By admin 
Dan Osborn, the Democratic Party–backed independent running for Senate in Nebraska, has spent part of his campaign courting voters critical of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement.
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He has sharply condemned the president’s tactics, criticizing the use of masked agents, saying that immigrant labor is essential to Nebraska’s economy and that federal raids on factories and restaurants are hurting business owners.
Complicating that message is Osborn’s role as a labor leader during a bitter strike five years ago at an Omaha Kellogg’s cereal plant. In the midst of the strike, Osborn and his union worked to alert federal immigration authorities to allegations that Kellogg’s replaced striking workers with undocumented immigrants.
“Kellogg’s bringing in replacement workers, we have it on good authority that they’re replacing us with a good percentage of undocumented workers,” Osborn said in December 2021 on a pro-union podcast. “We have been in contact with Homeland Security and ICE. We’ve made our claims. I hope they do the right thing and investigate our claims.”
Osborn offered no evidence in the interview that Kellogg’s was employing undocumented workers, and CNN could not independently verify the allegation. While reporting at the time documented Kellogg’s use of temporary replacement labor, no public reporting identified any of those workers as undocumented, and CNN’s review of the record found no evidence supporting the claim. Kellogg’s did not respond to a request for comment.
Osborn’s campaign now says he never personally contacted ICE or DHS. Instead, Osborn called the local sheriff’s department to ask how such allegations should be reported, the campaign said in a statement to CNN. He then passed that guidance to his team, the campaign said, while others contacted federal authorities on their own “in their individual capacity.”
A spokesperson for ICE declined to confirm or deny whether the agency received any tip connected to the Kellogg’s strike, citing a policy of not identifying people who report suspected immigration violations.
Less than two weeks after Osborn’s podcast appearance, workers ratified a new contract and the 77-day strike came to an end.
An independent balancing act
Osborn has built his political identity as a pro-labor populist independent — a Navy veteran and former union president who lost but overperformed in a 2024 Senate run and is now relying on a coalition that depends heavily on Democratic voters who, polling shows, have grown sharply hostile to ICE.
Osborn’s comments from 2021 could complicate that effort, especially as immigration enforcement has become one of the most polarizing issues in American politics — and as Osborn attempts a balancing act that few candidates have managed.
His independent brand depends on holding together Trump voters drawn to his economic populism and Democrats who anchor his coalition, and no issue strains that coalition more than immigration.
On the trail Osborn has tried to occupy the middle, pairing tough border language with sympathy for longtime undocumented residents.
He has said he wants longtime undocumented immigrants to have a path to citizenship, that immigrant labor is essential to filling Nebraska’s open jobs, and that undocumented immigrants should be able to get Social Security cards as part of their process of becoming legal immigrants. He says he supports immigration reform, but only when the border is secure with a wall.
Osborn’s also been unsparing in some of his criticism of Trump’s immigration tactics.
“I mentioned that it’s hurting businesses, but it’s also not humanly decent,” Osborn said on The Bulwark podcast in August 2025. “We’re seeing factories, get raided, meat cutters get raided. We’re seeing people not showing up to work at restaurants. We are seeing business owners get hurt by this immigration policy. So the economic conservative side of me is extremely worried about that.”
A 2025 Pew Research Center survey underscores the political tension around ICE for Democratic-backed candidates like Osborn: while 72% of Republicans viewed ICE favorably, Democrats overwhelmingly viewed the agency negatively, with just 13% expressing a favorable opinion and 78% viewing it unfavorably.
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A tense labor standoff with Kellogg’s
Osborn’s 2021 comments came in the midst of what was then a tense standoff between Kellogg’s and the labor union Osborn was leading at the time.
Roughly 1,400 Kellogg’s workers across four US plants walked off the job over wages, benefits and the company’s two-tier employment system, which paid newer hires lower wages and offered fewer benefits than longtime “legacy” workers. As the strike dragged on, Kellogg’s threatened to permanently replace striking workers and continued operating plants with replacement labor.
At the time, Osborn was serving as president of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 50G. The strike ended after 77 days, when workers ratified a new contract on December 21, 2021, that raised wages for workers and created a path for newer employees to move into legacy positions. “It will be difficult to go back. There is a lot of tarnished relationships that we will work diligently to repair,” said Osborn at the time.”
Asked by CNN about his efforts to alert authorities to Kellogg’s replacement workers , Osborn’s campaign sought to draw a distinction between the candidate and others involved in the strike, saying he personally never contacted federal immigration authorities.
“Dan contacted the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department to inquire about the proper procedures for how to investigate and report that the company was replacing their striking workers with undocumented workers. He passed the information from the Sheriff’s office along to members of his team,” his campaign told CNN. “Many of the individuals who raised the concerns about Kellogg’s replacing the striking workers with undocumented workers contacted DHS and ICE in their individual capacity. Dan never contacted DHS and ICE himself.”
A Democratic bet on an independent
The Nebraska Democratic Party’s decision not to field its own Senate candidate and instead back Osborn stems largely from his unexpectedly strong 2024 Senate run, when, running as an independent, he lost to Republican Sen. Deb Fischer by roughly 7 points in a state Donald Trump carried by about 20 points.
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During that campaign, Osborn frequently blended tougher border rhetoric with calls for broader immigration reform. In campaign materials, he argued that “illegal immigration creates a pool of cheap labor with no rights and is detrimental to every American worker,” while also emphasizing the economic importance of legal immigration.
Osborn’s campaign casts the Kellogg’s episode in those same terms, as a fight against corporate power rather than against immigrants.
“When we were on strike against Kellogg’s, we received reports that they may be bringing undocumented labor as our permanent replacements, and members of the community stood up to protect these local union jobs and hold corporate power accountable,” Osborn said in a statement. “There’s a reason why we haven’t had real immigration reform in this country: mega-corporations who use Citizens United to fund career politicians in DC are benefitting from our broken immigration system by exploiting undocumented immigrants to create a cheap pool of labor, driving down wages to boost their own profits while undercutting American workers.”
Osborn now is mounting a second straight Senate run, this time against Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts — a former governor and Trump endorsee.
In a September 2024 campaign ad, Osborn declared: “I’m where President Trump is on corruption, China, the border. If Trump needs help building the wall — well, I’m pretty handy.” He also said: “Social security to illegals? Who would be for that?”
At the same time, Osborn also spoke sympathetically about long-term undocumented immigrants already living in the United States.
“These people are our friends. They’re our neighbors. A lot of them have been here 30 years or more, and I think it’s time they get into Social Security already,” Osborn said during a 2024 interview, while also arguing Nebraska could “certainly use immigrant labor” to help fill open jobs.
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