Nebraska governor backs Trump’s immigration crackdown, but his family farms reportedly hired undocumented workers

Jim Pillen spent three decades building a hog operation from 60 sows on a dirt lot into one of the nation’s largest pork producers before he became Nebraska’s governor. That same company, Pillen Family Farms, has employed undocumented workers for more than a decade. At the same time, Pillen has aligned himself with President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

A joint investigation from Flatwater Free Press and The New York Times found that at least 20 of the family’s roughly 100 hog farms employed workers without legal status. The investigation reviewed state and federal court records and interviewed more than 40 current and former employees, managers, prosecutors, and immigration lawyers.

At least a dozen Pillen workers were charged between 2015 and 2024 with using fake or stolen identities to get hired, and nine were convicted while three failed to appear in court. It’s important to note that Pillen Family Farms itself has never been charged with wrongdoing in any of those cases.

Pillen’s own farms are not exactly helping his immigration argument

Former employee David Armendariz told reporters he overstayed a tourist visa and used a purchased fake driver’s license to get hired at two Pillen farms, and that a manager accepted it without objection. One former manager at another Pillen farm said he once told a worker to find a new ID after the company flagged an earlier one. Neither account has been tested in court, as employers are rarely the direct target of these identity-fraud investigations.

A spokeswoman for the governor said Pillen never knowingly hired an unauthorized worker. Sarah Pillen, who runs the company as co-CEO alongside her brother Brock, said in a statement that the farms take pride in following employment law and have never knowingly hired anyone without authorization. The company enrolled in the federal E-Verify system the same day Pillen launched his first campaign for governor. That system, however, checks only new hires going forward and cannot screen an existing workforce retroactively.

John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, said large hog operations have leaned on immigrant labor for years as fewer Nebraskans take on the physically demanding, lower-paid work the industry requires. Reliance on workers without legal status has functioned as an open secret at some of the company’s farms, according to the investigation. That reality sits uneasily against Pillen’s public standing as one of the most aggressive Republican governors on immigration enforcement.

Since Trump returned to office, Pillen signed a January 2025 executive order directing state agencies to support federal immigration enforcement, and he later authorized National Guard soldiers to assist Nebraska-based ICE operations. He also converted a former state prison into a detention facility known as the Cornhusker Clink. Pillen has occasionally softened his language, saying immigrants who are working hard and being good neighbors are different from those he considers criminal threats.

Other governors have faced their own reckonings with the crackdown, including Minnesota’s immigration standoff, where a federal surge became a political flashpoint of its own. Pillen is running for reelection this November with Trump’s endorsement, a reversal from 2022, when the president initially backed a primary opponent. There is no legal finding that Pillen personally participated in any unlawful hiring, and federal law does not require employers to be document forensics experts as long as they make a good-faith effort to verify paperwork.

However, the gap between the company’s hiring history and the governor’s political brand has already become part of the campaign conversation. Nebraska voters could weigh that contrast against Pillen’s enforcement record as the race toward November heats up.