This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 19 episode of “Connect with Jacob Soboroff.”
In Trump-era politics, there’s the rhetoric, then there’s the reality — and sometimes those two worlds collide.
I’ve seen it firsthand while reporting on U.S. immigration policy. Contradiction comes up constantly between the hard-line anti-immigrant talk and the industries that privately benefit from undocumented labor.
Take, for example, Republican Gov. Jim Pillen of Nebraska, a politician who has positioned himself as a champion of President Donald Trump’s deportation push. His words have been pretty clear-cut when it comes to immigration. In a December post on X, Pillen wrote, “The criminal illegal aliens who have invaded our country must be removed so they no longer pose a threat to our people. I will do everything in my power to ensure Nebraska continues to stand strong with President Trump to get the job done.”
And Pillen has seemingly acted on that: He has dispatched state troopers to partner directly with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on arrests, and he’s converted a shuttered state prison into a mass detention facility, grossly referred to as “Cornhusker Clink.”
But there’s another side of the story.
Three decades ago, the governor founded Pillen Family Farms, a massive hog enterprise that now has about 100 farms across Nebraska. Since taking office, the multimillion-dollar business has been run by two of his children, Sarah and Brock.
And lo and behold, that business, according to a joint investigation published by The New York Times and the Flatwater Free Press, has employed undocumented workers at its hog farming facilities.
Journalists interviewed dozens of current and former Pillen farm employees, spoke with attorneys and reviewed court records, and they found that at least 20 Pillen hog farms employed undocumented immigrants, an arrangement the report described as “an open secret.”
According to court records, at least a dozen Pillen workers were charged with using fake or stolen IDs for employment between 2015 and 2024; nine were convicted. Many workers interviewed said the practice was common. However, Pillen Family Farms was not charged in those cases.
MS NOW reached out to Pillen’s office for comment. So far, we haven’t received a response. But the governor’s spokesperson told The New York Times that he “never knowingly hired an illegal immigrant and went above and beyond the legal requirements to verify the immigration status of his employees.”
So just to make sure we have got this right: Publicly, Pillen has said undocumented immigrants are “invading” his state. But privately, according to this investigation, undocumented immigrants have been contributing to his family’s bottom line for years.
Allison Detzel contributed.
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