() More than 70 migrants who were taken into federal custody during a workplace immigration enforcement raid at a Nebraska food packing plant this month used stolen Social Security numbers and identities to gain work authorization and to be paid and get access to benefits, Homeland Security officials announced.
Federal investigators determined that “massive” numbers of stolen identities were taken by workers, affecting 100 people in multiple states. The workers at Glenn Valley Foods were taken into federal custody on June 10, when federal agents conducted the raid at the plant in Omaha.
Chad Hartmann, the president of the plant, told reporters that the company uses E-Verify, a federal database, to verify the immigration status of employees. However, Homeland Security Investigation officials said that employees who were characterized as “good, hardworking and honest” had obtained their identities illegally.
“These so-called honest workers have caused an immeasurable amount of financial and emotional hardship for innocent Americans,” Mark Zito, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations Kansas City, said in a statement released by the agency. “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.”
Nebraska raid targeted use of fake IDs
previously reported that out of the 107 Glenn Valley Foods workers who were targeted in the raid, 70 were detained by ICE based on their immigration status. One ICE agent told that a civil search warrant was executed based on reports that workers were using fake IDs, fraudulent IDs or a combination of IDs that were not real.
“I don’t understand why in the hell they were using false ID when they can get a visa,” Glenn Valley owner Gary Rohwer told . “I was dumbfounded. These are good, good people, and they really, truly are part of our family.”
Zito said that among the people who allegedly had their identities stolen by the migrant workers was a Pennsylvania resident who officials said was denied prescriptions after his identity was stolen. That person’s name and identity were used by a person to gain employment at Glenn Valley Foods, federal officials said.
A disabled Texas resident who was unable to work because of their condition was also among the alleged victims of the identity theft involving workers at the Nebraska plant. Other victims, including those from California and Missouri, were also affected by allegedly having their identities and Social Security numbers stolen by migrants who were taken into custody during the Nebraska raid.
“The criminals who stole these identities didn’t just break the law, they upended lives,” Zito said in a statement issued by HSI. “These victims aren’t faceless statistics; they’re real people who are being denied healthcare and have lost educational opportunities.”
The investigation into the matter continues, HSI officials said.
Raids conducted by ICE and other federal immigration enforcement agencies have taken place at workplaces and farms across the United States. President Donald Trump previously said that the raids would pause temporarily at farms, hotels and restaurants, where large percentages of workforces are made up of migrant workers.
However, other administration officials, including White House border czar Tom Homan, have said that such immigration enforcement operations would continue as officials push ICE to increase the average number of migrant arrests it makes, with the goal being 3,000 apprehensions per day.
How many migrants have Social Security numbers?
A Social Security program called Enumeration Beyond Entry showed that nearly 2.1 million migrants received Social Security numbers in fiscal year 2024, an increase from 964,000 in 2023 and 590,000 migrants who received Social Security numbers in fiscal year 2022.
The Social Security Administration reports that, in general, only noncitizens who are authorized by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to work in the country are eligible to receive Social Security numbers.
Once authorized to legally work in the U.S., migrants are eligible to apply for a Social Security card. However, the agency stipulates that for non-U.S. citizens to receive Supplemental Security Income, they must have been granted a certain classification by the Department of Homeland Security.
Those classifications include:
- Being legally admitted into the country as a permanent resident
- Granted conditional entry or asylum
- Paroled into the U.S. or admitted as a refugee
‘s Ali Bradley contributed reporting to this story
