Rumors always swirled in the tomato plant. "That immigration was coming, that they were coming for the big fish,” said Rosa, an undocumented Mexican woman.

The ‘big fish’ was Juan Pablo Sánchez Delgado, also undocumented and from Mexico, who was detained on August 8, 2018, in one of the largest immigration raids in the Donald Trump era and the largest ever to occur in Nebraska or Minnesota.

But he wasn’t the only one affected. The operation resulted in more than 130 arrests, including of Rosa. Four large companies were involved, but none suffered major consequences.

According to the U.S. Justice Department, Sánchez accumulated a fortune of $5.6 million by providing undocumented labor to to the food producers Christensen Farms, Elkhorn River Farms LLC, O’Neill Ventures LLC and GJW LLC.

For every $500 check he paid to his undocumented workers, Sánchez deducted $50 in commission for himself. From that, he became a millionaire, according to an indictment, made public on the day of the raid.

Sánchez lived and operated in O'Neill, a small, conservative, white Nebraska farming town of just over 3,500, known as "the Irish capital of the United States." He owned a Mexican restaurant called La Herradura and a grocery store, which operated in the same building on the town’s main street and which served as a facade for his business. In addition to Facebook pages created by Sánchez and his family members, undocumented immigrants sought work through the store.

“He had his little restaurant, he lived modestly. Three or four years ago, he started the business of being a contractor and charged the people he sent to work," said Rosa, who was arrested at the O'Neill Ventures LLC tomato plant.

Rosa was detained for less than 24 hours, from 9:00 a.m. on August 8 to 5:00 a.m. the next day, which was enough time to leave her life in limbo. Now 60, Rosa has spent the last 20 years living between Mexico and the United States, crossing the border for seasonal work in agricultural states like Texas and Nebraska. She worked in the O’Neill tomato plant for two years. Before the raid, the company never checked the validity of her documents through E-Verify, a federal tool to verify the legal status of workers.

"It was awful, everything came to an end for us. We are all walking on a tightrope now. Especially me, because I am not married and I have no children here,” she told Univision in July 2019, after spending almost a year without a work permit. She fears her process before immigration courts will end in deportation.

Most of the 130 workers detained by ICE that day were released in exchange for collaborating with investigators, but almost two years later they still do not have legal status to remain in the United States. Many have open immigration cases. Some 20 of those detained have since obtained work permits, but the companies where they used to work—where some were arrested—no longer want to hire them directly.

Despite everything that happened, Rosa continues to see Sánchez and his family as benefactors, because they offered her work when she arrived with no money and no place to live. “He helped a lot of people by giving them work. People loved him very much. But he didn't know how to do business,” Rosa said.

The main thing Sánchez didn’t do well, in her opinion, was to be discreet. He and his family flaunted their money—betting on race horses, organizing cockfights and buying other expensive products that stood out in the humble town, where everyone said hello to each other on the street.

“They had normal cars and suddenly about three years ago, they all bought trucks. And it made you think: ‘How does Juan Pablo have so much money?’ His daughter turned 15 and suddenly she had a truck, and they celebrated with the best wine, whiskey, music and everything,” Rosa said.

Leonel, who was born in Xela, Guatemala, and has spent 19 years in the United States, was one of the first undocumented workers arrested as part of the investigation, in May 2017. In the year leading up to the raid, he was detained twice and faced a charge of identity theft, for which he was ultimately acquitted.

“When we arrived at the store, [Juan Pablo] said: ‘Boys, if you need work I have a job for you, ’or ‘Talk to me if you need work.’ And then he put us with the potatoes, tomatoes, with the pigs,” said Leonel, who worked for Sánchez for four exhausting years, washing trucks that Christensen Farms used to transport pigs.

“They were three-level trucks, each level a meter high or less, and we had to get in there on our knees, remove the wood chips, then put water with a pressure hose. And they made us clean there all crouched and uncomfortable to be able to put new pigs,” Leonel told Univision in July 2019 in O’Neill.

Initially he earned $600 every other week, which rose to $800 in 2017, before his arrest. Leonel cashed his checks at El Mercadito, Sánchez’s store, which charged a fee of $30 to $50 per check, depending on the payment amount. To compensate, Leonel was allowed to take the equivalent amount in merchandise—like fruits, flour, tortillas and canned goods, which were often expired.

His wife Carmen and his father were also detained at a potato processing plant and left without jobs. Months later, Carmen obtained a work permit, but the companies that gave her work through Sánchez refused to re-hire. Leonel was unemployed for almost a year, until he got a job an hour's drive from O'Neill.

In their indictment, prosecutors did not specify the exact number of immigrants that Sanchez hired in the three-and-a-half years of his operation, but cited statistics observed on the day of the raid of O'Neill's tomato plant as an example of the far-reaching labor scheme: “On August 2018, the majority of the O'Neill Ventures LLC workforce was foreign workers who could not legally work in the United States.”

Sánchez Delgado employed workers through two companies—JP and Sons, LLC and J Green Valley, LLC that were registered to his stepson Antonio de Jesús Castro, and he did not verify his workers’ identities, according to prosecutors. He also withheld money from workers, claiming it was to pay federal taxes and social security.

The companies in his stepson’s name had contracts with Elkhorn River Farms LLC, O'Neill Ventures LLC and GJW LLC, to provide them with labor. With this set up, the companies avoided paying local taxes and for insurance for their employees, according to the Prosecutor's Office.

The raid also resulted in the arrest of 12 of Sánchez Delgado’s relatives and business partners, including a front man and a number of representatives of the involved companies.

Of those arrested, Sánchez received the harshest sentence. On November 27, 2019, Sánchez was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for money laundering and conspiring to harbor undocumented workers. He’s also required to pay a $100,000 fine and will be deported upon release.

His wife, Magdalena Castro-Benítez, was charged with acting as her husband's "financial manager" in the money laundering operation and sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison.

The representatives of the companies that used Sánchez’s services to hire undocumented workers were not held in custody during their trials. After two years, all were acquitted.

Of the $5.6 million that Sanchez accumulated under the contractor's labor scheme, the Prosecutor's Office has recovered less than a third: $130,000 in cash found in homes in Nevada and Nebraska and three Las Vegas properties valued at $1.5 million and registered to the company owned by Magdalena Castro Benítez, Sánchez’s wife.

And the workers, who authorities say they seek to protect through workplace raids, were left abandoned. "We were used as bait to get the big fish, and they don't want to give us work anymore," said Leonel. The only person responsible for what happened, Leonel said, was Sánchez.