OMAHA — Richard Randall Sr. was a fan of President Donald Trump’s crusade to beef up border security — that is, until a wrong turn onto a local military base left his “little buddy” in a big bind and Randall with a whole different perspective.

A lifelong Nebraskan, U.S. Navy vet and dad, Randall had developed a father-son-like relationship with Jazon Gonzalez Perez, a Guatemalan migrant who managed a couple of local restaurants in the Plattsmouth area where Randall lives. He described Gonzalez Perez as an inquisitive, eager-to-learn hard worker.

The mentorship had grown to the point that Gonzalez Perez called Randall on June 7 when he — while looking for a bank branch to deposit funds on behalf of work — wound up in a snag with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A cell phone search had led Gonzalez Perez toward a branch on Offutt Air Force Base, where he was stopped and detained at a checkpoint when he could not produce a valid driver’s license.

Gonzalez Perez called Randall, who told the Nebraska Examiner he was blindsided by seeing immigration agents take away his buddy. He said conversations with on-site local law enforcement officers led him to believe Gonzalez Perez would be allowed to leave if Randall drove the car.

Randall said it looked as though the plain-clothed ICE agents were called into duty unexpectedly. One brought a child with him as if the two had been on a family outing.

“I said, ‘Hey wait, he’s not a terrorist. He manages a restaurant. He’s a good kid. He just made a wrong turn,’” Randall said, recounting the episode. “I thought we were arresting gang members, murderers and rapists.

“He’s none of those.”

Expected ‘God-Fearing’ Workers Last

Gonzalez Perez now sits in ICE custody at an Iowa jail, awaiting possible deportation for being in the country without proper authorization. And Randall says he is fuming over tactics he said turned out not to be what he voted for last November.

He expected “God-fearing” workers to be last in line. For the Plattsmouth-area resident who considers himself an independent swing voter, a different reality has “hit home” and shifted his mindset on federal immigration enforcement.

“Call me naive, but my clear understanding was we were going to go after the bad actors, not hardworking immigrants,” said Randall.

His frustration intensified in the days after the Offutt turn, as ICE and Homeland Security Investigations on June 10 detained nearly 80 workers from a worksite raid at an Omaha food plant. Not since a 2018 immigration operation in and around O’Neill, which ensnared 133 workers, had Nebraska seen such a large-scale enforcement action.

ICE officials said the raid at Glenn Valley Foods was prompted by a federal criminal search warrant suspecting widespread use of stolen identifications by workers there to gain the jobs. So far, available federal court records show three of the workers that were detained have been charged criminally as a result of the operation, including one for stolen ID, though an ICE spokeswoman said Thursday the probe continues.

Raids were conducted days prior to Omaha’s in places such as a Home Depot and in a garment district in Los Angeles, sparking protests that then spilled across the country. Trump’s call for the Marines and California National Guard troops without the consent of that state’s governor escalated tensions.

Polling shows Randall is not alone in his frustration, as people witness the reality of stepped-up immigration enforcement at worksites, on streets and in courthouses coinciding with quotas demanded by the Trump administration.

A CBS News survey conducted June 4-6 — prior to widespread protests of ICE arrests in Los Angeles — found 54% of people approved of Trump’s approach to deportations.

A more recent Quinnipiac University poll, released June 26, indicated 41% of voters  approved of the way Trump is handling immigration issues, compared to 46% who approved three months earlier in the university’s poll from March.

Approval from independent voters on the immigration question dropped to 32% from 41% in March.

Trump himself has delivered conflicting signals, reportedly ordering officials on June 12 to tap the brakes on raids at farms, hotels, restaurants and meatpacking plants. Days later, his social media post called for federal officials to “do all in their power” to deliver the “single largest mass deportation” program in history. His major targets: the Democratic strongholds of Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.

Flip Flop

The flip-flopping concerns leaders at the Omaha-based Center for Immigrant & Refugee Advancement, saying it “further erodes trust for immigrant communities.”

CIRA, which provides legal services statewide, said any claim that enforcement is focused on “dangerous” individuals does not align with what its lawyers are seeing on the ground. It said mothers and fathers, including some who had been in the U.S. for decades, are being “ripped” from their families.

“This is not a public safety initiative — it’s political theater and our communities are paying the price,” the statement said.

According to TRAC, a widely-used national clearinghouse that tracks immigration and detention trends, ICE as of mid-June reported detaining 56,397 people  — up from 38,525 a year ago and a record high since 2019 when the Syracuse University-based Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse began publishing semi-monthly statistics.

TRAC said nearly 72% of the detainees had no previous criminal conviction. Of the 28% who did, TRAC said many had been convicted of offenses such as minor traffic violations.

Longtime Omaha immigration attorney Rachel Yamamoto said she has noticed a pivot by federal officials to go after “easy pickings, low-hanging fruit,” apparently to meet the reported quotas of up to 3,000 arrests daily demanded by the Trump administration.

She pointed out her own clients: a mother-daughter duo detained June 4 at an appointment that in years past was a routine “check in.”

Maria De Leon of Huehuetenango, Guatemala, had entered the U.S. in 2014, with 3-year-old daughter Hermelinda in tow. She was released at the border to await a “credible fear” interview with federal officials that came six years later.

Her plea to stay was denied, and she was under an Order of Supervision to check in annually with immigration officials, Yamamoto said. Federal officials did not violate any rules in detaining De Leon, the attorney noted, as the food plant worker had an outstanding order of removal. But she called it “a drastic change from usual procedures.”

“She’s been on this order of supervision since 2014,” Yamamoto said of De Leon. “Everything was fine every year, until now. She’s never been arrested. She’s had a work permit. Her husband is working legally.”

Yamamoto and De Leon’s husband, who was waiting in another room, were particularly taken aback that Hermelinda, 14, also was detained. Yamamoto was with the mom and daughter when agents asked the teen to empty her pockets. She pulled out her phone and a lip gloss.

“That moment was horrible,” Yamamoto said. “Her eyes got big, like, ‘Am I being detained right now?’ I’m glad they didn’t cuff them.”

In past experience, Yamamoto said, youths typically were allowed to stay with the other parent. De Leon’s husband, Abel, had arrived in the U.S. two years prior to his wife and daughter, fleeing gangs, and has had an active asylum application pending for more than a decade in a backlogged court system. The couple’s 10-year-old son, born in the U.S., remains with dad in their South Omaha home.

De Leon’s family received word a few days later that mother and daughter were together in a family ICE facility in Texas. Yamamoto said the mom likely has no chance to stay in the U.S., though Hermelinda appears eligible for an asylum interview.

Businessman’s View

Immigration arrests have increased nationwide and more than doubled in 38 states since Trump took office Jan. 20, the New York Times reported Friday.

Nebraska has averaged 4.3 daily arrests — a 343% rise from 2024, the newspaper reported, based on data obtained through a Freedom of Information lawsuit by the Deportation Data Project at the law school at the University of California, Berkeley.

The data covers administrative arrests (those in which ICE seeks to deport rather than criminally prosecute the arrestee) conducted by the agency’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division through June 10. It does not include criminal arrests, arrests made by ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations divisions or Customs and Border Protection.

From a small businessman’s perspective, Gary Jenkins of Omaha said he was confused and in unfamiliar territory when a Guatemalan crew member was apprehended by ICE agents who followed him and his brother on a recent Saturday work morning into a gas station.

Jenkins said he jumped into action to find legal help for the man he said reported loyally to housing renovation job sites for years. He described the man, in his early 40s, as a father of three. His understanding is that the worker had missed an immigration court date in New York while living in Omaha.

Soon after his detention, the man was returned to his homeland. His wife and kids remain in the Omaha area, as does a brother, who Jenkins says has legal status.

“These guys are over here doing great work,” he said. “Now I have to go out and find somebody I can trust and believe in.”

Federal officials paint a different picture. Mark Zito, special agent in charge of a Homeland Security Investigations office that covers Omaha, recently took aim at people supporting workers detained at Glenn Valley — pointing out havoc that can occur if an undocumented worker uses a stolen Social Security number to gain employment.

Federal officials have said that 100 “real victims” face financial and emotional consequences as a result of their identities being used fraudulently at Glenn Valley.

“These so-called ‘honest workers’ have caused an immeasurable amount of financial and emotional hardship for innocent Americans,” Zito said in a statement. “If pretending to be someone you aren’t in order to steal their lives, isn’t blatant criminal dishonesty, I don’t know what is.”

ICE offered a handful of examples, including: a Texan struggling to get Social Security disability payments as their ID was being fraudulently used to earn wages at Glenn Valley; a Coloradoan asked to repay $5,000 after their income was falsely increased due to wages earned at Glenn Valley, and a nursing student from Missouri losing out on college financial assistance because fraudulent use of ID pushed up income.

Gov. Pillen Calls Hard Workers ‘A-OK’

Longtime South Omahan Sharon Boll sees the complexities, and sides with Trump policies.

She recently sat in a lawn chair watching an anti-ICE rally unfold in her neighborhood. She expressed empathy for families separated by deportations and trying to fix their residency status and respected the right to protest.

“I know the long citizenship path is a pain in the butt, but they need to be here legally,” said Boll, who had a large framed image of Jesus Christ propped on a chair next to her.  “A lot less harm will come to them.”

Even Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, — quick to say he is “a 100% supporter of ICE” — has revealed a nuanced opinion of immigration enforcement, depending on the situation.

He said he has been to the border: “I’ve seen criminals and terrorists and kids being loaded like pack mules full of fentanyl and synthetic methamphetamines coming from China. Safety is the highest calling of government, that we get the criminals and terrorists out of here. That’s the focus and what I believe in.”

Pillen told the Nebraska Examiner he was “not talking about” established immigrant families, though, and urged Congress to “fix the immigration issue.”

“Anybody that is here working hard and being a good neighbor, they’re A-OK. They’re fine,” Pillen said.

He said he did see a problem at the Glenn Valley operation because of “concentration of folks doing criminal activity of stealing people’s ID — that’s a grave offense.”

Stopped At Offutt Gate

Randall said he had been supportive of Trump’s crackdown when he understood the target to be high-level criminals.

Admittedly, he said he does not know all the intricacies of immigration law and what it takes for a foreign-born worker to enter or remain in the country with U.S. permission. He said he is familiar, however, with the manager at one of his go-to diners that he came to know as a sort of “adopted son.”

Over time, he learned that Gonzalez Perez had left his homeland to try and make a better living and help his siblings. His dad is a farmer in Guatemala, and his mom is deceased.

On a recent Saturday, Gonzalez Perez set out to make a bank deposit for his employer. The regular bank site was closed at the time. His boss told him it could wait, but Gonzalez Perez said he wanted to make sure payroll could be met, said Randall.

The online search led Gonzalez Perez to a satellite branch on the Offutt base property. A statement from Offutt’s public affairs chief said the man was detained at the gate, after presenting a Guatemalan ID card rather than a valid driver’s license.

Per security protocol, 55th Wing Security Forces contacted the Sarpy County Sheriff’s Office and ICE “due to the individual operating a vehicle without a valid license and presenting a foreign identification card with no documentation authorizing access to the installation,” said Kris “Krispy” Pierce, who heads public affairs for the 55th Wing and Offutt.

“The safety and security of our installation and personnel remain our highest priority,” said Pierce.

Randall, called by Gonzalez Perez, said he first spoke by phone to an onsite sheriff’s deputy and, based on conversations, believed he would be able to drive his friend off base. Upon arriving, he found Gonzalez Perez sitting in his car blocked by cones.

Immigration agents later arrived, ran information through a device and put his friend in handcuffs, respectfully and without incident, Randall said. Gonzalez Perez is in ICE custody at the Pottawattamie County Jail.

‘Tipping Point’

Gonzalez Perez has an immigration court hearing scheduled in early July.

His attorney said she prefers not to comment on the case.

Randall said he is monitoring closely. He believes deportation and immigration policy could be a political “tipping point” for independent voters like himself.

“I’m all for arresting bad actors. I think we all are,” Randall said. “That’s not what happened here.”

This story was published by Nebraska Examiner, an editorially independent newsroom providing a hard-hitting, daily flow of news. Read the original article: https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2025/06/29/immigration-enforcement-hit-home...