Works just fine, just make sure you do your mail forward with the paper form, keep your payments current, and do the verification of the forward in person as is required. Fwiw you can use any address you have access to to start the PO box or other accounts as well, even if you won't have that access for long. Source: I do mail
The good news is that your post isn't really something you have to worry about(social media is propagandizing this), it's only going to impact state funded housing for people and aim to funnel money to private prison contractors for any homeless people who assault ICE or w/e other federal agents. The bad news is that its rooted in hate and going to damage section 8 housing access, generally making people poorer/more worse off in the long run.
I don't know exactly how rough the market is now, but I've been happily using my moto g8 power (intl) that I bought for 170$ in 2020 when I lost my old one. Motorola makes some very good, cheap phones that can also be rooted (I'm not knowledgeable on this, I just use pared down apps on mine because I mostly value the 3 day battery life and regular phone/email features).
I looked into redmi back then but even w/o the US ban it wasn't worth it.