Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen has championed President Trump's immigration crackdown and allowed ICE to use a former state prison as a detention center, but his family's hog business has employed undocumented workers for more than a decade, an investigation by The New York Times and Flatwater Free Press found. The report, published in September 2026, reveals that Pillen Family Farms—one of the nation's largest hog producers with roughly 1,200 employees across four states and Canada—took on workers without legal status even as the governor publicly called for deporting "criminal illegal aliens" who have "invaded our country."
Court records and interviews with more than 40 current and former employees show that at least 20 Pillen hog farms employed undocumented immigrants, according to the investigation. At least a dozen Pillen workers were charged with using fake or stolen IDs for employment between 2015 and 2024, with nine convicted and three failing to appear in court. Six former workers acknowledged in interviews they had no legal status, and at least 10 others used false identities but never faced criminal charges. The company operates about 100 farms in Nebraska alone and ranks 14th nationally on the Pork Powerhouses list with 78,000 sows. Since Trump took office, ICE has arrested more than 3,000 people in Nebraska, more than doubling the rate under the Biden administration.
The report finds that the use of undocumented labor at Pillen farms was "an open secret" at some Nebraska locations. One former employee, David Armendariz, who overstayed his tourist visa in 2008, said he worked at two Pillen farms until 2023 using a fake driver's license that a farm manager accepted. "Everyone knows that it's not your name, but they don't ask you what your name is," he told investigators. A former manager, Quinten Rowley, said the company increased background checks around the time Pillen decided to run for governor, forcing him to turn away more applicants. Pillen's spokeswoman 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."
The investigation reveals that large hog producers have turned to immigrant labor—legal or not—because of persistent workforce shortages, with most Nebraskans unwilling to take jobs that require long hours for relatively little pay. John K. Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, confirmed this pattern across corporate hog operations in recent decades. Federal officials have largely avoided enforcement at agricultural employers in states that helped reelect Trump, the report notes. "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. ICE identified no records of audits or inspections at Pillen farms over the past 15 years.
Pillen shifted his public stance on immigration dramatically as his political ambitions grew. Before running for governor, his business donated to Centro Hispano, a nonprofit supporting both legal and undocumented workers, and he accepted an award from the group in 2018. Days after Trump's return to the White House, however, Pillen directed the Nebraska State Patrol to partner with ICE and allowed the agency to use a former state prison—now called the Cornhusker Clink—to hold hundreds of detainees. He has visited the White House 11 times since last year and Mar-a-Lago twice, far more than his recent predecessors. Despite this cooperation, less than a third of Nebraskans support the federal crackdown, according to one national poll cited in the report.
The report concludes that Pillen's language distinguishing hardworking immigrants from criminals ignores legal reality. Carl K. Hart Jr., who prosecuted identity fraud cases as Platte County attorney until 2022, said undocumented workers in Nebraska rarely break laws beyond obtaining employment and are largely "law-abiding residents trying to live their American dream and support themselves and their families." Under pressure to meet White House quotas, ICE agents have made arrests in record numbers nationwide, often deporting people with no history of criminal charges. The Nebraska State Patrol has assigned more troopers to immigration enforcement roles, and the McCook detention center is expanding. One former Pillen employee, Ashly Cortez-Garcia, summed up the contradiction: "You can't hire illegals and then stand against illegals."