It was Luis Mejia’s third day at work at Glenn Valley when immigration agents stormed into the building and began rounding the meatpacking workers into the cafeteria.
“It just felt a bit unreal,” Mejia said, recounting the day. “Honestly, it just feels like a nightmare.”
Mejia’s mom, Ada, had worked at the plant for years – and at 19, Mejia joined her to help support their family. Ada was the sole provider. As word spread inside the plant about la migra, Mejia said his mom hugged him and told him to take care of his two younger siblings. Immigration agents checked Mejia’s ID and escorted him out of the building.
Ada was one of 76 workers detained and placed onto a big white windowless bus. She was carted off to an immigration processing facility, where she was able to call her son, before her family was met with days of silence. Then there was a call from the Lincoln County Jail in North Platte, where Ada would remain detained for a month.
The immigration raid on Glenn Valley Foods was one of the largest workplace immigration enforcement actions under the second term of President Donald Trump. It was the largest immigration raid in Omaha’s modern history.
One year later, the scars remain for individuals, their families and communities.
“You can kind of see she’s a little more traumatized, she’s a little scared of going government places,” Mejia said of his mom, who was granted a work permit after her release from detention. “She’s still recovering from it.”
Irma Villezca, the director of the South Omaha Business Association, said the raid’s impacts have been long lasting. Most businesses in the neighborhood closed their doors for days after the raid as people stayed in their homes, and Villezca said six businesses shut down for good.
For the one-year anniversary of what Mayor John Ewing called a “very difficult chapter in our community’s recent history,” city officials and community leaders are focused on finding joy and togetherness from the hardship. An event in South Omaha called Dia de Alegria – a day of joy – was held on Wednesday, with live music, free history tours and face-painting for kids along the main stretch of South 24th Street.
And at a press conference Tuesday, Ewing named June Immigrant Heritage Month in Omaha.
“Immigrant families are an essential part of who we are as a city,” Ewing said in his announcement. “They are our neighbors, business owners, workers, faith leaders, parents, students and community volunteers. They contribute to our economy, enrich our culture and help shape the future of Omaha every single day.”
Community groups reflect on immediate aftermath
In the hours and days after the raid, the Heartland Workers Center became a key resource for triaging families. As the weeks went on, the cases were handed over to the Center for Immigrant and Refugee Advancement. Monica Meier, who leads a team of five other social workers at CIRA, said it became clear that the impacted families were going to need long-term support.
“It was Heartland Workers Center that was making contact with the families in those first 20 days to get a rough count of how many families it was – moms, dads, grandmas, you know, the leftover makeup of the families,” Meier said. “And then they transitioned those families over to us for ongoing care, because it became evident really early on that these families were going to need a lot of support.”
The key need in the early months was financial assistance in the form of rental payments or groceries, since families remained afraid to leave the house to go to the grocery store for months after the raid. Once they were stabilized, the focus shifted to long-term planning.
“We had to start talking to them about the reality of the situation,” Meier said. “Some family and partners chose to leave and go back to their country of origin when their partner was deported. But [for] the ones that wanted to stay, the conversation became – How are you going to make this work? How are you going to make life here work? Because the money is not around forever. It led to hard conversations that had to be had.”
Some families found themselves moving in with adult children or other families to cut down on costs. Older teenagers began working to make up for the lost income.
Raid resurgence?
The raid at Glenn Valley was one of a handful of large workplace enforcement actions that took place in the summer of 2025. A dozen people were detained at a dairy farm in New Mexico. Fields and greenhouses in California were targeted throughout June and July; one farmworker fell to his death from the roof of a building during a raid. Hundreds were detained.
Within days of the Omaha raid, a senior ICE official instructed agents to pause investigations into the agriculture industry, including meatpacking, signaling a tension between the needs of farmers and businesses and the Trump administration’s mass deportation goals.
That policy was reversed days after it leaked to the press. But workplace raids in the agriculture sector have remained few and far between since then, and the agency’s focus has shifted to staying out of the spotlight. Addressing a conference of sheriffs in Omaha earlier this week, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin said the only way to enforce immigration laws is to “become invisible again.”
But with the Department of Homeland Security slated to receive another massive funding infusion of $70 billion for immigration enforcement efforts, some lawmakers worry that high-profile immigration actions could make a comeback.
State Sen. Margo Juarez, whose district includes Glenn Valley and parts of South Omaha, said she fears a resurgence of large-scale raids after the November elections.
“I personally believe that activity is going to kick up again,” Juarez said. “There is no doubt in my mind that things are going to change after November – especially now that [Trump] got the funding he wanted.”