Nebraska's governor has spent this year putting the machinery of his state behind President Trump's deportation drive. He directed the Nebraska State Patrol to partner with ICE. He turned a former state prison into an ICE detention center. In December he posted that "the criminal illegal aliens who have invaded our country must be removed."

On September 9, the Flatwater Free Press and the New York Times published what they found when they looked at the hog company that made him rich.

Jim Pillen built Pillen Family Farms from 60 sows on a dirt lot into one of the largest hog producers in the country. Reporters reviewed state and federal court records and interviewed more than 40 current and former employees, prosecutors, immigration lawyers and community organizers. What they documented:

• At least 20 Pillen hog farms employed undocumented immigrants.
• Six former workers acknowledged that they had no legal status while working for the company.
• At least 12 Pillen workers were charged between 2015 and 2024 with using fake or stolen identification to get hired. Nine were convicted. Three did not appear in court.
• At least 10 more used false identities, according to them or their relatives, and were never charged.

The reporting describes undocumented labor as an open secret at some Pillen operations. David Armendariz, who overstayed a tourist visa in 2008 and worked at two Pillen farms through 2023, said a farm manager accepted the fake driver's license he had bought when he was hired — the same ID that got rejected when he tried to use it somewhere else years later.

His description of how it worked is one sentence long:

"Everyone knows that it's not your name, but they don't ask you what your name is."

The E-Verify defense, and when it started

Pillen and his company deny knowing. His spokeswoman, Laura Strimple, said Pillen "never knowingly hired an illegal immigrant and went above and beyond the legal requirements to verify the immigration status of his employees." Sarah Pillen, the company's co-CEO, said "We have never knowingly hired an illegal immigrant," and pointed to the company's voluntary participation in E-Verify, the federal system for checking whether a new hire is authorized to work.

Here is the part of that defense worth sitting with. According to the investigation, Pillen Family Farms opted into E-Verify on the day Pillen launched his campaign for governor.

The company describes that participation as voluntary — which means it was free to opt in during all the years before that day, and did not.

So the timeline is: build the business, employ the workers, run a governor's campaign, join the check on the day the campaign starts, then spend this year putting the state behind the federal crackdown on other people's undocumented workers.

What he did with the office

The immigration enforcement Pillen has delivered as governor is not rhetorical. He put the Nebraska State Patrol into a partnership with ICE, and he approved converting a state prison in McCook into an ICE detention facility — the one Pillen and federal officials dubbed the "Cornhusker Clink."

We have already looked at how that has gone. Pillen projected $2.45 million a month in revenue from the McCook ICE jail; a year in, Nebraska had collected $14.6 million in total and was building solitary confinement cells.

He has also tried to hold two positions at once. In December he posted that "the criminal illegal aliens who have invaded our country must be removed." After an ICE raid on an Omaha meatpacking plant in June 2025, he said "Anybody that is here working hard and being a good neighbor, they're A-OK," and that he was "100 percent opposed" to mass deportation.

Local officials and immigration lawyers told the reporters that the line Pillen draws between hardworking people and criminals ignores legal reality: a worker who buys a fake ID to get hired has committed a crime. The people doing the hard work and being good neighbors, in the version of the story where they are A-OK, include the ones who staffed his barns — and nine of them were convicted.

Who actually pays for this

The workers charged with using fake IDs to get a job at Pillen's farms went through the courts. Nine of them were convicted. Pillen Family Farms was not accused of any wrongdoing in those cases.

That is the ordinary shape of immigration enforcement in agriculture, and it is the reason the story matters beyond one governor's hypocrisy. The employer gets the labor. The worker gets the record. And when the employer becomes governor, he gets to run on the crackdown.

Pillen himself did not respond to interview requests and declined to answer the reporters' written questions. His campaign manager called the investigation "nothing more than a political hit piece from the New York Times targeting the Pillen family, their business and Nebraska agriculture."

Hours after it landed, his campaign put out "The Pillen Playbook 2.0", an updated policy wishlist for a second term. The Nebraska Examiner counted its references to immigration: one, with no specifics. "Eliminate state taxpayer benefits for illegals."

What the record shows

Jim Pillen directed Nebraska's State Patrol to partner with ICE and converted a state prison into an immigration jail, while posting that "the criminal illegal aliens who have invaded our country must be removed." A Flatwater Free Press and New York Times investigation found at least 20 farms in his own hog company employed undocumented workers, that at least 12 of his workers were charged between 2015 and 2024 for using fake or stolen IDs, and that nine of them were convicted. His company started using the federal work-authorization check on the day he launched his campaign for governor. It was not accused of wrongdoing in any of those cases.

Source

Flatwater Free Press and the New York Times, Gov. Pillen backs ICE crackdown. His company employs undocumented workers.. Photo by Nikos Frazier/Omaha World-Herald, via Flatwater Free Press.