Gary Rohwer owns Glenn Valley Foods, a meat-packing concern in south Omaha, Nebraska. Like most companies in the meat-packing business, many of his workers are foreign-born. However, Rohwer was not concerned with Trump's belligerent anti-immigrant hostility as he is a 'by-the-book' guy. I can't say he voted for the mephitic malignancy — especially as Omaha is a blue island in a sea of Cornhusker red — but in a state heavily reliant on non-native labor, the citizenry as a whole voted for Trump by 21%,
Regardless of his politics, Rohwer is a man who follows the rules. Naively, he thought this fly-right attitude would keep him in federal law enforcement's good graces. He was wrong.
Fortune reported on Gary's experiences as an employer in a nascent fascist state. In an article headlined: "Omaha food plant owner who lost half his workforce in ICE raids says he followed rules for hiring immigrants," the pro-business magazine (no socialism lurking here) reported:
The owner of an Omaha food packaging company says his business has been unfairly hamstrung by federal immigration officials, who raided the plant and arrested more than half its workforce.
The raid took place despite the company meticulously following the government's own system for verifying the workers were in the country legally, owner Gary Rohwer said Wednesday.
Glenn Valley Foods now is operating at about 30% of capacity as the business scrambles to hire more workers, Rohwer said as he stood outside the plant.
This is how Rohwer put it:
"We did everything we could possibly do."
Adding, "I'd like to see the United States government … come up with a program that they can communicate to the companies as to how to hire legitimate help. Period,"
Company President Chad Hartmann echoed the owner's puzzlement:
"My biggest issue is: Why us? We do everything by the book."
He explained that the plant uses E-Verify, the federal database used to check the immigration status of employees. When he said as much to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who carried out the raid, they told him the E-Verify system "is broken."
To which Chad quite reasonably responded:
"I mean, what am I supposed to do with that? This is your system, run by the government. And you're raiding me because your system is broken?"
Welcome to the rabbit hole, Chad and Gary. Agricultural states are MAGA strongholds. Trump doesn't care. He no longer needs their votes. If the constitution holds, this historic blight on America will be gone in 2029. If it doesn't, he'll install himself as emperor for life. Either way, TACO's not standing for election again.
Not only does Trump not give a shit about either the law or Americans of any political stripe, his appointees to positions of power are equally unconcerned by rules and political loyalty. Kristi Noem, ex-governor of Nebraska's northern neighbor, South Dakota, is now the boss of Homeland Security.
For most people, this is a management position. But Noem has shunned the desk to pursue a career as ICE Barbie. Should the dictatorship plan fall through, she could establish a lucrative income stream with an Only Fans cosplay page.
She is frequently photographed standing pointlessly in a bulletproof vest carrying a gun. As anyone who has worked in a corporate environment knows, nothing runs optimally when the boss is hovering around, sticking an unasked oar in.
In her latest "Look at me" inanity. Noem loitered outside a house in Huntington Park, CA, as 10 masked Brown Shirts raided the home of a U.S. citizen — a mother of four, pregnant with her fifth.
A clueless idiot looking at a screen, wondering if the camera has caught her better side
In America, we were brought up to play by the rules. However, we have now discovered that the rules are meaningless when those in charge of enforcing them ignore them.
