This is one of those stories you sort of hear about a couple of weeks before, and maybe forget about unless some little nugget of information comes along that makes you want to dig a little deeper into it. Which is exactly what happened to me this morning.
I do recall maybe even commenting on X when the first word about this broke.
The big story was the raid on Glenn Valley Foods in Omaha, Nebraska, about two weeks ago. It wasn't so much the raid itself, but the number of illegals that they rounded up, which caught people's attention at the time. That's a lot of folks for the feds to be pulling out of a business.
Immigration raid rocks Nebraska meatpacking plant; protesters and law enforcement clash
...Federal authorities detained more than 70 people during a raid on the Glenn Valley Foods meatpacking plant near 68th and J streets, ICE said in a statement.
The large-scale raid also involved the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service and Omaha police, according to the plant’s president.
It led to confusion inside the plant and anger outside of it, as some protesters clashed with law enforcement. It shocked company executives, who said they’d used the federal government’s system to verify the legal status of their employees. And it also set off a fresh round of fear and rumors that plants and stores elsewhere in Nebraska had been raided, or were soon to be. Those reports couldn’t be verified by the Flatwater Free Press on Tuesday evening.
ICE executed the federal search warrant on Glenn Valley Foods “based on an ongoing criminal investigation into the large-scale employment of aliens without authorization to work in the United States,” the agency said in a statement. During the raid, an undocumented person from Honduras attempted to assault federal agents with a boxcutter, but no agents were injured, an ICE spokesperson said.
It also earned the ire of many of the locals, much like in Los Angeles, some of whom made it down to the plant as the raid was progressing to 'protest.' As in LA, that turned ugly, too, with protestors and family members even jumping on government vehicles. The rock chuckers also came out, as you can see in the first 18 seconds of this video, which somehow did not make national news reports sympathetic to the illegal aliens' cause.
I don't think there's a soul with half a brain in the country who doesn't believe that there are - or were - a ton of illegals working in the meat processing industries. I remember the chicken processing plants in north Alabama near where my Daddy once lived by Lake Guntersville and Albertville. They were some of the largest in the state.
Sometimes, there would be sporadic ICE or CBP raids. His next-door neighbor was a plant manager and said it was almost a routine from a movie - the green federal vans and Suburbans would pull up to the front of the plant and three-quarters of the workers on the processing floor would go flying out the back. It was a well-choreographed and practiced dance. The three or four or ten who didn't move fast enough were popped into the van, the feds left, and everyone came back out of the fields or woods and went back to work.
Then they went home to the little communities in the mountains around Guntersville, which had become plagued with violence and drug problems, many of them attributable to the influx of illegals who worked at the factories.
When I initially heard about this raid, I thought it was a repeat of that classic dance from the late 90s and early 2000s, but was kind of surprised that a factory owner would be so sanguine about employing illegals in numbers approaching that in this day and age. It didn't seem especially prudent.
I also gave a passing moment to wondering why the feds would be bothering with a plant in the middle of nowhere when surely there were plenty of the first-to-go criminals to be found by the gross in any city they were already working in.
And that was that, until I read a Judicial Watch newsletter this morning, which began to explain exactly HOW an obscure plant out of thousands in the country wound up raided.
It also answered my question about the plant owner's apparent lack of concern. It turns out, as far as he knew, all his employees were kosher by virtue of passing their E-Verify screenings. The plant was 100% compliant with federal regulations for hiring. The workers did so by using stolen identities and Social Security numbers.
Years after Judicial Watch reported that the government’s system to verify if employees are authorized to work legally in the United States approved hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, federal authorities have uncovered widespread identity theft at a meat processing plant that used the defective tool to screen 100% of its staff. A recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) worksite enforcement operation at Glenn Valley Foods in Omaha, Nebraska busted over 70 illegal aliens who were using stolen Social Security numbers and identities to unlawfully obtain wages, health benefits and employment authorization, according to the agency. The criminal identity theft scheme left “more than 100 real victims to face devastating financial, emotional and legal consequences,” ICE writes in its announcement of the operation.
What led the feds to raid that plant in particular was a deep, detailed, multi-agency investigation into at least a hundred cases of individual identity theft across the country that - SURPRISE! - all led back to a massive identity theft ring originating in that very plant.
A recent worksite enforcement operation led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement revealed massive identity theft impacting unsuspecting U.S. citizens whose personal information was used by illegal aliens to gain unlawful employment at Glenn Valley Foods.
The ICE-led multiagency investigation uncovered approximately 70 illegal aliens who were using stolen Social Security numbers and identities to unlawfully obtain wages, health benefits and employment authorization, leaving more than 100 real victims to face devastating financial, emotional and legal consequences.
The agent in charge of the three-month-long investigation had no sympathy for the illegals or community activists attempting to stir up trouble over the simple folks just looking to earn a living.
...Anne Wurth, the group's associate legal director, told NBC News they are “honest, hardworking individuals in our community" who have also been victims of an immigration system that “does not provide enough pathways” to remain in the country legally.
"That’s not true," said Elhrick Cerdan, the assistant special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Nebraska, who led the enforcement operation at Glenn Valley Foods.
Amazing how the lawbreakers are always the victims, always.
Special Agent Cerdan is pissed.
“There have been individuals who have gone on the record recently referring to the identity thieves we arrested last week as ‘good, hardworking, and honest,’” said Mark Zito, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations Kansas City, which covers Omaha. “These so-called honest workers have caused an immeasurable amount of financial and emotional hardship for innocent Americans. If pretending to be someone you aren’t in order to steal their lives isn’t blatant, criminal dishonesty, I don’t know what is.”
And when you read about what the victims of this fraud have been put through because of these 'honest, hardworking' criminals, you damn near want to drag them out of the factory and throw them on a bus yourself.
These are some - just some - of the cases of honest, hardworking AMERICAN CITIZENS victimized by the Glenn Valley Foods illegal aliens identity theft scheme.
- A healthcare provider was forced to deny medically necessary prescriptions to a victim in Pennsylvania after his identity was stolen. It was later determined that someone used the victim’s name and Social Security number to illegally gain employment and healthcare benefits based on fraudulent employment at Glenn Valley Foods.
- A disabled victim in Texas, who was unable to work, struggled to get their Social Security disability payments because an illegal alien was fraudulently using their identity and earning wages at Glenn Valley Foods.
- The IRS requested a victim in Colorado to repay more than $5,000 after their income was falsely increased due to an illegal alien stealing their identity and using it to work at Glenn Valley Foods.
- A full-time nursing student from Missouri lost their college tuition assistance because it was fraudulently reported that they earned too much money. The investigation revealed that an illegal alien at Glenn Valley Foods was using their Social Security number for employment. The same victim was also unable to renew their Missouri driver’s license, until HSI contacted the Department of Motor Vehicles on their behalf, because the alien who stole her identity has multiple unpaid traffic violations.
- A victim in California has been working for nearly 15 years to regain their identity and fix the financial damage done by an illegal alien who was working at Glenn Valley Foods.
That's just one processing plant. I mean, my Lord. The numbers could be staggering of the damage these people have done and no - waah - I don't care how long they've been here or that 'they're like family.'
I don't.
...Reyes grew emotional as she spoke about the raid, noting that those arrested have family and friends who depend on them for survival.
“I don’t think that anyone should be punished for going to work,” Reyes said. “It seems like no one has compassion anymore.”
Agents took hours to meticulously go through and verify everyone's paperwork and authenticate documents. They even allowed workers to return home to retrieve paperwork for other family members or friends who didn't have what they needed with them. This wasn't any inhumane cattle round-up.
...It took federal authorities four hours to safely conduct employment authorization audits of every worker at the plant, according to Cerdan and the U.S. attorney’s office in Nebraska.
Homeland Security agents identified 76 employees at Glenn Valley Foods who lacked valid work authorizations, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. “These workers were using Social Security numbers that had not been issued to them,” U.S. Attorney Lesley A. Woods said.
Based on the findings of the audit, “a large number of suspected fraudulent identification documents” was uncovered, Woods said. “Multiple identities of United States citizens were being fraudulently used by workers at that location.”
Cerdan said workers at Glenn Valley Foods were using the identities of 100 U.S. citizens — most of them of Latino heritage and from multiple states.
“These victims have experienced tremendous loss because of reported wages that they did not earn,” he said.
Where's the compassion for the victims of the identity theft and fraudulent documents the feds found?
Now there's nothing but 'fear' in Omaha, too, and that's supposed to intimidate the federal government from enforcing the law.
In a darkly amusing twist, another precious and long-held bromide fell to the wayside as a result of this raid on identity thieves - the always sneering progressive assurance that if you scoop these illegals up, there will be no one to clean your toilets...or process your hamburger.
AMERICANS AREN'T WILLING TO DO THOSE JOBS.
Turns out, they kinda are.
We all know how the Democrats go on about illegals doing jobs American’s won’t do???
— Trevor Thacker (@trethack24) June 17, 2025
Welp, just 2 days after the Glenn Valley Foods meat packing plant was targeted by ICE raids, NBC News reported the waiting room was full with people, American citizens, filling out job… pic.twitter.com/XNPAD4KGLt
It turns out, every seat in the place was packed with a hopeful job applicant or someone finishing up training to get started at their new job.
Every seat in the waiting area of Glenn Valley Foods was occupied with people filling out job applications early Thursday afternoon, two days after the meatpacking plant became the center of the largest worksite immigration raid in the state of Nebraska so far this year.
Dozens of prospective employees, many of them Spanish speakers, had been coming in and out of the plant all day. Some were hoping to land a new job; others were coming in for training.
The scene gave the company’s president, Chad Hartmann, a glimmer of hope amid the chaos that ensued after Tuesday's raid purged roughly half of his staff — many of whom had been longtime employees of the company, which has been processing boxed beef for more than 15 years.
What a country.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member