The Canyon County Sheriff’s Office and Caldwell Police Department released a joint statement Wednesday saying they wanted to clarify the situation around Sunday’s raid in Wilder, which was not an ICE-led operation, despite what the Department of Homeland Security indicated.
In a statement to the media Tuesday, Homeland Security said that “ICE dismantled an illegal horse-racing, animal fighting, and a gambling enterprise operation” and that “as part of the operation ICE law enforcement officers arrested 105 illegal aliens.”
The raid at La Catedral Arena, where four people were arrested as part of an FBI criminal investigation on alleged illegal gambling, was in fact led by the FBI’s Treasure Valley Metro Violent Crime and Gang Task Force, according to Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue and Caldwell Police Chief Rex Ingram.
The FBI has said several times that it was the lead agency and that ICE was there “as part of the broader federal team to process individuals who were found to have potential immigration violations.”
