People in Wilder, Idaho, didn’t think much about La Catedral Arena, the dusty horse track west of town. On Sundays in the summer and early fall, vendors sold horchata and tacos, announcers called race results in Spanish, and immigrant families gathered for fun at a fair price.
But when federal investigators flooded the track on October 19, with guns drawn, a helicopter overhead, and unmarked SUVs racing in on dirt roads, they did more than break up an alleged gambling ring and send more people back to their home countries. They broke Wilder’s naïve conviction that the town’s remote location and deep-red politics might keep it safe from the raids that were happening in other areas of the country.
Chris Gross, a second-generation farmer who farms sweet corn seed and mint in Wilder, said, “We depend on Hispanic workers. She said, No one thought this could happen here.” The raid on La Catedral may not have gotten as much attention as immigration sweeps in Minneapolis, Chicago, and Los Angeles, but it showed how hard President Donald Trump is working to find and get rid of people who are in the country illegally. Local immigration lawyers say that 75 people were arrested that day and have since been deported.
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