State Sen. Margo Juarez of Omaha, at center speaking. Aug. 22, 2025. (Photo by Zach Wendling/Nebraska Examiner)
LINCOLN — The Nebraska Governor’s Mansion was a bit busier than usual on Friday.
Roughly 150 protesters gathered outside the mansion Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen sometimes calls home to protest his plans for a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility at a state prison in the southwestern part of the state. State Sen. Margo Juarez of Omaha spoke to the protesters, saying she needs to “be stronger so I can advocate for my immigrant community.”
“Much has changed in our country since January,” Juarez said. “President [Donald] Trump is pursuing his goal of removing undocumented immigrants from our country without due process.”
Trump, throughout his 2024 presidential campaign, posted on social media promising voters what he called “the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History,” after the Biden administration saw illegal border crossings spike at the end of 2023 and start decreasing last year. Trump has said he is pursuing the deportations to “keep our families safe.” Pillen has said of the facility, “Government’s most important job is to keep us safe.”
The governor is following a similar political playbook on the rollout of the facility.
Nebraska has seen an increase in ICE activity this year. Glenn Valley Foods in Omaha faced an ICE raid in June, which sparked protests in Omaha and Lincoln. In July, ICE announced it had arrested an MS-13 “kingpin” hiding in Omaha.
Juarez called the Glenn Valley Foods ICE raid a “political stunt to create fear and divisiveness in South Omaha and beyond.”
“We must use our position of power and privilege to protect our immigrant neighbors,” she said Friday. “We must use our position of power and privilege to protect our immigrant neighbors.”
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The Governor’s Office has said any “backlash to this initiative is politically motivated” and that “Nebraskans spoke loud and clear last November and demanded order at the border.”
Four of the state’s five Electoral College votes went to Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Most Republican state senators reached by the Examiner in recent days have said they support the new effort in Nebraska. Former Vice President Kamala Harris won the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District.
A Papillion United Methodist pastor, Rebecca Hjelle-Penner, said while most of Nebraska went to Trump, “not all Nebraskans voted for that.”
“I don’t think that people … [or] I hope that people didn’t think this is what would happen,” Hjelle-Penner said. “That would break my heart to think that people would be so angry with their neighbors that they would decide it’s worth doing this to each other.”
While state lawmakers are “learning on the go” about Nebraska’s plan to transform its McCook Work Ethic Camp from a rehabilitative center for young men to a migrant detention facility, Pillen told NewsNation this week that the facility is “ready to roll.”
McCook city officials, in a statement, said it was out of their hands because the Work Ethic Camp is on state-owned land, but that they “are confident in the direction” the city and Red Willow County are heading.
Nebraska Appleseed, a group that advocates for the needy and immigrants, touted a petition on Ujoin, an advocacy website, has received roughly 12,000 signatures telling Pillen “no” on opening the facility, adding, “This is not who we are.”
National, state-by-state ICE expansions come as recent polling suggests a majority of Americans now disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration, though most Republicans still support it. Recent polling indicates a shift in people’s attitudes from last year, when more Americans supported less immigration and stricter immigration enforcement.
“I wonder now if they would reconsider the way that they did vote,” Hjelle-Penner said.
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