Those who remember the 1980s television series The Dukes of Hazzard will recall the bumbling sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane, forever taking orders from Commissioner Boss Hogg. Coltrane loved to clutch his CB radio and bark commands — all while proving utterly ineffective at keeping the Duke boys from skirting the law.
Idaho has one of those sheriffs in Canyon County. Kieran Donahue, a self-proclaimed “law-and-order” conservative, is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican who has essentially taken his cues from Donald Trump. In fact, he sat beside Trump in the Oval Office this past June, using his position in the National Sheriff’s Association to rail against so-called “sanctuary cities.”
Photo: BoiseDev report, June 2, 2025
This week, Donahue galloped back into the headlines—literally—as he sat astride his horse while roughly 200 agents from the FBI, DHS, ICE, and other agencies stormed a family-friendly weekend horse track. They rolled in armored vehicles, fired rubber bullets, zip-tied women and children, and hauled adults away—only to criminally charge four people with gambling offenses.
(Photo courtesy of KTVB 7)
On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security issued this statement:
“Over the weekend, ICE dismantled an illegal horse-racing, animal fighting, and gambling enterprise operation out of a property known as La Cathedral Arena in Wilder, Idaho. As part of the operation, ICE law enforcement officers arrested 105 illegal aliens. Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, we are dismantling criminal networks in the United States.”
— Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant Secretary
By Wednesday, Sheriff Rosco—excuse me, Sheriff Kieran Donahue—apparently decided his agency wasn’t getting enough credit. So what did he do? He threw a tantrum worthy of a Saturday-morning rerun and effectively called DHS a “dipstick” (to borrow Rosco’s favorite insult).
In a joint statement with the Caldwell Police Department, Donahue claimed he wanted to “clarify” the raid. Translation: he was upset that ICE got the spotlight while he sat on his horse’s patoot.
Donahue asserted that the FBI was the lead agency and that ICE was merely “part of the broader federal team to process individuals who were found to have potential immigration violations.” He accused Homeland Security of misleading the public, saying:
“To be clear, this was not an ICE-led enforcement action. The statement released by DHS yesterday claiming responsibility for dismantling a criminal organization was completely false and a serious misrepresentation of the facts.”
Source: East Idaho News, Oct. 2025
On one hand, it’s almost comical to watch MAGA versus MAGA—law-and-order zealots turning on one another. But let’s be clear: the sheriff is wrong.
ICE wanted a spectacle. The agency’s goal was not public safety but political theater—a media circus designed to show Trump’s America “getting tough” on immigrants, especially those with melanin to spare. If Donahue had truly wanted to focus on illegal gambling charges, he could have done so without staging a paramilitary raid.
He also seems to forget that the Idaho State Police have a 287(g) agreement with ICE — meaning the state could have handled the immigration processing itself, rather than inviting federal agents to turn a community gathering into a scene from a dystopian film.
Governor Little press release
So no, Sheriff Coltrane—pardon, Donahue—Idahoans aren’t as gullible as you think. We see the holes in this story.
And for the record, ICE shouldn’t be trusted. Several immigration attorneys shared notes from a February 12 meeting with ICE officials in Boise, where agents assured them that enforcement was limited. They explicitly said they “were not focusing on minors” and that, with only nine officers for the region, they would not target schools, hospitals, churches, lawyers’ offices, or large public events “such as dances.”
So much for that promise after this weekend’s raid.
Read the attorneys’ account — El Chupacast, Feb. 2025
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