FREMONT, Neb. — Big-city mayors may be complaining about the economic impact of an influx of migrants, but the residents of a small city near Omaha can’t decide how they feel.
Fremont, Nebraska, population 27,000, has three massive meat-processing plants. As young locals leave in search of better jobs, Central American migrants have been taking their places in the slaughterhouses, especially after Costco opened a huge rotisserie chicken facility in 2019.
“We need these people,” said Mark Jensen, president of the city council. “We need this work done. This is what feeds the nation and the world.”
But instead of a welcome mat, for more than a decade Fremont has had a controversial law on the books that tries to bar undocumented migrants from living within city limits. In 2010, residents voted 57% to 43% to require that all people renting property in Fremont must first sign a declaration that they are legally present in the U.S.
“The city’s citizens asked the city council to do something because it was pretty obvious that we had just become a haven for illegals,” said city council member Paul Von Behren.
Brenda Ray, who has lived in the Fremont area for 40 years, said she noted the change in the city’s population and voted for the ordinance back in 2010. She said she doesn’t “have a problem” with the Central American arrivals “if they are legal and they come in to speak American English.”
She wishes the rule, known as Ordinance 5165, “accomplished more,” but still supports it.
“It’s something that we have in our toolbox,” she said. “If we have a big problem we can fall back on it.”
The factories need workers, however, and the migrants have kept coming. By 2022 a town that was once nearly all white had become 16% Latino, according to census data, and the number has risen since. Many of the most recent arrivals are from Guatemala. The Guatemalan consulate in Omaha says there are at least 2,020 Guatemalans in Fremont and the true…
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