By Matt Olberding, Nebraska Public Media
A company that contracts with the federal government to process immigration records plans to lay off its remaining employees in Lincoln, a move that will cost nearly 200 jobs.
ITC Federal said in a letter sent Tuesday to the Nebraska Department of Labor that it will perform a “mass layoff” of 192 employees at its Nebraska Service Center at 850 S St. The last day of work for most of them will be Nov. 30, according to the letter.
The 192 workers being laid off represent, “the remainder of bargaining unit and non-bargaining unit employees currently employed at the Nebraska Service Center,” the letter says.
Officials from ITC Federal did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Jackson Thomas, treasurer of United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America Local 808, which represents 180 of the workers being laid off, said it did not come as a surprise because workers knew the contract was coming to an end, and there had been layoffs at the beginning of the year.
“The only question for us was the pace of how the layoffs would happen,” he said.
The ITC Federal employees in Lincoln do contract work for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, dealing mostly with paper forms filed by immigrants who are already in the country and are victims sex trafficking or domestic violence.
Thomas, who has worked for the company for about three years, said it has been in Lincoln since the 1990s, and there are a number of employees who have worked there “for decades.”
“This is who they are,” he said. “This is what they’ve done for a lot of their lives.”
The company had already laid off about 140 employees in Lincoln around the first of the year and also has cut jobs and closed down immigration service centers in other parts of the country.
Jackson said the big issue now is whether workers will get any severance, something that’s not looking likely.
“There’s been quite a few people who’ve been here for a long time, and ITC says, ‘No. No. You don’t get anything.'”
The USCIS employs hundreds of workers at both the 850 S St. building and another building in the Highlands in northwest Lincoln. Those workers are not affected by the layoff, but they may be furloughed due to the current federal government shutdown.
The ITC Federal layoff is the sixth one in Nebraska affecting at least 100 workers since the beginning of May, according to the Nebraska Department of Labor. In all of 2024, there were only four such layoffs.
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