Immigration situation in Idaho may get worse before it gets better | Opinion

Update (Aug. 12, 2025): This editorial has been updated to add that Gov. Brad Little’s direction to Idaho State Police was limited to specific duties.

When it comes to the United States’ immigration policy, we’re beginning to see how bad things can get.

A story this week by the Idaho Statesman’s Carolyn Komatsoulis showed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are upping their game in Idaho, smashing a Meridian man’s car window to detain him.

At the same time, Idaho State Police have signed an agreement with ICE to join a “Task Force Model,” which uses racial profiling to let local police question people on the street about their immigration status, according to another Idaho Statesman story. Even though Gov. Brad Little said his orders to the State Police were limited to specific duties, the agreement still gives Idaho officers the power to interrogate anyone believed to be an immigrant, to arrest immigrants under certain conditions and to transport immigrants to detention facilities, according to the Statesman story.

Civil rights organizations are sounding the alarm over ICE’s obvious violations of constitutional rights, including U.S. citizens getting caught up in mass arrests and deportations, inhumane conditions for immigrants in federal prisons and unconstitutional raids.

Not to mention deporting detainees — without proper adjudication as to whether they are in the country without legal authorization — to foreign countries, including a brutal torture prison in El Salvador and the dangerous and inhumane establishment of “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida.

You may be completely fine with all that, unconcerned with inhumane and unconstitutional treatment of human beings, including children. You may be fine with stray innocent bystanders getting caught in the wide net that’s been cast (as long as it’s not you, of course).

But consider this: A rough estimate by the University of Idaho’s McClure Center put Idaho’s workforce count at about 27,000 undocumented immigrants, mostly working in agriculture, construction and service industries.

Idaho industry professionals report that in agriculture, dairy and hospitality industries, businesses employ unauthorized workers to meet their labor needs because authorized workers cannot be found.

So what happens if Trump fulfills his campaign promise — with the help of Idaho State Police — and rounds up nearly 27,000 undocumented immigrants in Idaho?

Employers in agriculture, construction and service industries are going to be in a world of hurt, to say the least. The people Republican leaders believe are out there lining up to take these jobs exist only in their minds.

Finding workers is already a key concern for Idaho businesses today, according to the U of I report, even with undocumented workers. These businesses report that they have to adapt to the lack of workers by forgoing business growth opportunities, cutting back production or even closing, according to the U of I report.

This doesn’t even include the contributions that undocumented immigrant workers make to Idaho’s economy through their spending and taxes.

Those contributions “are likely in the billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs,” according to the report.

Despite recent poor jobs reports, the United States still faces a labor shortage in the millions.

Rounding up and deporting millions of undocumented immigrants could have a devastating effect on the economy, perhaps none more so than Idaho’s.

But maybe that’s what it’s going to take for Congress to do its job and adopt immigration reform.

U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson’s Farm Workforce Modernization Act would be a good place to start. It would create a pathway to legal status by creating a category called Certified Agricultural Worker for undocumented farmworkers who have done at least 180 days of agricultural work over the past two years.

It would reform the H-2A Guestworker Program by expanding eligibility to include dairy and other year-round agricultural work, and by adding flexibility for employers.

It would still require employers to attempt recruiting U.S. workers first before using the H-2A program, and establish a mandatory E-Verify system for agricultural employment to ensure future workers are authorized to work legally.

An earlier version of the bill passed the House with bipartisan support, but it got nowhere in the Senate.

Perhaps things weren’t bad enough.

The U.S. has been skating along like this for decades, with an untenable and unsustainable immigration policy, blindly looking the other way while undocumented immigrants do work that other Americans won’t do, spend money that bolsters the economy and pay taxes that help to provide government services.

If we let President Trump and ICE continue with this reckless, inhumane and unconstitutional deportation crusade, we’re going to see just how bad it can get.

Maybe that’s what it will take to get Congress to fix our broken immigration system.

Statesman editorials are the opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community members John Hess, Debbie McCormick and Julie Yamamoto.

This story was originally published August 12, 2025 at 4:00 AM.