Outside of being a McAllen city commissioner, I'm also the chief lending officer at Lone Star National Bank. I've been there for 20 years.
Our bank probably lends anywhere in the range of 500 to 600 million dollars into local business, and a huge portion of that business each year is construction, land development and real estate as a whole. Ninety-three percent of those dollars go into real estate investments. So we deal with probably almost your entire membership and builders and suppliers and the entire chain of the construction industry.
So, obviously, on the financial sector side, we see the dip and the drop in demand, which obviously means lesser and lesser investment in the region. We already know the supply of homes is already a bit crunched with demand, and so that only causes prices to go higher.
I think the issues with labor are causing almost risk pricing for the contractor. It creates a lot of instability in the market to be able to, from an economic standpoint, plan and forecast ahead for future projects. So, definitely, in the banking sector, we see the demand diminishing. We see the strain from not only the construction industry, but we see it across the board in various sectors and finance. And so it definitely affects the market as a whole. It affects the local economy, significantly. It affects the local workforce.
And all of that can put a lot of strain on, really, community banks. Lone Star National Bank, along with a large number of other banks in the community, are really the access to capital for small business, for the local community, even for the consumers. And as things like this continue to happen and escalate, it's only going to force banks to tighten up. It's only going to reduce not only the access to capital across the board, but it's going to elevate the risk of foreclosures, the risk of default, consumer credit. All that is going to be effective.
We're all one large affected community, and we're very tied to the community. And so it's critical that… I talk about it from the financial sector (point of view), from sort of the economic impact, from the numbers that the banks see, and the industries that we see affected. But there's no doubt that overall, too, these are our neighbors. These are the people that we work with. This is our community. We are a border town, and we want to see the people in our community treated with dignity and respect, and we want to see people willing to work, given an opportunity. We have created the system that exists alongside the system, and there are better solutions that can fit what's being done today.
Editor’s Note: The above commentary was provided by Seby Haddad, chief lending officer at Lone Star National Bank, at a symposium hosted by South Texas Builders Association. Titled the Immigration Enforcement & Construction Industry Impact Symposium, it was held at McAllen Convention Center on Jan. 14, 2026, and was attended by construction industry leaders from across the Texas-Mexico border region, bankers, U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar and Monica De La Cruz, and McAllen Mayor Javier Villalobos.
