"I'm Thinking I'm 100% Legal." Then ICE Raided His Company.
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President Trump took office promising to carry out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history. And his administration has been trying to carry out that pledge, partly through workplace raids in industries that rely heavily on immigrant labor. One of those industries is meatpacking. Gary Rohrer knows the business well. Hi, Gary. Hi. You can hear me OK? Yes, I can hear you just fine, ma'am.

Gary's been in the meat industry since the 1980s. He's the CEO of a Nebraska-based company called Glen Valley Foods. Its signature product bears his name, Gary's Quick Steaks. They're small pieces of thinly sliced steak, about the size of a nickel, that have been frozen together. And then when you lay it on the grill, it releases in 60 seconds into a pile of thinly sliced steak for burritos, tacos, sandwiches.

salads, steak and eggs, Philly cheesesteak sandwiches. Gary's Quick Steaks are produced in his meat processing plant in Omaha before being shipped out and sold across the country. More than 100 employees work in the production line at his plant, slicing, pressing, and freezing meat. Nearly all of them are Latino immigrants. We really, really have a great, great Hispanic crew that we think the world of. They've been here forever.

And once they come, they stay. They're responsible. They show up on time. Gary says some of his employees have been with the company for 10 years or more. But earlier this month, something happened that threw Gary's business into chaos. It was about 9.30 in the morning. And ICE and Homeland Security people, they surrounded the building first. We didn't even know it. Had the building totally surrounded.

Gary was stunned. Glen Valley Foods had just become another target in the Trump administration's deportation push. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Annie Minoff. It's Thursday, June 26th. Coming up on the show, one CEO on the ICE raid that brought his business to a halt. ♪

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What does a day on the production line look like? What would someone on your production line be doing in a typical day? Well, what they basically do is they take boxed beef that we purchased from the packer and they open it up. And then what they do is they slice it and then they press it and then they slice it again. And then it goes through a stuffer.

that stuffs it into a log, and then it's blast frozen. How hard is that work? Because what you're describing sounds pretty labor-intensive, making all those thin slices. Well, ma'am, it's not only hard, but if you can visualize a bloody wet floor at 39, 40 degrees, knives, presses,

I've had people that have lost their hands in the press. Oh, my gosh. The press runs about 1,300 pounds per square inch, and it's hard. The boxes are heavy. Gary says he pays his production line workers an average of $20 an hour. That's higher than Nebraska's minimum wage of $13.50.

He also says his workers are on the company payroll and that Glen Valley Foods takes out taxes appropriately. Tough working conditions are a big reason why the meatpacking industry has struggled to attract U.S.-born workers. Many workers in animal slaughtering and processing are immigrants, and about 16 percent are likely undocumented, according to a Goldman Sachs report. That's among the highest percentages of undocumented labor in any industry.

So when you hire somebody, how do you try to figure out whether they're authorized to work in the U.S.? Well, the Homeland Security's people instructed me years ago to use their program called E-Verify.

E-Verify. It's an online government tool that lets employers like Gary vet new hires to make sure their documents check out and that they're legally authorized to work in the U.S. So we send the paperwork in, meaning the I-9s, to the government, and they critique it, check it out, review it, and then they come back and say, "'Hire them. They're okay. They're legal. They're fine.'"

It is possible to circumvent E-Verify's checks by submitting fraudulent documents. And there are other, more robust measures available for businesses to vet new hires. Some large companies in the meat industry, for example, hire outside consultants to conduct audits of their employees' documents. But for small businesses like Gary's, it's common to just rely on E-Verify, which is free. Gary says he's used it for years.

As you were watching ICE kind of ramp up its raids over the last several weeks, were you worried about your plant? Prior to the raid, I'm thinking I'm 100% legal. So I'm telling myself I've got nothing. Why would I worry? I mean, they're all verified. Gary wasn't worried. But his company was on the radar of the Department of Homeland Security. And on the morning of June 10th, federal agents showed up at his plant.

They had helmets on, they had masks on, you could only see their eyes. They had bulletproof vests on. They had clubs. They had guns. Then about probably, I don't know, 20 of them came to the front door and they had a big, big steel ram. And had we not opened up the door,

After a couple, three knocks, they were prepared to ram it, break the door down and come in. But we did open the door up and they showed us the warrant and then they rushed in and basically took control of everything.

They went to the processing floor, grabbed people, put them in the break room, test kitchen. They went into, they just went all over. They just stormed the building. Offices, processing floor, grabbing people, putting them in different rooms. People were crying, bawling. I had employees running into the freezers, hiding behind the pallets. We had one guy went up on the roof. It was chaotic.

How did that feel to see at your factory? Well, I came close to crying. After I saw so many mothers crying and being handcuffed and taken out of here and placed in a van, not a van, but a, oh, like a school bus, I guess you'd call it. And then trucks

About four hours down the interstate to North Platte, Nebraska, to be thrown in jail waiting for their court appearance. About 75 of Gary's workers were arrested that day. According to the Department of Justice, five are now facing criminal charges for resisting arrest or assaulting officers during the raid.

DHS and ICE agents audited Glen Valley Foods and found workers who had allegedly applied for their jobs using fraudulent IDs and social security numbers that didn't belong to them. A DHS spokeswoman said that the stolen social security numbers caused harm to, quote, real Americans, adding, quote, these criminals shouldn't be pitied. They should be held accountable. And under President Trump and Secretary Noem, they will be.

The spokeswoman also said that agents wear face coverings for their own protection and clearly identify themselves as law enforcement. Gary says he didn't know that the workers who were arrested were allegedly undocumented. He says he did his due diligence when hiring them. He blames the E-Verify system, which he says didn't flag those workers. For God's sake, I mean, that's the problem. E-Verify doesn't work because it doesn't catch them. We can't manage it.

I would not have hired any illegal workers, but E-Verify said it's okay. The DHS spokeswoman said E-Verify consistently receives high marks from users and maintains a, quote, nearly perfect accuracy rate. She added that while E-Verify supports employers, business owners still have a legal responsibility to ensure that employee documentation, quote, reasonably appears to be genuine.

The raid cut Gary's production line workforce in half. And the following day, he says many of his remaining employees didn't show up for work. That left his plant running at just 15% capacity. So now we had to contact our customers and tell them what happened. And it's going to take us probably weeks to get back to 100% capacity. That's a lot of loss. What's next for Gary's business is after the break. ♪

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After the raid, production at Glen Valley Foods nearly ground to a halt. Gary needed to ramp up hiring, and fast. He says finding new job candidates hasn't been a problem. The word got out, and there are people that came into my building to apply for jobs that were working in other processing plants. We stopped taking applications at 110 jobs.

Of those 110 applications, Gary says only about five of them are from non-immigrants. How are you thinking about hiring now, given that this has just happened and given the problems with E-Verify? We are told to continue to E-Verify. Now, tell me the logic. And who's telling you that?

Well, ma'am, the same people that have been telling me that for 15 years, the government of the United States of America, Homeland Security. How does that make you feel to be told that, given what's happened? You think I'm frustrated, I'm sad, I'm mad. I think the government let me down. The government doesn't understand. It's disgusting. It's terrible. It makes no sense.

In this day and age of technology, are you telling me they can't determine if they're legal or not? Now, when they picked them up, they vetted them and said they weren't legal. So what's the government doing that I can't do? When I turn the paperwork and give it to the government, I don't understand it. Are you talking to other business owners about this? Are there people you're... They're all upset.

Workplace raids like the one on Gary's plant have generated pushback from business owners across meatpacking, agriculture and hospitality. That's left the Trump administration trying to pull off a balancing act: deporting undocumented workers without too much disruption to business.

Earlier this month, Trump addressed the need to protect the agriculture industry. Our farmers are being hurt badly by, you know, they have very good workers. They've worked for them for 20 years. They're not citizens, but they've turned out to be, you know, great. And we're going to have to do something about that. We can't take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don't have maybe what they're supposed to have, maybe not.

Around the same time, the Department of Homeland Security issued new guidance, pausing ICE operations on farms, restaurants, hotels, and meatpacking plants. But just days later, the administration did a 180. The pause was lifted. And Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem doubled down, calling workplace raids a cornerstone of Trump's deportation plans. What's your reaction been kind of watching this unfold over these past few weeks?

Well, I think it's pretty typical of the miscommunication that flows up to the president. It's terrible. No clear communication. None whatsoever. The DHS spokeswoman said that the president has been, quote, incredibly clear. She added that worksite enforcement remains a high priority.

Trump has said that his goal, you know, with some of these policy decisions is to open up these jobs in industries like yours to U.S. citizens, to Americans, he says. Americans will not do the job. And I think I'm qualified to make that statement by virtue of this being my second.

meat processing company. So I've got a track record of 40 years and I know that Americans will not do the job. The government doesn't understand. This is not new. This has been going on since 1982 when I got in the business.

This is many, many, many, many, many years going on. And you're telling me the government doesn't understand that Americans don't want to do this type of work? You know, they might if I pay them 40, 50 bucks an hour. Because if you pay somebody enough money, they'll do anything. But then what is that going to do to the end product at the retail level?

If you talk about inflation, this is going to be inflation going to the moon. In other words, prices will go sky high. Wages go up, the price of your meat goes up. Well, that's just exactly how business works, ma'am. And so that would be catastrophic. That'd be unbelievable. And the wages we're getting now are fair. They're very fair.

Are you worried about more raids? I don't. At this point, I don't know anything. I mean, I really don't. I thought I had everything under control. I thought E-Verify was legal. I don't know what to think. The government tells me one thing, and then the next day or two, they tell me another thing.

They tell me it works. Now they tell me it doesn't work. And then number three, they tell me, guess what they tell me now? What? Keep doing it. Keep doing it. It doesn't work, but keep doing it. Maybe the most important thing is for the government to just simply understand that this country was founded on immigration, people coming into this country.

I mean, we need these people, especially for this type of industry, more than ever. And so I'm at a loss for words as to why the government doesn't understand this. It's just, it's chaotic. It's unbelievable. It's been more than two weeks since the raid halted production lines at Gary's plant. Today, he's operating at 25% capacity.

That's all for today, Thursday, June 26th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in today's episode by Arian Campo-Flores, Tarini Pardi, Rebecca Picciotto, and Patrick Thomas. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.