Immigration Crackdown Creating 'Havoc' For Some Apartment Owners

More and more apartment landlords and operators are starting to feel the strain placed on their portfolios by the Trump administration's intensifying immigration enforcement actions.

Forty percent of apartment owners, developers and investors reported that recent immigration policies hurt leasing efforts and occupancy rates, according to a survey conducted by John Burns Research and Consulting for the National Apartment Association.

In Florida, where about 22% of the population is foreign-born, 67% of landlords polled reported a negative impact from immigration policy enforcement, according to the report. In Texas, 21% of owners and developers reported a significant negative impact, while another 26% said they felt a somewhat negative impact.

Immigration actions, including detentions and deportations, have meant some tenants simply vanish from their units. Other impacts include delayed or diminished payments.  

“Not only did a lot of my tenants disappear, but slow paying became more of a norm, because people are living month to month trying to figure out if they're going to be here or not,” said Ariel Lopez, owner of South Florida-based multifamily landlord The Lopez Cos. “It's created a lot of havoc for the multifamily sector.”

Lopez owns 300 apartments in Miami-Dade County that today are operating at a 30% vacancy rate, he said. Typically, that rate is closer to 2%. He places the blame squarely on the federal government's immigration policies.

The topic of immigration has been underdiscussed among multifamily researchers in an environment with softening rents and vacancy at its highest point in years, said Eric Finnigan, the JBREC vice president of demographics research who conducted the report. Many have pointed to a slowdown in leasing, macroeconomic uncertainty and a record wave of new construction.

The extent to which immigration enforcement actions and policy shifts affected the multifamily sector surprised Finnigan, who researches the residential rental market.

One client, who Finnigan declined to name, struggled with a 10% drop in occupancy at an apartment property in the Southeast following a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid.

As immigration enforcement actions ramped up, apartment landlords and operators have sought advice on how to handle it — and data to explain its impact, Finnigan said.

The survey, which polled more than 130 apartment developers, investors and operators across the country, also found that 30% of respondents experienced a negative impact on staffing and labor from immigration policy shifts.

But the main effect of the immigration crackdown on multifamily has been the way it has changed some tenant behavior, Finnigan said. Foreign-born residents may opt to move in with friends or family to avoid putting their names on documents.

“We're hearing this from clients that are in communities where there's a lot of immigration enforcement — there's just a hesitancy to report or put their name anywhere down on paper or show up in public to send money home, back to wherever they're from,” Finnigan said. “It’s not just the people that end up getting picked up in enforcement actions but really the wider swath of the population of foreign-born residents.”

Still, the majority of respondents to the survey said they have seen no effect from immigration actions at their properties, and 1% said they have had a positive effect. The results reinforce that the immigration policies are a “one-sided risk, rather than a demand tailwind,” according to the report.

President Donald Trump is spearheading the “largest deportation program” in the country’s history after promising on the campaign trail to deport 10 million people who are in the country without authorization.

The crackdown started immediately after he took office a year ago, raising concerns about potential apartment raids, prompting landlords, employees, property managers and industry associations to scramble for legal guidance on how to respond if one were to occur.

The Department of Homeland Security said in December that it had deported more than 600,000 unauthorized immigrants in 2025 and another 1.9 million “self-deported,” or left the country voluntarily. Nearly 70,000 migrants were being held in detention centers as of Jan. 8, NBC News reported.

This month, the Department of Housing and Urban Development notified landlords and public housing authorities that they have 30 days to prove the eligibility and citizenship of nearly 200,000 tenants or they may be subject to sanctions.

The growth of the immigrant population in the U.S. fell by more than 50% between July 2024 and July 2025, according to Census Bureau data released this week. Population experts expect that number to fall even more dramatically this year, The New York Times reported.

“Immigration is going to be very low for the foreseeable future. Then that removes a big segment of rental demand,” Finnigan said.

In a typical year, about 100,000 to 200,000 immigrants would rent in the U.S., and the majority of these tenants tend to be in middle-to-lower-income submarkets and reside in older boutique apartment buildings, Finnigan said.

For landlords like Lopez in immigrant-dense communities, the financial strain is already being felt. He has offered free rent to try to fill up his sudden surplus of vacant apartments.

“The water has reached our noses,” Lopez said.