear factor” and disruption created by deportation activity, describing it as “debilitating” for small companies. His point is simple: in a business with around 10 people, deporting even one worker changes morale and operational stability. When employees are uncertain about whether they will be detained, planning becomes harder. Scheduling becomes riskier. And the workforce becomes less reliable, which is exactly the kind of friction construction and other labor-sensitive industries struggle with even in stable conditions.

Paxton, who has long been an immigration hardliner, has doubled down in public messaging. The source notes that Paxton touts his support for a controversial Texas immigration law and has sued to stop publicly funded legal defense for undocumented immigrants. That matters because the political story here is also an enforcement and legal-architecture story. In communities where enforcement is seen as sweeping, policy disputes do not land as “technical governance.” They land as “people are getting taken away,” which is the lived reality the poll and the business owners describe.

The tension gets sharper when you connect it to what else is hitting these businesses. The survey reports seven in ten say they were impacted by Trump’s tariffs. Palomarez’s “morale” argument sits alongside a cost argument. If your margins are already squeezed by tariffs and you are also losing workers to deportations, you do not just lose employees. You risk delayed projects, higher costs to replace labor, and reputational churn with clients waiting on deliverables.

South Texas, in particular, is presented as a key battleground between enforcement and economic reality. The source recounts that in 2024, Trump won Texas Latinos by 10 points, riding concerns about former President Joe Biden’s border policy to victory in heavily Latino border communities. Trump won 14 of 18 border counties, including Starr County, a 90-percent Latino county that Hillary Clinton won with 79 percent in 2016 and that had not voted Republican since the 1890s. But now, many feel Trump’s interior enforcement policy has gone too far. The survey says 70 percent had a negative view of immigration raids on the workforce.

There is also a signaling problem for Republican candidates in these districts. The source describes story after story in local media, including an undocumented man in Houston shot and killed by an ICE officer, a mariachi musician in San Antonio detained after playing at a birthday party, and a Catholic nun in McAllen detained while walking to Sunday Mass. Even GOP officials have criticized what is described as overreach. GOP Rep. Monica de la Cruz, representing a battleground district in the Rio Grande Valley, wrote on Facebook that “our immigration enforcement should target violent criminals,” and that “A Catholic nun on her way to church is not a threat to our community.” The construction executive granted anonymity says the nun’s arrest was “the final nail in the coffin” for many Hispanics who voted Republican, describing them as “conservative Latinos in south Texas” and saying it does not make sense.

For business leaders and boards, the second-order implication is that immigration enforcement is not just a voter issue. It is an operational risk factor. Mario Guerrero, a three-time Trump voter who leads the South Texas Builders Association, says it feels like “if you’re brown, they’re gonna stop you,” which he frames as damaging to labor availability. He also argues against the idea that deportations create jobs for American workers, noting the climate and labor reality in the valley. Palomarez adds that the districts that swung Republican are paying the price: “And now you don't have employees, or enough employees, to get that project done.”

Finally, the stakes expand beyond individual voters. The Texas Senate race is described as one of the nation’s most watched and most expensive this cycle. Early polling shows it in a dead heat: a New York Times/Siena poll released last month showed Paxton and Talarico tied. Among Hispanic voters, Talarico led by 32 points. That is a large enough gap to turn workforce disruption into an election narrative, and an election narrative into a policy urgency loop. If you are a CEO running operations in competitive, labor-constrained markets, the business takeaway is straightforward: when regulation-driven enforcement creates fear and labor volatility, it shows up in morale, delivery timelines, and political legitimacy. And when a major base starts flipping, it can change who gets to set the rules next.