Heartless ICE (FBI) raid in Idaho was authoritarianism in action | Opinion

Imagine this: You take your family to a state fair. You take your kids to get some kettle corn. You go on a few rides.

And then hundreds of law enforcement agents show up, zip-tie your whole family, separate your children from you and question you. Eventually, they cut the zip ties and let you go. You run panicked through a neighboring farmer’s field, trying to find your children, since that’s where they were sent after being released.

The justification? It turns out a few guys at the fair were taking bets without a license, constituting illegal gambling.

This is essentially what seems to have just happened in Wilder, a town of fewer than 2,000 people, where roughly 200 law enforcement agents — some masked, some from the FBI, some from Canyon County and many from Immigration and Customs Enforcement — descended on La Catedral Arena, a local horse track and event venue.

Racing there was permitted and legal, but gambling was not, because the track did not have a betting license. By all accounts, few people in attendance had anything to do with the gambling — which granted, was illegal if it was happening.

A handful of people were named in a federal criminal complaint authored by the FBI. Nonetheless, dozens of people who merely were in attendance were detained, many with their hands cuffed behind their backs. Children were separated from their families, a heartless, cruel, unjustified act.

On the most generous reading, granting that everything the FBI says in its criminal filing is true — and you should not assume that with the Trump administration’s Department of Justice — the actions of federal officials were completely unjustified. It was racial profiling on a massive scale, targeting immigrants. It was immoral. It was thuggish.

It was authoritarianism in action.

And it was all done under the name of an FBI gambling investigation that obviously was used as an excuse for ICE to target people, something ICE has been increasingly doing, including to U.S. citizens, as Pro Publica recently reported.

It’s hard to answer for behavior like that. Perhaps that’s why the FBI and Canyon County Sheriff’s Office canceled their scheduled press conference about the raid on Monday. An FBI spokesperson noted that a federal criminal complaint for the men wanted in the alleged unlicensed betting operation was available, so there was nothing more to add.

More like they knew they didn’t want to answer the many questions the public would have.

The FBI already sent out a news release about the raid Sunday night and announced the press conference, so it’s not as if officials weren’t gunning for publicity. That release also contained a justification for this extreme response: Gambling harms the community.

“Illegal gambling isn’t a victimless crime,” the FBI said, as the Statesman reported. “These operations can create an increase in violent crime, drug activity, and violence, putting communities at risk.”

There have been no public reports of violent crime, drug activity or violence at La Catedral. If those problems existed, officials could address them at a press conference — instead, they chose secrecy and canceled the meeting with the media.

It is true that gambling can harm gambling addicts and their families. But there’s been no allegation anything uniquely harmful was happening at La Catedral, other than that the operators lacked a license for parimutuel wagering.

If what the FBI alleges is true, the betting was indeed not legal, but it hardly qualifies as an urgent federal matter that requires hundreds of law enforcement agents, drones and a helicopter in response.

The way you deal with an unlicensed betting operation is to identify the people running it and show up with a warrant to arrest them — if they need to be arrested at all, rather than simply served with the charges. You could do this without scooping up every other human being in the area.

It is well within the ability of any county sheriff’s office to handle — along with the FBI, if there’s a genuine reason for the case to be federal. Five people have now been arrested in this case.

What you don’t do is detain everyone in the vicinity with brown skin.

But in this case, it seems the FBI has simply acted as ICE’s errand runners as the Trump administration continues its targeting of immigrants — undocumented or not.

Because here is the simple truth: Federal agents under the Trump administration would never dream of doing this at a similar event where most of those in attendance were non-Latino.

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 October 21, 2025 at 4:00 AM.