Charles Hicks was at the gym when his husband called from the car to say he was being followed, Hicks recalled. His husband pulled over by their home, and Hicks watched on FaceTime as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent smashed his husband’s window.
He rushed to his Meridian apartment, but by then his husband was gone. Hicks, a U.S. citizen, already had started the process to get his husband legal status, he said. He and his husband had talked about the possibility of immigration enforcement, but Hicks said it still didn’t make him ready.
The Statesman is not naming the husband because Hicks said his husband fears repercussions for his case.
“I was not really prepared to watch that or to hear that,” Hicks said by phone. ICE agents screamed and yelled at his husband in the car, he said. “The No. 1 feeling that I had was just a pit in my stomach.”
Being in the United States without authorization is enough grounds to start the deportation process, and some immigrants who are here legally can also be removed. But under President Donald Trump, ICE agents in Idaho have been changing their tactics and using some strategies more often, according to local immigration lawyers. That includes smashing car windows, like with Hicks’ husband.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment sent via its official media email.
ICE agents also have conducted more arrests at ICE check-ins, which are routine meetings for agents to keep tabs on people going through the immigration process. Agents have also focused more on workplace enforcement, lawyers said. ICE isn’t necessarily going out to farms, but agents have been going to businesses to look for people employing undocumented immigrants, according to Neal Dougherty, a Nampa lawyer and partner at Ramirez-Smith Law.
The Owyhee County Sheriff’s Office and the Idaho State Police also have signed cooperation agreements with ICE, known as 287(g) agreements.
Overall, immigration arrests have increased over 900% in Idaho since Trump took office, according to The New York Times.
There aren’t increases in ICE’s resources or agents, said J.J. Despain, managing attorney for Wilner & O’Reilly’s Boise office, but ICE has lowered the bar on who it wants to deport and changed their strategies.
“Some of those are happening by surprise,” Despain told the Statesman.
The criminal justice system
In early April, a man failed to show up for his pretrial conference in Canyon County, perplexing his lawyer.
The lawyer, with the Idaho Public Defender’s Office, had been working with his client, who was charged in December 2024 with driving with a suspended or revoked driver’s license.
“I don’t know why he isn’t here today,” the lawyer told the judge in court audio obtained via a records request.
The next day, Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a picture of the man being detained in Nampa by federal officers.
When ICE picks up people mid-case, they can face default judgments and parole or probation violations for failing to appear in court. When or if individuals ever return to the United States, there can already be a warrant out for an immigrant’s arrest, said Dougherty.
ICE picked up people while their Idaho criminal cases were ongoing before the new administration took office. But it’s happening more often now, Dougherty and Despain said, with potential consequences for the immigrants and any victims.
These aren’t all minor cases like driving with a suspended license. In one instance, a 27-year-old man from Mexico was arrested in Pocatello for child sexual abuse, child enticement and kidnapping. ICE posted a picture of him the day before his preliminary hearing, at which he failed to appear. He has since been deported, ICE spokesperson Alethea Smock said in an email. The case is listed as inactive and pending after the state asked to keep the case open.
Wood River Valley lawyer Justin McCarthy said immigrants in Idaho’s criminal justice system should finish their sentences in the Gem State.
“They should be held accountable here. … You don’t get to skate on the sentence,” McCarthy said. “What about victims? What about the victims’ families? … That person could come back, and they often do.”
An immigrant from El Salvador
Hicks had been with his husband for about five years by the time he was detained by ICE in late June. The couple married in 2023, according to a petition filed by his husband’s lawyers.
Hicks’s husband is originally from San Salvador, the capital of the Central American country of El Salvador. He came to the United States in 2018 to support his family and has worked in construction, Hicks said. His husband sends money to his mother, sisters and nephews back home, Hicks said. He hasn’t been able to see his family in years.
In 2021, his husband pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and received a withheld judgment. He was required to undergo alcohol education and was placed on unsupervised probation, according to court records. On June 5 of this year, he was found guilty of driving while using a cellphone, according to online court records.
After his arrest, the husband was sent to Elmore County first. Now he is detained in the Nevada Southern Detention Center west of Las Vegas, according to an online ICE detainee locator tool.
Hicks can’t go visit his husband in detention. The couple can conduct phone and video calls through the jail, Hicks said.
Lawyers for Hicks’ husband filed a petition in federal court to get him out of detention, arguing among other things that ICE agents didn’t show a warrant when they broke into his car and that an immigration judge was unfairly keeping him detained.
Hicks filed a petition earlier in 2025 for his husband to get residency, he said. But it will take four to six years, Hicks said.
“You should enter (the U.S.) with permission,” Hicks said. “But also, the whole process is just broken. It shouldn’t take someone five or six years to possibly get residency when they’re married to a U.S. citizen.”
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