It was a chilly Sunday afternoon a year ago at La Catedral Arena, a popular track for horse racing outside the Idaho town of Wilder. Hundreds had gathered at the arena for a festival celebrating horse racing and Mexican culture.
“Something is wrong,” Ivan Popoca, who attended the festival with his two kids, remembers thinking.
When it was all over, federal authorities had arrested 105 people for alleged immigration violations. Yet on paper, this wasn’t an immigration raid at all. The only warrant for the Wilder raid was secured by the FBI. Its target: the owner of the track and four others for alleged unlicensed gambling.
“That is not what a criminal search warrant execution looks like. That is what a massively violent
Trump Administration officials insist that the arrests made that day were lawful. “The facts haven’t changed: ICE helped dismantle an illegal horse-racing, animal fighting, and a gambling enterprise operation out of a property known as La Cathedral Arena in Wilder, Idaho,” a DHS spokesperson told TIME. Idaho Gov. Brad Little also defended the raid, saying in a statement at the time that it is “common practice” to detain others present while processing the scene.
The ACLU and some of the families involved in the case released a documentary online on Monday called Wild Raids in which they discuss the raid’s impact, and why the legal challenge matters beyond people in Wilder.
Juana Rodriguez attended the festival with her three-year-old son. Despite both of them being U.S. citizens, they were zip-tied and detained for hours following the raid. Like many others who were detained, she described not being given access to food or water.
Detainees were eventually taken into a tent and questioned by ICE agents about their immigration status. Among the 105 people who were ultimately arrested, 75 are believed to have been deported to their home countries, according to local media, and 26 were released from ICE custody after their lawyers filed habeas corpus petitions. The whereabouts of the remaining four people are unclear. ICE did not provide an update on their case status.
A year later, Rodriguez says she is still scared to go to Latino cultural and other public events because of what happened at La Catedral. She also has nightmares about ICE officers taking her child away from her.
A large group of protesters gather in October 2025 in Caldwell, Idaho, to protest an FBI and ICE raid in Wilder. —Darin Oswald–Idaho Statesman/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
ICE’s Growing Legal Fights
The ACLU filed a class-action complaint in February, charging that a variety of local, state and federal agencies violated the constitutional rights of those at the festival. Both sides are now waiting for a judge to rule on a motion by ICE and other agencies to dismiss, in which it argued that federal and state law enforcement are protected by qualified immunity, a longstanding legal doctrine when executing a federal warrant.
Anyone seeking to hold federal agents accountable must be prepared for a long wait, says Borchetta. A lawsuit against the federal government can’t even be filed unless it’s been six months since a complainant filed a claim for compensation and the issue remains unresolved.
But the law itself imposes many limitations on suing the federal government. Victims can seek compensatory damages for actual losses, but not punitive damages. And unlike state authorities who can be sued for civil rights violations in state courts, federal law enforcement authorities are generally shielded from such lawsuits based on legal precedents.
“While we don't yet have a decision from the court, we haven't seen more raids like this in Idaho,” she says. “The lawsuit itself exposes both the state and the federal actors to liability, and that can change behavior itself.”
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