“There’s no playbook” on how to move forward. This is what Chad Hartmann of Glenn Valley Foods told NBC News after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers raided his meat-packing plant in Omaha, Nebraska.
ICE agents arrested 76 illegal immigrants at Hartmann’s plant alone, which he said was about half his entire workforce, and over 500 across Omaha that day.
Recommended Stories
Now, before you blame Hartmann for hiring illegal immigrants, you should know that he did use the E-Verify system recommended by the Department of Homeland Security to screen job applicants for U.S. citizenship.
But the system is only as good as the inputs it receives.
“That system doesn’t capture a solution if somebody’s got a fake ID,” Hartmann explained. “That’s what needs to be repaired.”
Despite losing half his workforce, Hartmann said production at his plant only dropped 20%. And despite his protestations about there being “no playbook” on what to do after an immigration raid, it seemed his plant was doing just fine. NBC News reported that when it arrived two days after the raid, “every seat in the waiting area” was “occupied with people filling out job applications,” with dozens of job applicants moving in and out of the building at a time.
Hartmann was hiring people not just to cut meat but also to load boxes, maintain machinery, and ensure the plant was in shape to pass strict Safe Quality Food audits and inspections from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“It takes skilled people who take pride in what they do,” Hartmann told NBC.
Glenn Valley Foods is not the first meat-packing plant to be raided by immigration officials, and the Trump administration is not the first administration to crack down on illegal immigrants. Back in 2006, the Bush administration raided six meat processing plants across the plains and Midwest. In total, 1,300 illegal immigrants were arrested in a single day, accounting for about a quarter of the company’s workforce.
Did the company go out of business? Not at all. All facilities resumed some level of operations the same day they were raided, and all six returned to full production within five months. Except this time they hired all U.S. citizens … and paid the new workers, on average, about 10% higher wages than the illegal employees they replaced.
HOW BIG LABOR BECAME OPEN BORDERS
So, contra Hartmann, there is in fact a playbook for a meat-packing plant that had its workforce raided by ICE: it’s called offering wages to American workers to get your plant back up and running.
Fortunately, it sounds like Hartmann and other employers are already doing exactly that.