Wyoming jails hold father detained in controversial Idaho ICE operation, now suing for his freedom

This story was updated after publication Tuesday morning to include an order issued by U.S. District Court Judge Scott Skavdahl. -Ed.

When the raid began, she was tending to her baby in the parking lot of a local horse track.

She looked out her car window and saw that people who’d been watching the race were now fleeing into nearby fields.

Then she heard the helicopters. 

She stepped out of her car. She saw patrol vehicles, SUVs and armed officers descending on the track outside Wilder, Idaho. The horse race was popular with the local Hispanic community, and she was witnessing the beginning of an Oct. 19 operation conducted by more than 200 federal and local officers.

She and her four siblings are U.S. citizens. But as the agents descended on the track, her thoughts went immediately to their father, an immigrant who was present elsewhere in the facility. The woman agreed to share her story with WyoFile on the condition of anonymity for her and her family members, because she feared retaliation or harassment from both federal authorities and people with anti-immigrant sentiments. 

“Oh my God, my dad,” she said, recounting the raid. “He is not coming home with us today.”

She was right. Her father was one of more than 100 people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the track, according to Idaho news accounts. 

Her father today sits in the Sweetwater County Detention Center in Rock Springs, after a weeks-long stay in the Uinta County jail in Evanston. He is challenging his imprisonment as unconstitutional in federal court. Last week, his lawyer asked U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl to order the man’s release or conduct a bond hearing, saying he should be allowed to return home to his family, which depends on his financial support, while his immigration case is adjudicated. 

The case, held at the federal courthouse in Casper, is one example of how the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement plays out in Wyoming, even for cases that might originate hundreds of miles away.

No allegations of local crimes

The man has no criminal record in the United States and has not returned to his native Mexico in two decades, his attorney Jacob Rourk said at the Nov. 12 court hearing. The government is advocating for the man’s indefinite detention “without care or attention paid to whether he is a flight risk or a danger to the community,” Rourk said. “He is neither of those things.”

Rourk’s assertion, which was not challenged by the government in open court, would mean Uinta and now Sweetwater counties are holding a man whose only crime is entering the country illegally. 

U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials have said they are targeting “the worst of the worst” for deportation, and also seeking to remove people who entered the country during a surge of illegal immigration under the administration of then-President Joe Biden. This man appears to fall into neither category. 

ICE arrest data also indicates that nationally, more than 70% of people detained under the Trump administration did not have criminal convictions, according to immigration researchers. 

In June, when Uinta County Sheriff Andy Kopp announced he’d be lending his jail space to ICE, he said he was doing so to raise revenue to cover salary raises to retain his underpaid deputies, as property tax reductions passed by the Wyoming Legislature cut into county budgets. 

The detainees Kopp’s jail would hold for the federal government “are all ICE inmates with criminal records that are picked up elsewhere… they’re dropped off here and they go on from here, no more than 72 hours later,” Kopp said, according to a transcript of the June 25 meeting of the Uinta County Commission, which was compiled by the Uinta County Herald.

But the Idaho detainee’s family and attorney say that in this case, the jail has been holding a father of five detained amid mass arrests, scooped up in a dragnet — someone who came to the United States and worked, without running afoul of local law enforcement, for two decades to provide a better life for his children.

“He has always said he works his butt off for us, and we can pay him back by becoming who we want to be in life,” his daughter told WyoFile. 

Kopp declined to speak to WyoFile about the case, other than to note the man had been transferred to Sweetwater County on Monday.

Kopp is a defendant in the man’s petition for release and the sheriff appeared in court, where he was represented by an Uinta County attorney. But Kopp is named purely because in a habeas corpus petition, as the motion is called, the person petitioning for his or her freedom names as a defendant the supervisor of the facility in which they are held. Kopp and his attorney did not contribute to the hearing, which featured arguments between Rourk and Levi Martin, an attorney for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Wyoming who argued the federal government’s case. 

Skavdahl has, for now, blocked ICE from moving the detainee out of Wyoming while he considers whether to grant the request for release or a bond hearing. Rourk asked for that order out of concern that ICE may otherwise ship his client between detention facilities around the country, as the agency has reportedly been doing with many detainees, making it more difficult for his lawyer and family to stay in contact with him. It’s unclear why authorities moved the man between the two county jails in Wyoming this week. 

Rourk also asked Skavdahl to keep the case in his court, and if he chooses to order a bond hearing, that he adjudicate the matter himself and not move the case into immigration court. Those courts and judges are not part of the independent federal judiciary branch — immigration judges work under the authority of the executive branch. 

Amid the Trump administration’s sprawling and aggressive deportation drive, immigration judges are ignoring rules that allow some people to return to their homes and communities, instead leaving them in detention for months, Rourk argued.

Skavdahl appeared taken aback by the request. “So I should presume that (immigration judges) won’t follow the law?” he asked. Rourk pointed to a case out of Washington state, where immigration attorneys in the Seattle area have accused immigration judges of ignoring a U.S. District Court order that they provide opportunities for bonds.  

Martin, the government lawyer, disagreed. An immigration judge, not a U.S. District Court judge like Skavdahl, should decide whether the man receives bond, Martin argued, if such a hearing is held at all.

Update: On Tuesday morning, after this story was published, Skavdahl ordered the government to provide the man a bond hearing with an immigration judge within seven days, or else to release him. Skavdahl also required the federal government to report back to him about the results of the bond hearing, and maintained jurisdiction over the case. Skavdahl lifted his order requiring the man be held in Wyoming, so that ICE could move him to a facility in Nevada for his immigration hearing.

Martin did not dispute Rourk’s claims that his client had no criminal record, but he questioned the father’s character — accusing him of taking “minors to an illegal gambling operation where he was detained.” 

But the daughter described it as a social event, centered around a horse race. 

Controversial operation

Federal officials have said ICE accompanied the Federal Bureau of Investigation for the horse track operation, which officials described as an illegal betting ring. The track owner and four others face felony gambling charges, according to reports in the Idaho Statesman.

The horse race itself appears to have been a licensed event, and ICE descended on the track on the last day of the 2025 racing season, according to the Statesman.

Federal agents initially detained more than 400 people during the operation and made 105 arrests on immigration grounds. 

The raid sparked controversy in Idaho, where officers have been criticized for aggressive tactics against minors and families and for targeting an event they knew they would find plenty of candidates for deportation. Some attendees are considering a lawsuit against the government for injuries and trauma suffered during the raid. 

Like many of the hundreds of attendees at the event, the woman interviewed by WyoFile said her sisters and two younger brothers, ages 15 and 11, were handcuffed with tight plastic zip ties and spent hours waiting for a chance to prove their lawful presence in the country. In initial statements, the Federal Bureau of Investigation denied using zip ties on children. Federal officials moderated that statement, however, after being confronted with photographs of a handcuffed minor. 

The family of the man now jailed in Wyoming were handcuffed for close to four hours, minus the daughter, who said officers left her hands free so she could care for her baby, she told WyoFile. During the initial roundup of attendees, she and her siblings were not with their father. When they caught sight of him again, it was through the plastic windows of a tent they were being held in. 

Once federal authorities established someone was a citizen or lawfully present, they put a green band on the person’s wrist, the woman said. When she saw her father through the window, he wore a red wristband marking him for immigration detention, she said. 

She and her siblings pleaded with officers to allow them to say goodbye to their father and were allowed to, despite some resistance, she said. 

As their lawyer argues for her father’s release, the family is struggling, she said. The raid traumatized her young brothers. 

“They’re still in shock and they haven’t fully understood what happened,” she said. The other day, she caught the 11-year-old hiding his head under a pillow as he cried. 

“He didn’t want anyone to see it,” she said.