OMAHA, Nebraska — Immigration authorities raided an Omaha meat production plant Tuesday morning and took dozens of workers away in buses, leaving company officials bewildered because they said they had followed the law.
The raid happened around 9 a.m. at Glenn Valley Foods in south Omaha, an area where nearly a quarter of residents were foreign born according to the 2020 census.
Chad Hartmann, president of the food packaging company, said the front office was stunned by the aggressive nature of federal officials’ raid and confused by why the company was targeted.
“We do everything by the book.” The plant uses E-Verify, the federal database used to check the immigration status of employees.
It’s a raid,” said Rohwer, whose company makes the Gary’s QuickSteak brand of ready-to-grill steak.
OMAHA, Nebraska — Company officials said they had complied with the law, but immigration officials took dozens of workers away in buses during a raid on an Omaha meat production plant Tuesday morning, leaving them perplexed.
Around nine in the morning, the raid took place. M. at South Omaha’s Glenn Valley Foods, where, according to the 2020 census, almost 25% of the population was foreign-born.
A few people turned out to protest the raid; some even tried to stop officers in one place by jumping on the front bumper of a car, while others threw rocks at the cars of officials as a white bus carrying workers left a plant.
The food packaging company’s president, Chad Hartmann, stated that the front office was taken aback by the force of the federal agents’ raid and perplexed as to why the company was singled out.
“Why us is my biggest problem,” Hartmann remarked. “We follow the book in every way. “”.
The facility checks employees’ immigration status using the federal database E-Verify. He told U that at that time. A. He was informed that the E-Verify system “is broken” by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who conducted the raid. “.”.
Hartmann asked, “I mean, what am I supposed to do with that?”. “This is the government-run system that you use. And because your system isn’t working, you’re raiding me?
While ICE officers worked, Omaha police and the Douglas County sheriff’s department assisted in blocking off traffic in the area, which is home to numerous food production plants. They said that immigration officials had alerted them to their plans.
Meatpacking facilities mainly depend on foreign laborers who are prepared to perform the physically taxing tasks. Although the administration has been stepping up its efforts in recent weeks, President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement initiatives have not yet targeted the industry. This week, Trump summoned the National Guard to address the ongoing anti-immigration demonstrations in Los Angeles.
Owner and CEO Gary Rohwer told WOWT in Omaha that he was not informed in advance of the operation. He said a list of 97 individuals they wished to screen was brought into the plant by federal agents.
“Obviously not. “It’s a raid,” Rohwer, whose business produces ready-to-grill steak under the Gary’s QuickSteak brand, declared.
According to Estefania Favila, a supervisor at Glenn Valley Foods, federal agents started crashing on the plant’s doors and shouting, “Homeland Security!” while she was in a morning meeting.
“They just came in and told us that we had to get everyone out of production because it was a raid,” Favila said. Employees with documentation proving they were U.S. were separated from the others. A. citizens, both those without documents and those with legitimate employment documents, she said.
Favila said about 70 people were removed in buses with blacked-out windows. She mentioned that two of her cousins who came from Honduras were among them.
In a confirmation email, ICE officials stated that the raid at Glenn Valley Foods was “based on an ongoing criminal investigation into the large-scale employment of aliens without authorization to work in the United States.”. They said it was probably Nebraska’s biggest “worksite enforcement operation” since Trump’s second term began.
The company’s president, Hartmann, stated that he would get in touch with Republican Rep. to try to obtain answers from Don Bacon, the district’s representative, and other Nebraska leaders. By Tuesday afternoon, Bacon had released a statement stating that the goal of the ICE raid was to look into identities that had been stolen and that “ICE is a victim in this as well and verified that Glen Valley Foods complied with E-Verify 100 percent.”. “”.
After learning of the raid, Douglas County Commissioner Roger Garcia hurriedly left a routine meeting Tuesday morning, saying the community is in shock.
“It obviously creates a great deal of fear,” Garcia, the local representative, said. “People in Omaha are asking me if this will last for several days. I’m getting asked if this will spread to other cities. “.”.
