Yanqi Xu is a reporter for Flatwater Free Press. She examined the agricultural industry in Nebraska as a part of The New York Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship.
Para leer la historia en español, haga clic aquí
Before becoming Nebraska’s governor three years ago, Jim Pillen built a multimillion-dollar hog enterprise. Casting himself as a conservative businessman who would grow the state’s economy, he defeated a Trump-backed candidate in the Republican primary.
This time around, Pillen, who is seeking reelection this fall, won President Trump’s endorsement. The governor — who had rarely spoken out about immigration issues until last year — had embraced Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda.
Days after Trump’s return to the White House, the governor directed the Nebraska State Patrol to partner with ICE on immigration enforcement. He allowed the federal agency to use a former state prison, now referred to as the Cornhusker Clink, to hold hundreds of detainees caught up in the administration’s mass deportation sweep. He has echoed Trump’s rhetoric about “criminal illegal aliens” who have “invaded our country” and decried “the worst of the worst” immigrants he has claimed are hiding out in Nebraska.
But for more than a decade, Pillen’s hog business has employed migrant workers, those who are in the country legally — and those who are not, The New York Times and the Flatwater Free Press found.
His company, Pillen Family Farms, has taken on undocumented workers as it has grown into one of the nation’s largest hog producers, according to a review of state and federal court records and interviews with more than 40 current and former employees, prosecutors, immigration lawyers and community organizers.
Many farms in Nebraska and other states rely on immigrants because of labor shortages. While the scale of undocumented workers in the Pillen farm labor force — which has about 1,200 employees in four states and Canada — is not clear, the fact that the company has used them is an open secret at some of its Nebraska farms.
Pillen has faced little public scrutiny about his workers. His spokeswoman, Laura Strimple, said in a statement that “Jim Pillen never knowingly hired an illegal immigrant and went above and beyond the legal requirements to verify the immigration status of his employees.”
At least 20 Pillen hog farms employed undocumented immigrants, according to court documents and interviews with more than two dozen current and former workers, including several managers. Six former workers acknowledged in interviews that they themselves had no legal status.
Court records show that at least a dozen Pillen workers were charged with using fake or stolen IDs for employment between 2015 and 2024. Many Pillen workers interviewed said the practice was common. At least 10 who assumed false identities, according to them or their relatives, never faced criminal charges for that.
David Armendariz, a Mexican who overstayed his tourist visa in 2008, said he worked at two Pillen farms until 2023. When he was hired, he recalled in an interview, a farm manager accepted the fake driver’s license he had purchased. The same ID was rejected years later, he said, when he applied for a construction job elsewhere.
Over the years, Armendariz said, more Hispanic workers arrived at the farms, many of them undocumented. One co-worker changed his name multiple times, he said, and another went by a different name from the one on his sign-in sheets. Armendariz said he was open about his own status. “Everyone knows that it’s not your name,” he said, “but they don’t ask you what your name is.”
Quinten Rowley, who managed two boar farms for Pillen’s business until 2022, said the company ramped up background checks for applicants about the time Pillen decided to run for governor. After that, Rowley said, he had to turn away more applicants.
Samuel Bethune, Platte County’s public defender until 2009, said he had represented hundreds of undocumented immigrants every year, most of them employed in meatpacking plants. He recalled that a few clients charged with traffic offenses identified themselves as Pillen workers but lacked valid employment documents.
ICE identified no records of audits or inspections at Pillen farms in the past 15 years after a request from The Times and Flatwater. The federal agency has raided relatively few workplaces in Nebraska. The largest and highest-profile one was an Omaha meatpacking plant where more than 70 workers were arrested in June 2025 over alleged identity theft.
After the raid, Pillen suggested in interviews that ICE would not target established immigrants. “Anybody that is here working hard and being a good neighbor, they’re A-OK, they’re fine,” the governor told the Nebraska Examiner. But he also said that stealing identities was a “grave offense.”
The governor did not respond to interview requests and declined to answer written questions for this article. Pillen’s spokeswoman said in her statement that he “has the strongest immigration record in Nebraska history. Under the governor’s leadership, Nebraska has assisted the federal government in the deportation of nearly 1,000 illegal immigrants through its variety of partnerships with federal entities.”
ICE has arrested more than 3,000 people in Nebraska since Trump’s second term, more than doubling the rate under the Biden administration. By comparison, in Minnesota, the epicenter of some of the nation’s most aggressive urban immigration enforcement operations, such arrests have more than quadrupled, according to an analysis of ICE data released by the Deportation Data Project.
Federal officials have largely avoided clashes with agricultural employers in states that helped re-elect Trump, according to agricultural producers and labor economists.
“If you’re going to come and pound on farmers in Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, whatever, and daily raid their farms or their processing plants, you’re going to have some problems politically,” said Al Juhnke, former executive director of the Nebraska Pork Producers Association. “The farms are right smack dab in the middle of red areas.”
Hogs, farmhands and fake names
The first farmer to lead Nebraska in more than a century, Pillen often talks about his agricultural roots. He grew up with livestock on his small family farm in Platte County in northeast Nebraska.
A Cornhusker football standout at the University of Nebraska, he studied animal science and then worked as a veterinarian before launching his own business more than three decades ago.
What is known as Pillen Family Farms, based in Columbus, started with 60 sows, or female pigs, on a dirt lot.
Now, after expanding and buying out competitors, the company owns about 100 farms in Nebraska alone, with workforces ranging from a handful to dozens of people. Since Pillen became governor, his children Sarah and Brock have run the company, which ranks No. 14 nationally on the Pork Powerhouses list, with 78,000 sows.
The family also owns a hog-breeding business and has a minor stake in Wholestone Prestage, which operates a pork-processing co-op in Fremont owned by some 200 producers. Since 2019, at least 56 Wholestone workers have been charged with using fraudulent IDs to work, according to state court records. More than half pleaded guilty or were convicted, several cases are going through court, and the other defendants fled or failed to appear. Wholestone did not respond to requests for comment.
At Pillen farms and elsewhere, workers labor long hours for relatively little pay to keep the hog barns running. They vaccinate pigs, feed them, move and ship them. The job is one that most Nebraskans do not want, hog farmers said in interviews.
Facing labor shortages, large corporate hog producers in recent decades have turned to a workforce of immigrants, whether legal or not, according to John K. Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union.
Gary Stover, a consultant who helped a local producer manage a hog farm in Shelby, said in an interview that he replaced the crew there with Hispanic laborers in 2010 because their work ethic impressed him. He said that one employee there used a fake name, and that his other consulting clients also had undocumented workers with falsified documents.
Nathan Dallon, an immigration lawyer in Omaha who has defended hundreds of undocumented workers against criminal charges like identity theft and driving without a license, said Nebraska’s agriculture industry operated on the premise that there would be unauthorized migrant labor.
“HR for a lot of these companies are incentivized to take on workers that they know are using fake papers,” he said in an interview. “Sometimes, they even help them get the fake papers, and then they know full well that they are making the crime worse for the person working.” (Dallon, citing client confidentiality, declined to say whether he had ever represented Pillen workers.)
The use of fictitious documents by immigrants for employment is hardly new in Nebraska. In Schuyler, fake IDs used at the Cargill meatpacking plant created a controversy more than two decades ago.
Dave Reinecke, then Schuyler’s mayor, told “60 Minutes,” “Would you rather have growth, or would you want to pick and choose where they came from?”
Now, three-quarters of Schuyler’s residents are Hispanic, the highest share of any municipality in the state. Court records show some undocumented workers for Pillen farms have lived there.
Other Hispanic immigrants, including Pillen employees, have settled in small towns near their workplaces.
Carl K. Hart Jr. prosecuted a steady stream of identity fraud cases involving undocumented workers, including five employed by Pillen’s business, as Platte County attorney until 2022.
“There are folks who are facilitating all of this,” he said in an interview. “They’re in the community, and they’re filling a need for the agricultural industry to obtain workers.”
Nine of the 12 Pillen workers who were charged with identity theft or impersonation were convicted, and three failed to appear in court. Pillen Family Farms was not accused of any wrongdoing in those cases.
Employers are rarely the target of such investigations, making it hard to determine whether they had any knowledge or involvement, prosecutors and defense lawyers said.
One former manager at a Pillen farm said in an interview that he told an immigrant to obtain a different ID a few years ago after an initial fake document was flagged by the company. Before working for Pillen, he had advised workers on how they could make their fake IDs appear more genuine, said the manager, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he still has relatives in the industry.
When Armendariz worked at Inland Foods, a Pillen farm outside Hastings, only a handful of workers had legitimate documentation, he recalled. About 20 immigrants did not, including him, he said. Roughly half had been hired by a co-owner that Pillen’s business eventually bought out. (Armendariz, who asked not to use his full surname because he feared retaliation, said he was let go after disputes with his boss.)
Some Inland workers are still undocumented after more than 20 years there, said a current employee, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the company. Two people said their undocumented relatives currently work at a Pillen farm near St. Edward.
Ashly Cortez-Garcia worked at a Pillen-owned hog unit near Albion five years ago. In an interview, she said her manager learned from the head office that an employee was working under one name and had applied for state assistance under another. Cortez-Garcia recalled that the manager told her to ask the worker in Spanish, “Which one do you want me to use?”
The manager, now retired, declined to respond to requests for comment.
Pillen Family Farms was sued in 2021 by a former human resources specialist, Luis Lucar, who alleged that it knowingly hired undocumented workers.
Between 2015 and 2019, he said, he repeatedly complained that the business changed workers’ names in company and government documents, misclassified workers as contract labor and falsified employment verification forms.
Lucar was fired in 2019 and now works as an organizer in Schuyler for the Heartland Workers Center, a nonprofit advocating immigrant labor rights. The company denied the allegations in a legal filing. Pillen’s campaign spokesman at the time, Matthew Trail, said Lucar was lying and described him to a reporter as a “disgruntled former employee” and “pro-illegal-immigration activist.”
In 2022, both sides agreed to dismiss the lawsuit. Lucar and his lawyer declined to comment for this article.
As Pillen Family Farms grew, it stepped up compliance with employment laws, said Rowley, the former manager. The business brought in more immigrants from Mexico on a specialized visa for skilled workers in the past decade. The day Pillen launched his campaign for governor, records show, the business opted into E-Verify, a government system to bolster employment verification.
In a statement echoing the governor’s, Sarah Pillen, the farms’ co-chief executive, told The Times and Flatwater: “Our team takes a great deal of pride and responsibility in following all employment laws. We have never knowingly hired an illegal immigrant.” She said that the company followed all employment verification rules and ensured that “all required forms of ID are reviewed and approved. We also voluntarily participate in the E-Verify program to go above and beyond in our commitment.”
A pivot on immigration
Since Trump took office, Pillen has worked to build good will in Washington. He has visited the White House 11 times since last year and Mar-a-Lago twice, including a one-on-one meeting with the president in July 2025, according to the governor’s official calendar. That is far more than his recent predecessors.
Despite the president’s endorsement, Pillen is in a competitive re-election race. Neither he nor his opponents have highlighted his immigration stance in the campaign.
But immigration remains a polarizing issue, even in a conservative state. Less than a third of Nebraskans support the federal crackdown, one national poll shows.
Before his first run for governor, Pillen’s business donated to Centro Hispano, a Columbus-based nonprofit supporting both legal and undocumented workers, and he accepted an award from the group in 2018. As governor-elect, he spoke about the need for the federal government to expand the number of legal immigrants who could do vital work in Nebraska and other farm states.
Backing Trump’s immigration policies, Pillen has emphasized the risk of violent criminals coming into the country and the need to target them for deportation.
On a radio program in July 2025, he recalled learning on a trip to the southern border that intruders had butchered a steer on a Texas family’s ranch. “There have been so many terrorists and criminals swimming across the border,” he said.
“The criminal illegal aliens who have invaded our country must be removed,” Pillen said in a social media post in December. “I will do everything in my power to stand strong with President Trump to get the job done.”
At times, the governor has appeared to soften his tone. After unveiling the new ICE site last summer, Pillen said that the detention center was intended for criminals, not hardworking families. He also emphasized the need to address labor shortages in industries beyond agriculture, including construction and hotels.
“President Trump knows, right? He knows that there are people in his industry that have worked forever and done good work but are not documented,” he said. Pillen added that he was “100 percent opposed” to mass deportation.
Pillen’s language distinguishing hardworking people from criminals ignores legal reality, some local officials and immigration lawyers say.
Undocumented workers in Nebraska, though sometimes committing a crime to obtain employment, rarely break other laws and are largely “law-abiding residents trying to live their American dream and support themselves and their families,” said Hart, the former Platte County prosecutor, a Democrat.
After the January killing of two people in Minneapolis by ICE agents and the resulting outrage, the governor largely refrained from commenting publicly about immigration. More recently, under pressure to meet White House quotas, ICE agents have made arrests in record numbers nationwide, often deporting undocumented people with no history of criminal charges.
The Nebraska State Patrol has assigned more troopers to immigration enforcement roles. And the ICE detention center, in McCook, is expanding to house more people.
Cortez-Garcia, the former Pillen farm employee, said she was dismayed as a Republican voter that Pillen seemed to contradict himself on the immigration issue. “You can’t hire illegals and then stand against illegals,” she said.
Samantha Aguilar and Roselyn Gonzalez contributed reporting. Research was contributed by Emma Croteau, Georgia Gee, Bob Glissmann, Kirsten Noyes, Jane Bello Rivas, Asia Rollins and Jeremy Turley. Sarah Cohen contributed data analysis.
37 Comments
If your point is that Pillen is a bit of a hypocrite on this issue, then fair enough I suppose. He is a wealthy politician, so it’s really no surprise to anyone.
But Flatwater is hardly any better, and on this issue in particular, since you are blatantly talking out both sides of your mouth.
First up, you use the politically correct “undocumented” term, while at the same time adding in a backhanded note that these people “lack” a “legal status.” The correct term is illegal immigrant, because they immigrated here illegally. Many of them are not actually “undocumented” at all, since they often have been documented either crossing the border in the past or have been previously deported, so the “undocumented” term is often flatly wrong. Activists try to spin the “undocumented” angle to soften the fact these people are breaking the law, but in this case you can’t both downplay the severity of the crime while telling us Pillen is a terrible evildoer for enabling the crime that you don’t even think is a crime.
Secondly, as is often the case in Flatwater investigations, some of your own evidence undermines your argument. You admit that some of the illegal immigrants you talked to used fake identification documents to get hired. You also admit that Pillen instituted tougher checks in applicants when he decided to run for governor, resulting in his staff turning away more illegal immigrant applicants. Pillen’s spokeswoman told you he doesn’t “knowingly” hire illegal immigrants, and if they are using fake or stolen identification by your own admission then this defense may well be true.
You briefly mention Glenn Valley Foods, the meat packing plant raised by ICE last year, then ironically complain that Pillen hasn’t been raided similarly. But Flatwater has run prior articles that contradict this attempt at a narrative. When Glenn Valley Foods was raided you ran an article full of anecdotal fluff about how mean and evil it was for ICE to arrest illegal immigrants, including quoting some random protestor who told you “America acknowledges that they took this land illegally, and wrongfully, they can’t say who belongs here and who doesn’t.” Shortly after you also ran a piece on E-Verify, alleging that it isn’t accurate and that Glenn Valley Foods supposedly had no way to know they were hiring illegal immigrants because E-Verify didn’t work correctly. But if you accept that defense for Glenn Valley Foods, how can you reject it when Pillen uses the same defense?
Bottom line: Pillen may be a hypocrite, but when Flatwater is constantly running far-left wing political propaganda pieces to defend illegal immigrants and the employers who hire them, you have no room to stand and accuse Pillen of anything on this issue. A literal case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Just a note that this commenter’s name is a fictionalized vampire character from White Wolf. This is not a real person’s name.
Glad you got the reference! Hope you are a fan of the games like I am!
But note that this website has no login mechanism and no means of verifying if any name that anyone provides here is actually their “real” identity. The overwhelming majority of comments posted are likely using names that are not their “real” names.
That said, I hope you aren’t suggesting that my non-“real” name is a reason to disregard the completely valid points I raised. That would be an ad hominem logical fallacy.
“If your point is that Pillen is a bit of a hypocrite on this issue, then fair enough I suppose. He is a wealthy politician, so it’s really no surprise to anyone.
Bottom line: Pillen may be a hypocrite…”
And that’s all that really matters – the facts. The article may have a bias/inconsistencies, but that’s inconsequential as far as the facts are concerned.
He’s a lying hypocrite.
Hypocrite? Like I said, sure he is.
Lying? Maybe, but the facts in the article don’t prove he is lying. And that is exactly my point. Pillen says he did not “knowingly” hire illegal immigrants, because they were using fake or stolen identification. And as I pointed out, this is the exact same defense that Glenn Valley Foods used, which Flatwater helped run interference for.
So if Glenn Valley gets off the hook, so does Pillen. I personally would throw them all behind bars, but this is Flatwater’s reporting we have to work with, not mine.
Oh, and I just remembered another thing… On July 15th Flatwater ran a puff piece on a “beloved Kearney businessman” who also got caught hiring illegal immigrants. Flatwater took umbrage that the feds were investigating some sketchy business dealings he was involved in.
So when a rich guy in Kearney gets caught hiring illegal immigrants he is “beloved” according to Flatwater and they gladly run interference for him. But when Pillen does the same, it’s a very different sort of article that gets published…
Hypocrisy is definitely a theme in this discussion, I can agree to that part.
Oh, nice catch! I forgot about FFP’s gushing lovefest on Kearney’s most beloved entrepreneur who employed illegal(s), AND who is accused of fraud in securing COVID funds..
Not much love for Pillen at FFP, though! I’ve counted 8 or 9 Pillen attack stories, mostly by the same author…which is really bizarre.
Nice catch on FFP’s lovefest on Kearney’s [beloved, apparently] employer of illegal(s.)
“Bottom line: Pillen may be a hypocrite, but when Flatwater is constantly running far-left wing political propaganda pieces to defend illegal immigrants and the employers who hire them, you have no room to stand and accuse Pillen of anything on this issue. A literal case of the pot calling the kettle black.”
A succinct takedown of the schizophrenic efforts of FFP. It’s as laughable as it is predictable.
Another LIBERAL (!) case of the pot calling the kettle black.”
Comparing a sitting governor who uses state power against immigrants while profiting off their labor to Paul Younes, a private Republican donor who is not running for office, is complete nonsense.
Exposing government hypocrisy is basic journalism, so feel free to take your closed mindset back to the CONSERVATIVE (!*%~) Fox News comment section.
The above comment violates several of the alleged rules for this comment section, such as name calling, personal attacks, unnecessary use of caps lock, etc. But as usual, moderation on Flatwater is as biased as the “news” itself.
Suffice to say, no, hurling unfounded allegations of hypocrisy is not basic journalism. Reporting facts without bias or preconceived ideology is basic journalism. And Flatwater consistently performs worse on that front than the supposedly evil conservatives at Fox News.
Comparing a sitting governor who uses state power to detain and deport illegal immigrants who committed numerous crimes against Nebraskans to Paul Younes, a very wealthy entrepreneur and publicity hog who “bent” the laws to knowingly hire illegal aliens and who later deceived the federal government (allegedly) to obtain COVID relief, is complete nonsense.
There, fixed it for ya.
Per your own summary of the facts, Paul Younes and Jim Pillen have numerous things in common. They are both well-known public figures. They are both wealthy business owners from the western half of the state. They are both Republicans. They both have been caught hiring illegal immigrants. And both of them have been written about by Flatwater. These two men have more in common than most of us do beyond our DNA.
A comparison of how Flatwater approached each individual, yet somehow arrived at diametrically opposed conclusions, is both logical and relevant to the discussion at hand.
You seem to have touched a nerve, Dr. Boo Hoo
If your touchdown dance is to celebrate the fact that Flatwater refuses to enforce their own rules against personal attacks, then I’m confident you just proved your side of the debate has nothing to rely on but personal attacks.
It is not contradictory or hypocritical to say that Pillen hired undocumented workers and that he then adopted some appearance of stricter enforcement right before his campaign. That is his hypocrisy & nihilism, not the reporter’s. And that does not by any means prove or even suggest that Pillen’s not still employing undocumented labor in an industry which is completely dependent on it.
We can’t help you if you don’t understand how presenting information works.
If your only rebuttal is to restate the original argument, ignore the provided counter points and then hurl insults, then I’m confident that I need say nothing further to make my point. The Flatwater staff may not bother to enforce their hypothetical rules against personal attacks, but any rational reader can identify trolling when they see it.
Bravo, great reporting!!!!
Thank you for uncovering the double-standards by our governor. It all tells me that he is fine with deportations as long as it does not negatively impact his own profit margins.
Let’s say that you were hypothetically correct, Karl. In our scenario, we will say that Flatwater has proven that Pillen “is fine with deportations as long as it does not negatively impact his own profit margins.”
If so, what is the relevance of that information and what will you do with that knowledge when it comes time to vote?
You have four options:
1. Pillen, Republican, the guy accused of hypocrisy in this case.
2. Walz, a Democrat whose time in the state legislature has demonstrated that she will take the most extreme left-wing positions on every issue, including immigration.
3. A former “Republican” (in name only) who briefly turned “independent” before joining a third party which he himself described as a “pirate ship” to get his name on the ballot.
4. The guy from the political party dedicated to getting high, which was almost disbanded by Osborn infiltrators (per Flatwater reporting).
Which of those four individuals will you vote for that will still deport illegal immigrants but will do so without engaging in hypocrisy by hiring them? Because I don’t see that option on the ballot this year.
If your answer is “I’m going to vote for someone who won’t deport illegal immigrants” then the allegations made in this argument are irrelevant, because you wouldn’t have voted for Pillen even if he weren’t a hypocrite. And that is why this article is nothing but partisan mud slinging designed to launch an obvious attack just before an election. The only people who will be “convinced” by this effort are those who already had their minds made up anyway.
(Although let’s not forget that the allegation itself is also riddled with plot holes and contradicts previous Flatwater reporting on similar incidents.)
Nebraskans were doing those jobs. They were replaced with immigrants to reduce costs. Jobs were scarce before and it’s only gotten harder to make it.
Hypocrisy is a characteristic of most politicians, but it’s an art-form if you’re a typical Republican office-holder.
My prediction: no one with white skin need worry for an instant about being punished, and the governor’s hog farms will continue to hire illegal aliens.
“will continue to hire illegal aliens.”
Uh, we enlightened folks no longer use the racist phrase, “illegal aliens”. It’s 2026, neanderthals!
We’re all illegal aliens, right Mike?
Your cuddly ILLEGAL manservants cost Americans over 150 BILLION DOLLARS a year(Per FAIR study 2023). Funny how you “journalists” NEVER report that….
I agree with you, Ed, although I presented it slightly differently.
Flatwater wants us to believe Pillen is a bad dude because he hires illegal immigrants. Yet the same Flatwater doesn’t actually believe illegal immigration is a crime and regularly defends illegal immigrants. So which one is it? Are people who hire illegal immigrants evil or are they saints? It can’t be both!
This article really says something about hypocrisy, but not what the author was hoping it would say…
Oh gawd, another BadBadPillen story from the same author of 5-10 other BadBadPillen stories on FFP. Yawn.
NO WHERE in this story is the fact that the Guv no longer runs Pillen Farms!
How dare you!
In Gov. Pillen’s response, he [accurately] described the left-wing bias of the NYT and this author.
This author has written multiple stories attacking the governor.
I call on the FFP to justify the number of anti-Pillen stories written by this author..
How is it ethical for FFP and this author to accuse Pillen Farms of employing “undocumented” workers when these workers have ALL provided documents to employers, including Pillen Farms, to substantiate their legal work status?
Using E-verify, as Pillen Farms uses, confirms the legal work statues of every applicant. Is FFL/Xu asserting that Pillen Farms should have investigated further?
Because, in fact, it would be ILLEGAL for Pillen Farms to question or further investigate the authenticity of the documents provided to them by applicants or the results of an E-Verify search!
Shame on FFP. Enough of this anti-Pillen Farms bs. It’s unethical.
This is an excellent point. If Pillen aggressively worked to oust every single illegal immigrant within his operation, Flatwater would gleefully write an article accusing him of being racist and discriminating against minorities. It’s obvious that a Republican governor just can’t win with this outlet, because no matter what he does, it’s going to get spun against him somehow.
I don’t even like the guy or think he is a very good governor. But I at least could articulate some competent reasons for holding that viewpoint. What Flatwater does is latch on to the smallest possible molehill they can find, inflate it into a pseudo mountain, and transform the issue into a blatantly biased and fallacious political attack. This isn’t news. It’s an election cycle hit piece.
Trust that when Mr Anonymous and J Gross are getting this frothy in the comment section, FFP has hit an article out of the park! Great reporting holding our elected officials accountable and making those who want to excuse bad behavior sweat lol
If publishing biased analysis of political issues to annoy internet users is the standard by which Flatwater judges their success, then yes, they really did hit this one out of the park.
But that is a really weird flex, to say the least!
” Great reporting holding our elected officials accountable…”
Please tell us what exactly did Gov. Pillen, as an elected official, do wrong in regards to Pillen Farms’ hiring practices…for which he should be held accountable?
Do you understand the question, Logic Hater?
[btw, this article does not allege, let alone substantiate, any wrongdoing by Gov. Pillen, as an elected official.]
I think the article is well written and well researched. After reading many of the comments I feel compelled to dispute those who comment about immigrants (whether documented or not) taking jobs from Nebraskans. I live in a rural area where there are confinement facilities – both cattle and hogs – and three that are owned by Pillen Family Farms. I know that most people won’t consider taking the jobs at these facilities because they involve a lot of hard work and poor working conditions. Sadly, immigrants don’t have a great deal of choice, so they work there. Pillen is GUILTY of hiring workers who are well known not to be living in Nebraska legally. Don’t get me wrong, I am fully in support of most of the immigrants living here because they are working hard and living as productive citizens and good neighbors. There are good and bad residents of every race, so I cringe at the targeting of darker skinned persons as criminal. If we had a decent immigration system, most would not be living here “illegally”. Pillen is an elected official, and as such, has offered himself up to be evaluated and criticized by his constituents. In the same way that Trump claims he no longer benefits from his many company holdings, Pillen may have turned over operations of Pillen Family Farms to his children, you can be assured that he has oversight and profits from his company. The fact that the governor transitioned the Work Ethic Camp in McCook to an ICE detention facility over the overwhelming opposition of Nebraskans tells me that there is a Trump/Pillen “arrangement” that has been made. In my own evaluation of the facts, it appears that there will not be ICE raids on the Pillen Family Farms facilities in the near future.
The comparisons to the story of the businessman in Kearney is not germane. Mr. Younes is a private entrepreneur, not an elected official. FFP does an excellent job of presenting the facts and allowing its readers to form their own opinions. I applaud FFP’s reporting and Yanqi Xu for her excellent research.
The argument that “Americans won’t take these jobs because the working conditions are poor” is a red herring.
It doesn’t alter the fact that illegal immigrants are breaking our immigration laws (and often many other laws as well, since they must commit fraud and identity theft to continue their unauthorized presence in our country).
If the conditions are so poor that nobody wants to work there, then pass new laws to hold employers accountable to provide better working conditions. But don’t use that as an excuse for illegal immigration.
Let’s try explaining the problem here another way.
We could make some of the same sorts of arguments against Donald Trump that this article is trying to make against Pillen. Trump is a business mogul from New York, who has taken decidedly non-conservative positions on a number of political issues. He has bragged about his “Operation Warp Speed” and personally tried to take credit for the COVID vaccines, even though those same vaccines are extremely unpopular with his base. Trump is married to a former model who has highly inappropriate pictures of herself circulating on the internet. Trump likes data centers, AI and Flock cameras. Trump has ultimately failed to follow through on many campaign promises, like building a wall and making Mexico pay for it. And the list could just go on and on.
Now If I were to share those criticisms of Trump and then say that was the reason why I voted for and/or supported a more conservative alternative candidate, that would be completely fair. I would be saying Trump isn’t conservative enough for my standards, so I voted for someone who meets those standards instead.
This is not what Flatwater is doing. Flatwater is attacking Pillen for doing something allegedly unconservative, and doing so in a way that not only fails to provide any alternative, but is doing so in a situation where Flatwater is fully aware that all of the even hypothetically available alternatives would be even less conservative than Pillen is. You can vote for a Democrat who would actually reverse everything Pillen has done and make Nebraska a “sanctuary state,” or you can vote for the “pirate ship” candidate who quit the Republican party to vocally demonstrate what an enlightened centrist he is, or you could even vote for the guy who just wants to smoke weed. But none of these options are more conservative or would take a more hard line stance on the issue of immigration than Pillen has, so none of those alternatives are “better” based on the criteria that Flatwater has presented. In fact, all of the alternatives are actually worse based on Flatwarer’s own criteria!
Thats why what Flatwater is doing here is intellectually and politically dishonest. They are in effect taking the stance of: “This argument wouldn’t work on me, but maybe if I use it on you I can get you to do what I want.”
I think the moral of the story is that it seems to be OK to hire illegal aliens if it benefits you directly but if you are in politics you have to play the game and pretend outrage all while still doing it. Its a matter of fact that even Trump has employed illegal aliens. He made it an election point and they’re doing this ICE stuff only because of politics and promises. The reason the illegals started getting hired in these places to begin with is because we, the privileged white class, don’t want those jobs and neither do our kids and unlike us, these immigrants are grateful for any job that allows them to provide for their families and/or send money home to their families. Most immigrants are honest, hardworking people that are not to proud to work these horrible jobs that we don’t want. We want something better for ourselves and our kids but these immigrants are grateful for these jobs. I challenge you all to name just one family member you have that is waiting in line to get those jobs. The answer is not to deport but to find these workers, document who they really are and create a path to legal employment not just throw them out of the country or kill them. Every single one of us are the product of an immigrant in one form or another and like us, these immigrants have every right to want something better and if they are willing to take jobs that we aren’t, that just helps us. I’m all for deporting criminals but the majority of these poor folks being deported are not criminals. If we had created an easier path to immigration, most would not be here illegally and we wouldn’t be in this mess and we have to own that. Of course, even those who came here following all the rules, are being grabbed when they are showing up for their court dates and that just sends the message, we can’t be trusted and that even if they follow the rules, they’re subject to the whims of certain political figures. We honestly need to stop deporting these workers and start a registry and a path to temporary citizenship while they earn the right to be an American.
I would be hard pressed to disagree more vehemently with you.
Before I get into any specific points, we need to address the difference between “immigrants” and “illegal immigrants.” Because I agree there are many legal immigrants who came to this country through the right processes, who are deeply grateful for the opportunity they have been given, and often do great work at their jobs every day. But political activists try to confuse the distinction between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants so that the high moral character of the legal immigrants can serve as a smoke screen for the illegal ones. And that problem right there is 90% of what is wrong with your argument.
You said “most immigrants” and then listed off a series of alleged good traits. But again, that may apply to the legal immigrants, but it doesn’t apply to the illegal ones. The idea that illegal immigrants are just as good as the legal ones is a myth, as illegal immigrants often must resort to committing additional crimes such as fraud and identity theft in order to obtain employment they are not legally allowed to have. Those crimes have real victims, including American children whose social security numbers are often abused by illegal immigrants who know the child won’t discover the theft until many years later. And that says nothing of the many illegal immigrants who came to our country with nefarious purposes in mind right away, such as drug traffickers, gang members and sex offenders. Many Americans, and even some legal immigrants, lose their lives every year because of illegally present criminals. It is a legitimate legal and public safety matter to enforce our immigration laws.
You say we need to create an easier path to immigration. But why? First off, we are under no obligation to do so. Most countries on earth are far less accepting of immigrants than we are, but nobody badgers them about it. Do you get offended when you learn that it’s illegal to immigrate to Iran or the Vatican? No, of course not. Only America is ever told that we are evil intolerant bigots because we refuse to institute a policy that any person can waltz across our border without excuse. Yet America is actually the most tolerant nation on earth and accepts more legal immigrants than any other nation! This idea that we are obligated to accept more or we have done something wrong is a false narrative. It’s nothing more than an emotionally manipulative guilt trip that flies in the face of every good thing our nation has already done.
And as for employment, I already addressed that in another comment. If the working conditions and/or pay of certain jobs are too poor for American citizens to consider taking those jobs, the solution is to improve the pay and conditions to the degree that the jobs become desirable. Saying that the jobs are so terrible that we need to import illegal immigrants and let them take these awful jobs so we don’t have to… thats a bit racist, isn’t it? Why would you condemn an immigrant to do a job that isn’t good enough for you?
And on top of all that, everything you said completely ignored the criticisms of this Flatwater article which were provided in many of the above comments. How do you justify the crucifying of Pillen over this issue, when Glenn Valley Foods and a “beloved” Republican donor were given a free pass? And even if Pillen is such an evil guy, who are you going to vote for instead? You wrote an whole essay that didn’t even really talk about the core issue the article is raising.
While touring in rural Minnesota, a couple of times I’ve encountered Spanish-speaking construction crews who travel around the Midwest building hog barns. I wonder if they had valid documentation. I wonder if the built barns in Nebraska. Come to think of it, most of the road and building contractors I’ve found staying at small-town motels are Spanish-speaking. Economists predict Trump will be the first modern President to see the labor force shrink under him. Given that unemployment is already low, it’s going to be hard to build hog barns without workers.