OMAHA, Neb. — 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 Vall