‘Cruel’ and ‘heartbreaking’ family separations: What witnesses saw at Wilder raid
As videos began circulating of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at a Wilder arena, where hundreds of law enforcement officers swarmed the final horse race of the season, footage of a bright blue porta-potty went viral.
In the video, one officer wrenched the bathroom door open. Two other agents, both armed, marched over to help drag a woman out, tugging her down from the doorway. She stood as they struggled to pull her, then dragged her suddenly forward. She appeared to stumble, and then the three pushed her to the ground.
That woman was Dayana Fajardo, a 39-year-old with five children who would later appear in court hearings to face a single illegal gambling charge. She was just a “soccer mom,” her attorney said in court. But her husband was the bookmaker, the FBI alleged.
Prosecutors said she should be kept in detention, away from her kids, because she was a flight risk who resisted arrest. Two officers were injured in the struggle to detain her, according to the FBI.
The federal agency said the crackdown at La Catedral Arena west of Boise was part of an investigation into illegal gambling. Four were arrested on charges at the event, a fifth the following day. The races themselves, however, were legal.
Meanwhile, ICE arrested 105 “illegal aliens,” according to the Department of Homeland Security. Officers detained hundreds and zip-tied attendees, including some children. At least three who were lawfully in the U.S. were also detained, according to previous Idaho Statesman reporting.
One 17-year-old girl told the Statesman that her father was arrested after the raid and her brother was left at the racetrack, parentless. Her grandparents brought her dad to the U.S. when he was a teenager. But as families sorted through separations in the weeks following the raid, the agencies involved were celebrating.
“On behalf of ICE/ERO, I also wanted to thank everyone for their support during this operation. We ended up with 105 arrests, which wouldn’t have been possible without everybody here,” wrote Ken Porter, an ICE official, in emails obtained through a records request. “Thank you for putting the Boise ICE office on the map!”
In another email, Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue, who was seen at the raid riding on a horse, wrote that it was an “honor” to “be a part of operations like this as we pursue public safety and enforce the rule of law.”
Agencies participating in the raid included the Canyon County Sheriff’s Office, the Idaho Department of Correction, the Nampa Police Department and the Caldwell Police Department, according to an FBI news release. Idaho State Police spokesperson Aaron Snell said the agency assisted only with perimeter control and crowd management.
“We absolutely could not have done this without you. You made a nearly impossible task have a very successful outcome,” wrote Christopher Sheehan, an FBI agent with the Boise and Pocatello offices, to the other groups involved in the raid. “Thank you again and stay safe.”
Just feels cruel’: What witnesses saw in Wilder
Idaho state Rep. Soñia Galaviz, D-Boise, recalled receiving frightened calls on a Sunday afternoon, scared voices telling her to come to the site of what turned out to be the FBI and ICE raid at a Wilder racetrack. She dropped everything and started driving.
Galaviz called state and police contacts as she made the 45-minute drive west from Boise, she told the Statesman. People described to her the law enforcement response: hundreds of agents, drones, a helicopter. She was confused, she said, wondering why that much force was needed to arrest a few people at what was essentially a rodeo.
“When you hear that, what you picture is sort of a war zone,” Galaviz said in a phone interview. “There was some cognitive dissonance of trying to understand how a community event led to such a reaction.”
The FBI expected to find undocumented immigrants while executing a search warrant that day, so ICE tagged along, according to a court filing.
Wives and mothers stood at the gates of the arena, holding residency paperwork and visas trying to get that documentation to the people being detained, Galaviz told the Statesman. Galaviz said she tried to connect people to hand over the information or to connect those who were undocumented to immigration attorneys.
Galaviz there also met an upset older teenager, looking for his father. He told her that his dad had called him from inside the arena before his phone was taken, the state lawmaker said.
By the time the teen and Galaviz got to the north side of the arena, he saw his father zip-tied with agents loading him into a van, Galaviz said. He yelled out, and the father shouted back, “I’ll call you when I can, I don’t know where they’re taking me,” according to Galaviz.
“That’s something that will stick with me because it was him yelling across the field to his dad and his dad yelling back. It’s hard to think about,” Galaviz said by phone, choking up. “That was heartbreaking. He just wanted to be connected with his dad. … It just feels cruel.”
At the raid, police and Canyon County sheriff vehicle headlights shone on dozens of detainees seated in folding chairs, the sun fading away as agents chained some of the people up, a video reviewed by the Statesman showed. Later, a woman screamed at the top of her lungs, between sobs: “No, don’t leave! Babe! Babe! No!”
In an interview with the Statesman, Nikki Ramirez-Smith, an immigration lawyer, described people outside the raid panicking as rumors spread about what happened to the children. As the crowd pushed ahead, law enforcement fired rubber bullets into the crowd, she said. In a video reviewed by the Statesman, pops of sound rang out and smoke appeared as the crowd fell back.
Some members of the crowd flung expletives and insults at the nearby officers, videos showed, expressing disgust at their actions that day.
Eventually, Ramirez-Smith said, the crowd got word that agents had started to release detained children. But many children were released into a neighbor’s field, according to Ramirez-Smith.
In a statement, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said ICE does not separate children from their families.
“Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates,” the spokesperson said in an email. “This is consistent with past administrations’ immigration enforcement.
“Parents, who are in the U.S. illegally, can take control of their departure,” Homeland Security added. “Through the CBP Home app, the Trump administration is giving parents illegally in the country a chance to take full control of their departure and self-deport, with the potential ability to return the legal, right way and come back to live the American dream.”
Questions remain about ‘cartel,’ fighting accusations
Law enforcement officials celebrated the Wilder raid as a success after the arrest of a handful of suspects. The government in filings sought to keep four of the five imprisoned, at times painting them as connected to a cartel or as people whose only local ties are criminals. But while the FBI said some Facebook messages between Fajardo’s husband, Samuel Bejarano Colin, indicated an exchange of drugs, public court filings have yet to show much evidence of suspects’ ties to cartels.
He and Fajardo wired money through two remitters “known to law enforcement … as laundering money for individuals involved in criminal activity,” the FBI wrote in court filings. The money went to two people in Jalisco, a large state in Mexico with a population of 8 million. The prosecution said Jalisco was a “known cartel stronghold.”
“His release creates a risk to these cooperating witnesses given defendant’s ties to an illegal organization and a drug supplier in Mexico,” a court filing said.
Prosecutors have also pointed to Fajardo’s tattoo, necklace and photos of Santa Muerte, which they called the “patron saint of drug trafficking.” The Mexican folk saint not sanctioned by the Catholic Church has grown in popularity in recent years and is associated with many groups. The FBI listed no evidence of cartel ties with two other suspects in their motions to keep them detained, and didn’t seek to keep the fifth in jail.
Gov. Brad Little’s office and Caldwell Police Chief Rex Ingram also said the gambling could be tied to a cartel. They have not responded to questions asking about evidence for the allegation. The Department of Homeland Security and Little’s office have also said the arena hosted animal fights, despite no public evidence of it or charges against the defendants with those allegations.
The Statesman requested all complaints about the property sent to the Canyon County Sheriff’s Office in 2025; there was a call about a potential fire in April, a pocket dial in June and a noise complaint in August. In September, someone reported an abandoned vehicle. A court filing showed a call for service in August 2024 for a fight.
Fajardo, a domestic violence survivor, volunteers with Hope United, a Caldwell-based nonprofit, her lawyer, Theodore Blank, said in a court filing. Her mother brought her to Oregon as a child.
During Fajardo’s hearing, her family sat waiting in the courtroom. The prosecution argued she had the cash on hand from the gambling to flee, that her only ties to the area were to the “illegal gambling operations,” and that she had a reason to flee because she was facing felony charges.
Blank, her lawyer, said the money from the gambling came in through her husband, into a joint account. He told the court she had been in the community for a long time and was invested in her kids’ school activities.
“Ms. Fajardo has been an active and dedicated member of our community, consistently demonstrating a strong commitment to helping others, especially during challenging times,” wrote Jayson Astorga, president of Hope United, in a character reference included in court filings. “Throughout her involvement with our organization, she has been instrumental in giving back and making a positive impact.”
‘The world we’re living in right now’
Any immigrant could be deported, even those lawfully residing in the U.S., if they break the law. But it’s unusual for ICE in Idaho to raid a recreational event like this one, lawyers told the Statesman.
In the aftermath, human rights advocates have questioned the tactics used and criticized law enforcement for tearing apart families and instigating fear in the community. In the Wilder School District the next day, attendance dropped amid fears from the increased law enforcement presence.
Viviana Gonzalez, a Jerome native and Utah-based immigration attorney, was a state away when her mother video-called her crying. Gonzalez’s family was there running a booth for their clothing business, and agents zip-tied her 13-year-old sister.
“This is not something that a U.S. citizen, 13-year-old girl, should ever experience,” Gonzalez said. “There were younger children than her that they saw were being zip-tied.”
Ingram told KTVB in a taped interview that it’s heartbreaking to see families torn apart and people taken away, “but that’s the world we’re living in right now.” He declined an interview with the Statesman, citing the threat of potential litigation. Caldwell is the only agency so far to take credit for zip-tying minors.
“I feel very bad. I mean, it hurts me,” Ingram told KTVB. “Children, they don’t have parents now because they got shipped across the state or out of the country.”
The FBI, Caldwell police and Nampa police declined to comment. The Canyon County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Galaviz, the state representative, followed up with the older teenager a couple of weeks after the raid to see how he was doing. His family was a wreck, Galaviz said, and the mother is inconsolable. The teen is now head of the household, she said.
His parents had been in the U.S. for decades, Galaviz said. His dad was just at the wrong place at the wrong time, she told the Statesman.
Two weeks after the raid, in late October, Fajardo was still in custody. She sat in front of the court, looking back at her family, in a green Ada County Jail jumpsuit. All this time, she had been waiting for her release.
Judge Debora K. Grasham told her that the government hadn’t shown she was a serious flight risk. Grasham ordered her release on Nov. 6, so long as she followed certain conditions. She was banned from attending horse races.
Despite the government’s efforts, only one of the five defendants, Samuel Bejarano Colin, remains in jail, because he faces an immigration hold if set free. One defendant, Alejandro Torres Estrada, has lived in Idaho for 24 years, where he has family. The court determined he had ties to the community and ordered his release. All five are set to stand trial in December.
It’s unclear whether Fajardo will ultimately be removed from the U.S. She faces “near certain deportation” after the case is over, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelsey Manweiler said in court. But in a court filing, her lawyer said she has some potential pathways to stay. Her children are U.S. citizens, and three are under 18.
Fajardo, when given a chance to speak that day in October, started crying. She would be reunited with her kids.