Idaho. A redoubt of sanity in an insane world.
Idaho
Joined July 2024
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Conservatives are very good at reacting to the latest horrific headline. We are much worse at building the research, tools, legislation and sustained local pressure needed to change what happens next.
That is why we built this map. Find your city or county. Check the record. Help us go on offense.
map.idahoimmigrationwatch.or…
Meanwhile in Coeur d'Alene...
Mayor Gookin says the police department isn't interested in 287(g) for “various reasons.”
And Republican Councilmember Christie Wood says she'd support an ICE “resistance” resolution brought by a liberal activst group.
All this in "deep red" Kootenai County.
So now we have builders putting up fences to keep ICE off their job sites? Yeah, they're entitled to insist on a warrant. But you have to wonder why they're so worried about ICE showing up in the first place.
And closer to home, how many Idaho construction sites could actually prove their workers are here legally?
Benny Melendez, the owner of a small construction company in South Texas, says he’s been forced to install fencing at job sites to protect his workers from ICE.
“It’s embarrassing for the land of the free, to have to do this,” Melendez told @camiloreports.
Unable to find workers, Melendez, a 2024 Trump voter and 2020 Biden voter, says he plans to vote for Democrats in the midterm elections.
This is an important effort. We need to hear directly from Idaho farms that are committed to legal hiring.
Know one? Send them his way.
More than 1,000 municipal police agencies nationwide participate in ICE's 287(g) program. Idaho so far has just TWO: Post Falls and Spirit Lake.
Credit to Chiefs Mark Brantl and Michael Morlan for being trailblazers here in Idaho. Both departments chose the broader Task Force Model.
Homan obviously understands how important worksite enforcement is. But if the plan is ready, why is it still sitting on a desk? What’s holding it up?
We’re seeing too much of this. In Washington and here in Idaho. Plenty of announcements, plans and intentions but not nearly enough follow through.
At some point, talk has GOT to turn into action.
A Soros-funded DC think tank has identified 3 Idaho counties for more immigration: Butte, Caribou and Minidoka.
EXC: A Washington think tank whose immigration program receives Soros funding has identified hundreds of American counties as destinations for migrants. 96.5% of selected counties are majority White .
Residents would have no say.
Its November 2025 immigration blueprint urges policymakers to “enable local governments and private entities to sponsor immigrants directly.” It also proposes state visa programs and “incentivizing new arrivals to stay in specific states and regions.”
Two weeks later, Niskanen published its Migration Match Index, assessing American communities for their capacity to accommodate more immigration.
The report describes places with “aging, stagnant, or insufficient native labor supply.” It weighs factors including job openings, rental vacancies, affordability, unemployment, and age.
The authors explicitly discuss using updated data to plan resettlement following “an influx of asylum seekers at the border.” They also contemplate applications to a future refugee-admissions system.
Niskanen’s own funding disclosure lists $300,000 from Open Society Foundation for immigration work, covering the period when both documents were published. Other donors include the Rockefeller Family Fund and the Pritzker Family Foundation.
The organization already has a record of helping turn private sponsorship into policy.
Its 2025 annual report says it “helped conceive and implement” Welcome Corps, the private refugee-sponsorship program established under Biden.
Idaho is increasingly treated by our political class like an economic zone whose job is to provide employers the cheapest possible labor.
H-1B in tech. Illegal labor in ag and construction. The priority is cheap labor. The people already living here come second.
Are we going to build an economy around Idahoans and Americans, or just continue participating in a global race to the bottom?
Two Idaho CDL schools were shut down in DOT’s nationwide enforcement action involving drivers who failed federal English language proficiency requirements.
Meanwhile, Idaho’s regular Class D written test is still offered in 11 different languages.
On Nov. 3, Idaho voters will get to vote for HJR 6 - the English as Official State Language Amendment - which would put official English into the Idaho Constitution.
New at the Chronicle:
The DOT recently shut down 110 CDL schools connected to commercial drivers who were unable to understand English. Two Idaho firms were part of that shutdown action.
gemstatechronicle.com/2026/0…
Worth remembering here in Idaho.
Catholic Charities’ lobbyist testified against HB 335 in 2025 and came back in 2026 to oppose HB 764, all legislation aimed at organizations knowingly harboring or transporting illegal aliens.
There’s a pattern here.
13 arrests while checking Post Falls job sites. 15 total.
Who hired them?
Enforcement matters. But if Idaho is serious about illegal immigration, we also have to deal with the employers creating the demand for illegal labor.
Michael Angiletta retweeted
Post Falls is fully operational with our 287(g) partnership with ICE! Some say there aren't many illegal aliens in North Idaho, but we arrested 13 during the first few days in a joint operation with ICE by checking some job sites. We're up to 15 now. How many are really here?
15 immigration arrests in Post Falls.
The obvious question now:
Who hired them?
🚨 15 immigration arrests in Post Falls.
Post Falls became the first city police department in Idaho to join ICE’s 287(g) program. Now we’re beginning to see what increased cooperation with federal immigration enforcement looks like on the ground in North Idaho.
This isn’t just a South Idaho problem.
👇 KREM’s report
krem.com/article/news/local/…
Illegal labor has consequences: it rewards employers who break the law, unfairly undercuts lawful workers and businesses, and drives illegal immigration.
Coeur d’Alene is now #8 statewide for ICE arrests. Post Falls is top 20.
This isn’t just a southern Idaho problem.
WHERE IS ICE MAKING ARRESTS IN IDAHO?
We dug deeper into the same ICE records behind the 1,177 arrest story.
Top apprehension cities in 2026:
Boise - 222
Caldwell - 141
Idaho Falls - 90
Burley - 79
Nampa - 67
Twin Falls - 67
Jerome - 67
Coeur d’Alene - 45
Rexburg - 33
Hailey - 30
That's 71.5% of Idaho’s statewide total.
And yes, that's Coeur d’Alene at #8. This isn’t confined to south Idaho.
North Idaho homebuilder contractors are herby put on notice...
This Post Falls story is typical of Idaho’s illegal labor problem. An employer says two longtime workers were deported after an ICE operation.
ICE arrests address the symptom. E-Verify addresses the cause. ktvb.com/article/news/politi…
It’s tempting to celebrate the ICE arrests.
But then ask: why are so many illegal aliens here in Idaho in the first place?
The arrests are the symptom. Idaho’s dependence on illegal labor is the disease.
Lenney lays bare the contradiction: Idaho’s BigAg lobby says immigration is a “federal issue” when legislators propose enforcement, while lobbying government for policies that protect its labor supply.
@IDFarmBureau if Idaho’s immigration bills were just “noise,” tell us which ones, and why.
This quoted post is unavailable.
Senator Lenney is right: WSO is by far the weakest 287(g) model. It’s mostly jail-based and reactive. Under DeSantis’ leadership, Florida didn’t settle for the weakest option. All 67 sheriffs signed Task Force Model agreements.
Idaho needs to do much better.
If Governor Little means it, he should do what Ron DeSantis did and mandate 287(g) for every law enforcement agency in Idaho.
Good for the goose, good for the gander, right?
But what he signed will do close to nothing about illegal immigration here.
The warrant service officer (WSO) model is the least consequential of the three 287(g) agreements. It basically means a trained officer gets authority to serve an administrative warrant, which means he hands a piece of paper to an illegal immigrant.
That's the whole thing.
And it stops at ISP. The agencies booking people into jails every night are the sheriffs and cops in all 44 counties, and this order doesn't reach a single one of them.
The Idaho Dairymen's Association, Farm Bureau, and Big Ag all want the cheap labor. Brad isn't going to sign anything that steps on their toes.
I ran a bill a few months ago that would have put 287(g) at the local level, where it would mean something. The cops, the sheriffs, and Big Ag all came out hard against it.
Mandate it for the sheriffs, Governor.
