WASHINGTON, June 10 (Reuters) – Tuesday’s immigration attack at a meat production plant in Omaha, Nebraska, was the state’s “large workplace enforcement project” during Trump’s presidency, the Department of Homeland Security said.
US Rep. Don Bacon said 75-80 people were detained to local media.
The US immigration and customs enforcement raid took place in the Glen Valley Foods plant. The food packaging company said it was surprised by the attack and was following rules regarding the immigration situation.
Chad Hartman, president of Glen Valley Foods in Omaha, said the attacked factories were using e-verify, a federal database used to check the immigration status of employees. He told Reuters that when he told federal agents this, the agent replied that “the system is broken” and urged him to contact his local council representative.
Ice executives have been bolstering their efforts over the past few weeks to elicit President Donald Trump’s record-level promise of deportation. The White House has requested that the agency illegally increase the arrests of U.S. immigrants, sources told Reuters.
Tensions erupted in Los Angeles over the weekend when protesters took them onto the streets after the ice arrested ice in their home depost stores, clothing factories and warehouses.
Local police in Omaha said immigrant staff had notified them of the attack in advance, but the company said they had not received prior notice of the operation.
Hartman said federal agents have a warrant saying they have identified 107 people they believe are using fraudulent documents.
“This was Nebraska’s biggest workplace enforcement project under the Trump administration,” the Department of Homeland Security said in X, adding that law enforcement officials were not hurt.
ICE said there is an ongoing criminal investigation into what immigration authorities called large-scale employment of immigrants illegally present in the United States.
“US immigration and federal law enforcement partners have today executed a federal search warrant at Glen Valley Foods, based on an ongoing criminal investigation into the large-scale employment of foreigners without allowing them to work in the United States.”
More than half of all American meat packing workers are immigrants, according to the Center for Economic Policy Research, a think tank.
Rights advocates, including the Nebraska ACLU, condemned the attack.
(Reporting by Kanish Kasin of Washington and Christina Cook of San Francisco, edited by Michael Perry)
