An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid at Glenn Valley Foods in South Omaha resulted in the arrest of over 70 employees and sparked a protest that got out of hand. The raid, which took place around 9 a.m. Sunday, quickly turned violent as protesters faced officers with hostile strategy.
The Associated Press reports that the raid was ‘based on an ongoing criminal investigation into the large-scale use of aliens without authorization to work in the United States’. ICE officials reported it was likely the largest ‘worksite enforcement operation’ ever in Nebraska under Donald Trump’s presidency.
A handful of demonstrators waited outside the meat packing facility after the raid. Footage on social media recorded the tense standoff, including moments of people jumping onto speeding cars to obstruct officers.
“A small group of protesters emerged to demonstrate against the raid, and some went so far as to crawl on top of the front bumper of a car in an attempt to halt officers at one scene while others hurled rocks at officials’ cars as a white bus full of workers drove away from a factory,” the Associated Press reported.
Extremely tense interactions between protesters and federal agents after an ICE raid at an Omaha meatpacking plant. pic.twitter.com/kwDbzWDQaL
— Jeremy Turley 🦃 (@jeremyjturley) June 10, 2025
Yet another clip depicted stones being thrown at a convoy carrying the arrested workers out of the factory.
Glenn Valley Foods Denies Advance Notice
Gary Rohwer, the owner and CEO of Glenn Valley Foods, said in an interview with WOWT that he had no prior knowledge of the raid and claimed that ICE agents came in without a warrant. “We E-Verify 100% all of the employees,” Rohwer said, asserting that the company is in compliance with federal employment verification statutes.
E-Verify, an administration-operated program, is utilized to validate the immigration status of workers. Yet when company president Chad Hartmann brought up this issue with the ICE officers during the raid, they supposedly retorted that the system ‘is broken’.
Over 70 workers were apprehended in the raid on suspicion of being immigrants who entered unofficially, Fox News said. The case continues to unfold, with the federal inquiry centered on the reported large-scale hiring of illegal workers at the plant.
