The owner of an Omaha food packaging company says his business has been unfairly hamstrung by federal immigration officials, who raided the plant and arrested more than half its workforce.
The raid took place despite the company meticulously following the government’s own system for verifying the workers were in the country legally, owner Gary Rohwer said Wednesday.
Glenn Valley Foods now is operating at about 30% of capacity as the business scrambles to hire more workers, Rohwer said as he stood outside the plant.
Asked how upsetting the raid was, Rohwer replied, “I was very upset, ma’am, because we were told to e-verify, and we e-verified all these years, so I was shocked.”
“We did everything we could possibly do,” he said.
E-Verify is an online U.S. Department of Homeland Security system launched in the late 1990s that allows employers to quickly check if potential employees can work legally in the U.S., often by using Social Security numbers.
Some of America’s largest employers use it, including Starbucks and Walmart, but the vast majority of employers do not. Critics say the system is fairly easy to cheat, particularly with false documents.
Rohwer noted that federal officials have said his company was a victim of those using stolen identities or fake IDs to get around the E-Verify system, which lead agents conducting the raid described as “broken” and “flawed” to Glenn Valley executives.
But that does nothing to repair the company’s bottom line, Rohwer said.
“I’d like to see the United States government … come up with a program that they can communicate to the companies as to how to hire legitimate help. Period,” he said.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed that more than 70 people were arrested during the Glenn Valley Foods raid on Tuesday. It also said one of the workers, described as a Honduras national, assaulted federal agents as he was being detained.
The Omaha raid comes amid an immigration crackdown under President Donald Trump. The administration has been intensifying its efforts in recent weeks, and Trump deployed more than 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines this week to respond to ongoing protests in Los Angeles over his immigration policies.
The raid, in the southeastern section of Omaha where nearly a quarter of residents are foreign born according to the 2020 census, led to hundreds of people turning out to protest Tuesday evening. But it also had a chilling effect on the south Omaha community.
The Metropolitan Community College’s South Omaha campus and an Omaha library branch in the area closed Tuesday afternoon, and several businesses along south Omaha’s normally bustling 24th Street closed as news of the raid spread. Several of them remained closed Wednesday, said Douglas County Board of Commissioners Chairman Roger Garcia, whose district covers south Omaha.
“Everybody’s still on alert, waiting to see what happens today and in the coming days,” Garcia said. “So there’s still a lot of anxiety and fear out there.”
That fear will show up in the form of a weakened economy in Omaha, he added.
“You know, when products are not being sold, taxes are not being collected, and people are not able to get their goods as well. So it affects all of us,” he said.
An aunt of Garcia’s wife was among those taken away by ICE during the Omaha raid, he said. They have been unable to determine where she is being held.
The raid came on the same day of the inauguration of newly elected Omaha Mayor John Ewing, a Democrat who unseated three-term Republican Jean Stothert last month.
During a news conference Wednesday to address the raid, Ewing declined to speculate on whether the timing of it was intended to distract from his swearing-in. But he denounced the action by federal authorities, saying, “My message to the public is that we are with them.”
Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer also declared that his department will play no part in checking immigration or the legal status of residents in the community.
“That is not our mission. Our mission is public safety,” the chief said. “I need victims to come forward. They will not come forward if they’re fearful of Omaha Police Department being immigration officers.”
