ICE Raids Idaho Republican Trump Critic’s Family Farm

April 2, 2025 Republicans, Trump Administration

Investigate West reports:

Trump’s second term was only in its second day when Ryan Spoon — vice chair of the local Republican Party apparatus in Idaho’s Ada County — turned the force of the federal government against a political enemy. “Could you please send some illegal immigration raids to the businesses owned by Idaho state Rep. Stephanie Mickelson?” he wrote in an X post, misspelling Mickelsen’s last name and tagging Trump’s border czar Tom Homan. “She has been bragging about how many illegals her businesses employ.”

“You can report her, too!” he wrote in a post festooned with flexing muscle and American flag emojis. Three days later, Mickelsen said, ICE agents appeared at Mickelsen Farms, where a slew of varieties of commercial and seed potatoes grow across thousands of acres in southeastern Idaho. “They just showed up out of the blue Friday morning,” said Mickelsen, a moderate Republican legislator and the former director for the Idaho Farm Bureau, a lobbying group for the agriculture industry.

Migrant Insider reports:

Mickelsen, a seventh-generation Idahoan and farmer, said her family’s farm was raided by ICE just three days after a local Republican official falsely reported her to the agency. The incident, which unfolded in late January 2025, has sparked outrage among some residents and raised concerns about political intimidation in the state.

Mickelsen, who represents a district in eastern Idaho, had spoken out against Trump’s hardline stance on immigration, noting the critical role immigrant labor plays in the state’s agriculture industry. “If you think that you haven’t been touched by an illegal immigrant’s hands in some way along the production chain … you are kidding yourself,” she said in a local news report posted to X.

The raid has had a chilling effect on Mickelsen’s willingness to speak out. “The next debate I remained silent … didn’t speak up because I didn’t want to put a target on my family’s back,” she said in a local news report, admitting that the intimidation had altered her behavior. “I did change the way I did things.”

There’s much more at both links above.



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