The results echo some of the findings from recent nationwide workforce studies on the economic impact of last year’s immigration raids.
A Brookings Institution study found that last year’s immigration enforcement surge across the nation cost 668,000 jobs, and those losses affected both immigrant and U.S.-born workers. Another study from the University of Colorado Boulder found immigration enforcement didn’t expand opportunities for U.S.-born workers and instead reduced employment for some of them.
‘Unlike anything we had ever seen’
Of the 76 people immigration authorities arrested at Glenn Valley Foods, close to 10 self-deported, Garcia told NBC News on Tuesday. Others who were also detained were eventually granted bond and reunited with their families, though many of them are still facing immigration proceedings.
“They have this constant pressure of being tied up in that system that might ultimately lead to deportation eventually,” said Garcia, who is the first Latino commissioner of Douglas County, where Omaha is located.
Garcia’s family was also among those directly affected by the raids. His wife’s aunt was among the meatpacking workers taken into immigration custody.
The woman, a mother of three U.S.-born children, spent a couple of months in detention before she was released on bond. Garcia said his wife’s aunt was granted a temporary work permit — alongside others who had been detained — while they wait for their next immigration court hearing.
Luis Mejía, 20, said he went to work last June at Glenn Valley Foods “thinking it would be a normal day.” The Nebraska native who was raised in South Omaha said everything changed that morning when immigration officers entered their workplace.
As some ran away in fear, Mejía’s immigrant mother hugged him and told him to take care of his younger siblings. Then, she ran with the others.
Meanwhile, immigration officers asked Mejía to show proof of U.S. citizenship.
“I didn’t know how to do that since I’ve never been asked that before. I looked at the officer with confusion and told him I was born here,” Mejía recalled. The officers cleared him to go after looking him up in their system.
A couple of hours after authorities let him go, Mejía received a call from his mother, telling him she had been detained. After that, Mejía didn’t hear from her for a few days while she was in detention.
She was one of the at least 63 workers who were taken to the Lincoln County Detention Center, four hours away.
The situation forced Mejía and his older brother to provide for their two younger siblings while not knowing if they would get to see their mother again.
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