Canyon County Built an ICE List Without Bothering to Check Who’s Actually Legal

Now look. I’m all for enforcing the law. I’ve said it a hundred times and I’ll say it again: a country that can’t control its borders isn’t really a country, it’s a waiting room with a flag. But there’s a difference between enforcing the law and being so downright lazy about it that you sweep up American citizens in the process. And down in Canyon County, Idaho, the misdemeanor probation office has been doing the latter with both hands and a smile.

Here’s what happened. Probation officers in this southwestern Idaho county spent May through July of this year firing off more than 140 emails to ICE agents in Boise. One senior probation officer, Norma Naranjo, emailed six ICE agents the night before a man’s regular check-in to tell them exactly when he’d arrive. The next morning, when he showed up a few minutes early, she typed out another message: “He is here are you guys on your way?” Bless her heart, she’s practically holding the door open and dimming the lights for them.

Carlos Naranjo (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons

But here’s the part that ought to make every single one of you sit up straight. The county compiled what they call a “foreign born list.” Eighty-two people on probation, handed over to ICE. And the criteria for making the list? Not whether anyone verified you’re in the country illegally. Not whether you have a green card or a pending asylum claim or, oh I don’t know, actual United States citizenship. No. The criteria was: did you write on your intake form that you weren’t born in this country?

That’s it. That’s the whole system. A probation officer named Brandon Black told his boss he just pulled “everyone in my cabinet that filled out an intake form and stated not born in US.” Another officer, Justin Donovan, flagged one man because he “only had an ID from Mexico during his last arrest.” Well, I have questions. Since when is having a Mexican ID proof of anything other than the man once had a Mexican ID? Since when is being born somewhere else the same as being here illegally?

Jeff Breach, who runs the Misdemeanor Probation Department and has a name that could not be more perfect for this story if you paid a novelist to write it, told his staff in June to go through their caseloads and send him names of people they “believe are in the country illegally.” Believe. Not know. Not verified. Believe. These are misdemeanor probation officers, not immigration attorneys, not federal agents, not people with any training in immigration law. And they’re playing detective with people’s lives based on a hunch and a birthplace.

Stefan Brending (2eight) (CC BY-SA 3.0 de) via Wikimedia Commons

When asked whether the department is worried that citizens or legal residents might end up on this list, Breach said verifying legal status “is within the purview of federal authorities.” In other words: not my job, not my problem, not my concern. He handed ICE a list he admits he didn’t check and shrugged. That’s not cooperation with law enforcement. That’s passing the buck so fast it ought to have a speed limit.

And here’s the kicker. Steve Cushman, the county’s director of constituent services, said the practice goes back to the Obama administration. Obama! The same administration the conservatives I know spent eight years hollering about. So this isn’t a Trump thing or a Biden thing. This is a government thing. Bureaucrats doing bureaucratic things because nobody ever told them to stop and think.

The ACLU of Idaho is already suing the county over a separate incident, an October 2025 ICE raid at a horse race track where they say Latinos were detained regardless of immigration status. In 2019, the Idaho Press reported the Canyon County Sheriff’s Office was flagging “all foreign born inmates” for ICE. Some of those flagged were U.S. citizens. Read that again. United States citizens, flagged for deportation review, because somebody in a county office couldn’t be bothered to check.

Morgan Solar (CC BY 2.0) via Wikimedia Commons

I want the law enforced. I want people who are here illegally to face the consequences. But I also want the government to do its job correctly, and a list built on “where were you born” instead of “are you here legally” is not correct. It’s sloppy. It’s lazy. And when the day comes that some naturalized American citizen gets hauled out of a probation meeting because a county worker guessed wrong, every person who defended this practice is going to have to explain why they thought “close enough” was good enough for someone’s freedom.

The law is the law. But a list isn’t the law. And a hunch isn’t probable cause. If Canyon County can’t tell the difference, they’ve got no business making lists for anybody.