Report: ICE Raid at Nebraska Meatpacking Plant Opens Jobs for Americans, Legal Immigrants

Following an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid on Glenn Valley Foods, a meatpacking plant in Omaha, Nebraska, Americans and legal immigrants alike are hoping to score newly opened jobs once held by illegal aliens at the facility.

As Breitbart News reported last week, ICE agents raided Glenn Valley Foods and arrested more than 70 illegal aliens who were working at the meatpacking plant.

Company president Chad Hartmann has said that he uses E-Verify on every potential new hire and thus was unaware that any illegal aliens were working at the plant. E-Verify, which can be defrauded using a stolen social security number, is meant to verify that a potential employee is legally allowed to work in the United States.

An NBC News report reveals that a couple of days after the ICE raid, Americans and legal immigrants poured into Glenn Valley Foods with the hope of scoring the newly opened jobs:

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. [Emphasis added]

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. [Emphasis added]

Decades of research have shown that ICE’s worksite raids routinely lead to new job openings for Americans and legal immigrants in the local community.

Testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in 2009, for instance, looked at the outcomes of ICE raids on meatpacking plants across seven states — finding that the plants were able to resume full production within 4-5 months following the raids thanks to new legal hires.

Likewise, the ICE raids often forced employers at the meatpacking plants to raise hourly pay to attract Americans and legal immigrants who could otherwise find better wages at less dangerous jobs elsewhere.

“In conclusion, I would observe that the immigration raids … had a profoundly positive effect in the lives of American citizens and permanent residents who needed and wanted these jobs,” journalist Jerry Kammer told the committee at the time.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.