Federal immigration raid at Omaha meat production plant sparks protests

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — 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.

A small group of people came out to protest the raid, and some of them even jumped on the front bumper of a vehicle to try to stop officers in one location while others threw rocks at officials’ vehicles as a white bus carrying workers pulled away from a plant.

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.

“My biggest issue is: why us?” Hartmann said. “We do everything by the book.”

The plant uses E-Verify, the federal database used to check the immigration status of employees. When he said as much to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who carried out the raid, they told him the E-Verify system “is broken.”

“I mean, what am I supposed to do with that?” Hartmann said. “This is your system, run by the government. And you’re raiding me because your system is broken?”

Omaha police and the Douglas County sheriff said immigration officials had warned them about their plans, and their departments helped block off traffic around the neighborhood where many food production plants are located while ICE officers worked.

Meatpacking plants rely heavily on immigrant workers who are willing to do the physically demanding work. The industry has not yet been the focus of President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts, but the administration has been intensifying its efforts in recent weeks. Trump called out the National Guard this week to respond to ongoing protests in Los Angeles over his immigration policies.

CEO and owner Gary Rohwer told WOWT in Omaha he wasn’t made aware of the operation ahead of time. He said federal agents entered the plant with a list of 97 people they wanted to screen.

“Of course not. It’s a raid,” said Rohwer, whose company makes the Gary’s QuickSteak brand of ready-to-grill steak.

Estefania Favila, a supervisor at Glenn Valley Foods, said she was in a morning meeting when federal officials began banging on the plant’s doors and yelling, “Homeland Security!”

“They just came in and said that it was a raid and we had to get everybody out of production,” Favila said. Employees were separated by those who had documents showing they were U.S. citizens, those who had valid work documents and those who did not have documents, she said.

About 70 people were taken away in buses with the windows blacked out, Favila said. Among them were two of her cousins who immigrated from Honduras, she said.

ICE officials confirmed in an email the raid at Glenn Valley Foods, saying it 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 likely the largest ”worksite enforcement operation” in Nebraska since the start of Trump’s second term.

Hartmann, the company president, said he planned to contact Republican Rep. Don Bacon, who represents the district, and other Nebraska leaders to try to get answers. By Tuesday afternoon, Bacon had issued a statement saying the ICE raid sought to investigate stolen identities and that “ICE verified that Glen Valley Foods complied with E-Verify 100% and is a victim in this as well.”

Douglas County Commissioner Roger Garcia, who rushed out of a regular meeting Tuesday morning after he learned about the raid, said the community is shaken.

“It clearly instills a lot of fear,” said Garcia, who represents the area. “People are asking me if this is going to continue for multiple days here in Omaha. People are asking me if this is going to spread to other cities.”