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Congressional Hispanic Caucus leaders blamed ICE enforcement for rising grocery, construction and health care costs at a Sept. 17 press conference, using the term "ICE tax" — a phrase America's Voice coined in a report released weeks earlier, not one invented that day.
- That report's own federal price analysis, not a press paraphrase, puts lettuce up 32.1% over the year ending in June, with apples, citrus and home health care all running well above the 2.6% core inflation rate.
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Texas sits at the crossing point of both the farm-labor and job-site stories, and two competing, separately sourced tallies of July's record ICE arrests are circulating at once.
Lawmakers from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus stood alongside the advocacy group America's Voice at the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 17 and put a name to what they call a hidden cost of mass deportation. Caucus chairman Adriano Espaillat told reporters "everyone in this country is paying the ICE tax," tying the phrase to food, construction and health care costs he says are climbing as immigrant workers are pulled out of the economy.
A Six-Week-Old Phrase Gets a Bigger Stage
The "ICE tax" label didn't originate at the press conference. America's Voice built its entire report around the term weeks earlier, arguing that mass deportation functions like a tax nobody voted on but everyone ends up paying. Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro used the moment to broaden the target, arguing that raids are hollowing out agriculture, construction and restaurants alike. California Rep. Gil Cisneros went further with a dollar figure, pointing to labor shortages he says have caused more than $3 billion in crop losses in his state.
Strip away the press-conference framing and the underlying numbers come from a year of federal pricing data. America's Voice's analysis found lettuce prices up 32.1% over the twelve months ending in June 2026, against a core inflation rate of just 2.6%. Apples rose 7.1%, fresh citrus 6.3%. The pattern extends past the produce aisle: in the Northeast, where roughly 23% of construction workers are foreign-born, new single-family home permits fell 23.5% between March 2025 and June 2026, while new-home prices in that same region climbed 15.4% over a comparable stretch. Home health care, a field where close to 40% of the workforce is immigrant, saw prices rise 10.7% over the past year.
Texas: Where Farm Labor Meets Job-Site Labor
Texas sits at the center of both halves of this argument. Nationally, 42% of the country's hired crop workforce lacks legal authorization, according to USDA figures — a number that carries outsized weight in a state where agriculture generates more than $30 billion a year. On the building side, roughly 40% of Texas construction workers are foreign-born, feeding an industry that contributes $144 billion to the state's economy. Builders in South Texas have already reported crews thinning out mid-project after enforcement operations moved through, stretching timelines and, eventually, prices.
The caucus wasn't the only voice breaking from the administration's line that week. Hours earlier, Florida Republican Maria Elvira Salazar released a campaign video, posted weeks ahead of November's midterms, warning that Hispanic voters who helped elect Trump in 2024 now "feel betrayed." Salazar represents a heavily Hispanic Miami-area district — nearly 70% of its residents identify as Hispanic — and said roughly half of the people detained by ICE in July had no criminal record.
Two Numbers, One Month
July turned into a month with two competing headline statistics. CBS News, citing preliminary Department of Homeland Security figures, reported ICE booked in more than 46,000 people that month. ABC News, citing people familiar with internal data, put the number closer to 51,000 arrests — what it called the highest single-month total in DHS history. Both descriptions are accurate; they're simply counting different things, book-ins versus arrests, from different points in the data's release.
The White House Pushes Back
The administration isn't conceding the economic argument. Asked about the America's Voice findings, White House spokesperson Lauren Bis blamed the prior administration for earlier price spikes and said the current approach is aimed at "putting American citizens first." Enforcement, meanwhile, keeps intensifying, with ICE facing internal pressure to sustain roughly 2,000 arrests a day.
Neither side disputes that enforcement has expanded sharply this year. What's contested is whether that expansion is the reason lettuce, lumber and home health aides cost more — or whether the timing is coincidence. With the midterms roughly seven weeks out, both parties are now making that case as much in grocery aisles and on job sites as on Capitol Hill.
