GOP Rep's Farms Raided By ICE After She Says She Became 'Target' Of Far Right
An Idaho Republican is speaking out after a local party official boasted online about reporting her family's farming business to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Idaho state Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen told KTVB in an article published on Monday that she is 'one of the few that have stood up to the far right extremism' and because of that, she has become a target.
Mickelsen is listed online as the CFO for her family's potato farming business. She maintained in an op-ed for the Idaho Statesmen that the business complies with all 'applicable federal and state laws' regarding employment and immigration.
However, she said she became 'the target of intimidation tactics designed to silence ' her when Ryan Spoon, Ada County GOP vice chairman, announced Jan. 21 on X that he was reporting her businesses to ICE.
'Attention, Mr. Homan, could you please send some illegal immigration raids to the businesses owned by Idaho State Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen?' Spoon wrote on X, referring to President Donald Trump's 'border czar' Tom Homan.
'She has been bragging about how many illegals her businesses employ. Here is a list of the businesses to raid,' he continued, linking to an 'about' page on Mickelsen's political website.
In a follow-up post, he wrote that he was 'filling out' ICE tip forms for 'all of Rep. Mickelsen's businesses.'
ICE showed up at Mickelsen Farms three days later, Mickelsen told Investigate West. One immigrant worker employed there was detained by ICE as of Jan. 27, according to the news outlet.
Mickelsen said that the man was detained because of a criminal record, and she did not know his immigration status. The lawmaker did not respond to a request for comment from HuffPost.
Spoon told HuffPost that he really did report Mickelsen's family business to ICE.
'I reported her to ICE, because she bragged about hiring illegals,' he said in an email.
He also told Investigate West that Mickelsen's 'own testimony drew attention to herself.'
That testimony, he told HuffPost, was when Mickelsen spoke out against a bill that would let local law enforcement detain and possibly deport undocumented immigrants. (Mickelsen ultimately voted for the bill, which has yet to pass the state Senate.)
Spoon pointed to video of Mickelsen's testimony posted by political group Stop Idaho RINOs. RINO is an acronym used to mean 'Republican in name only.'
'I think everybody needs to be aware that when we keep going down this road of attacking illegal immigrants, you're mainly attacking Hispanics in this case,' she said in the clip.
She continued, 'If you guys think you haven't been touched by an illegal immigrant's hands in some way, through either your traveling or your food, you're kidding yourselves.'
Spoon also told HuffPost that his actions 'had nothing to do' with political rivalry.
'She lives on the opposite side of the state from me. There is no position for which she would be my 'rival.''
Mickelsen said Spoon targeting her business represents a broader issue.
'These attacks aren't just about me,' Mickelsen wrote in her op-ed. 'They represent a dangerous shift in our political discourse. When elected officials can be bullied into silence because of false statements and threats to their livelihoods and safety, we all lose.'
Millions Of Voters Risk Disenfranchisement Under Republican Proposal
'Huge Screwup': Republicans Give Group Chat Breach A Thumbs Down Emoji
Former Utah Rep. Mia Love, The First Black Republican Woman Elected To The U.S. House, Has Died
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How viral images are shaping views of L.A.'s immigration showdown
As protesters and police officers clashed in the streets of Los Angeles, a parallel conflict raged on social media, as immigration advocates and President Donald Trump's allies raced to shape public opinion on the impacts of mass deportations on American life. The sprawling protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids were captured from all angles by cellphones and body cameras and streamed in real time, giving a visceral immediacy to a conflict that led to more than 50 arrests and orders from the Trump administration to deploy the National Guard. Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. Amateur videographers and online creators shared some of the mayhem's most-talked-about videos and images, often devoid of context and aimed at different audiences. Clips showing officers firing less-lethal rounds at an Australian journalist or mounted police directing their horses to stride over a sitting man fueled outrage on one side, while those of self-driving Waymo cars on fire and protesters holding Mexican flags stoked the other. The protests have become the biggest spectacle yet of the months-long online war over deportations, as Trump allies work to convince Americans that the issue of undocumented immigration demands aggressive action. But immigrant families and advocates have also been winning attention, and seeking public support, through emotional clips of crying families grappling with removal orders, anti-ICE gatherings and young children in federal custody. The messaging war comes at a time of polarized public sentiment over Trump's immigration policies. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in April found that roughly half the country believed Trump's deportations had gone too far, while the other half thought his actions were about right or hadn't gone far enough. 'To advance your side of the story, you need a piece of content that the algorithm likes. You need something that really grabs people's attention by the throat and doesn't let it go,' said Laura Edelson, an assistant professor at Northeastern University's Khoury College of Computer Sciences. 'If you're on the pro-ICE side of this, you need to find visual images of these protests that look really scary, look really dangerous because that's what's going to draw human attention,' she added. But if 'you don't think that ICE should be taking moms away from their families and kids, you're going to have a video that starts with a crying child's face.' A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal plans, said Trump's digital strategists were following the president's lead by spotlighting images of destruction while insisting that he would always intervene in moments of unrest. The White House, which has said the ICE deportations are necessary to solve a national crisis, on Sunday posted an Instagram photo of Trump and a warning that looters and rioters would be given 'no mercy.' 'We're obviously following the president's direction. He is driving the message through his posts and his comments to the press,' the official said. 'We are definitely playing offense here. We are once again boxing the Democrats into the corner of defending criminal illegal aliens.' The unrest and its online propagation also heightened activity around projects like People Over Papers, a crowdsourced map for tracking the locations of ICE officers. Reports flooded in as the clashes continued, said Celeste, a project organizer in L.A. who spoke on the condition that her last name not be used for fear of government retribution. 'I haven't slept all weekend,' she said. She added, however, that she worried violent imagery from the ground could hurt the protesters' cause. She said she planned to start making Spanish-language videos for her 51,000 TikTok followers, explaining to skeptics that the violence isn't reflective of the protests, which she sees as necessary to counter ICE's agenda. The L.A. unrest followed weeks of online skirmishes over deportations, some of which have been touched off by the White House's strategy to lean into policy fights with bold and aggressive messaging. The White House last month posted a video that it said showed an 'EPIC takedown of 5 illegal aliens' outside a home improvement store and included an ICE hotline to solicit more tips. The clip, recorded by ICE agents' cameras, was liked 68,000 times but also drew criticism from commenters, who called it 'disturbing' and said this 'isn't a reality show.' After a similar ICE raid on Saturday outside a Home Depot in Paramount, a predominantly Latino suburb of L.A., witnesses sent out alerts on social media, and protesters raced to the scene. Within hours, the Trump administration called for the deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops to neutralize the unrest. On his Truth Social account a week earlier, Trump celebrated the Supreme Court clearing the way for the removal of some immigrants' legal protections by posting a photo of a jet-filled sky with the phrase, 'Let the Deportations Begin!' The White House has also posted stylized mug shots of unnamed immigrants it said were charged with heinous crimes. 'I love this version of the white house,' one commenter said, with a cry-laugh emoji. 'It feels like a movie every day with President Trump.' During the protests, the administration has worked with new-media figures and online influencers to promote its political points. Phil McGraw, the TV personality known as Dr. Phil who now runs the conservative media network Merit Street, posted an exclusive interview with border czar Tom Homan and embedded with ICE officers last week during L.A. raids, as the company's spokesperson first told CNN. Some top administration officials have worked to frame the protests in militaristic terms, with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller on Saturday sharing a video of the protest and calling it 'an insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States.' Others, like Vice President JD Vance, have treated it as a chance for dark jokes. When posters on X said Vance could do the 'funniest thing ever' by deporting Derek Guy, a prominent menswear commentator who discussed how his family had been undocumented after fleeing Vietnam, the vice president on Monday posted a brief clip of Jack Nicholson nodding with a sinister grin. Some far-right influencers urged their followers to identify people caught on camera during the civil unrest. In one X post with more than 29,000 likes, the account End Wokeness shared a video of masked figures throwing rocks at police from an overpass and said, 'These are insurrectionists trying to kill cops. Make them famous.' In more left-leaning online spaces, some posters watching from the sidelines offered advice on how protesters could best position their cause to the rest of the world. On the r/ICE_raids subreddit, some posters urged L.A. protesters to stop carrying non-American flags. It's 'adding ammo to ICE's justification,' one poster said, attaching a screenshot of a Homeland Security post showing masked protesters with Mexican flags. Many accounts, knowingly or unknowingly, shared images that warped the reality of what was happening on the ground. An X account with 388,000 followers called US Homeland Security News, which is not affiliated with DHS but paid for one of X's 'verified' blue check marks, posted a photo of bricks that it said had been ordered to be 'used by Democrat militants against ICE agents and staff!! It's Civil War!!' The photo actually originated on the website of a Malaysian construction-supply company. The post has nevertheless been viewed more than 800,000 times. On Sunday night, California Gov. Gavin Newsom's X account tried to combat some of the misinformation directly, saying a viral video post being passed around as evidence of the day's chaos was actually five years old. Even before the L.A. protests, the increased attention on ICE activity had driven a rush of online organizing and real-world information gathering, with some people opposed to mass deportations tracking the movements of ICE officers with plans to foil or disrupt raids. In one viral TikTok post last week, a Minneapolis protester marching in a crowd outside the site of a rumored ICE raid said he had learned of it from Reddit, where a photo had been posted of Homeland Security Investigations officers outside a Mexican restaurant. The local sheriff's office later told news crews that the operation was not an immigration-enforcement case and that no arrests had been made. Some online creators treated the L.A. clashes as a prized opportunity for viral content. On Reddit, accounts with names like LiveNews_24H posted 'crazy footage' compilations of the unrest and said it looked like a 'war zone.' On YouTube, Damon Heller, who comments on police helicopter footage and scanner calls under the name Smoke N' Scan, streamed the clashes on Sunday for nearly 12 hours. Jeremy Lee Quinn, a photographer who shares protest footage to his social media followers, posted to Instagram on Saturday a video of protesters cheering from a bridge as officers tried to extinguish a burning police vehicle. Quinn, who also documented Black Lives Matter marches and the U.S. Capitol riots, said viewers on the left and right treat viral videos like weapons in their arsenal. Far-left viewers might take away from the videos ideas for militant tactics to use in future protests, he said, while far-right viewers will promote the videos to suggest the other side craves more violent crime. Either way, his material gets seen - including through reposts by groups such as the LibsOfReddit subreddit, which shares screenshots mocking liberal views on undocumented immigrants and transgender people. 'You end up with a far-right ecosystem that thrives on these viral moments,' Quinn said. As short-form video and social media platforms increasingly become many Americans' news sources of choice, experts worry they could also amp up the fear and outrage engendered by polarizing events. The fragmentation of social media and the attention-chasing machinery of its recommendation algorithms helps ensure that 'there are a lot of people talking past each other,' said Northeastern's Edelson, not seeing one another's content or 'even aware of the facts that are relevant to the other side.' Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, said videos can play a uniquely forceful role in shaping people's reactions to current events because they 'encapsulate the emotion of the moment.' 'There's a heavy dose of misinformation,' he added. 'And, you know, people just end up getting angrier and angrier.' Related Content 'He's waging a war on us': As Trump escalates, Angelenos defend their city To save rhinos, conservationists are removing their horns Donald Trump and the art of the Oval Office confrontation
Atlantic
20 minutes ago
- Atlantic
This Is Not What the National Guard Is For
Donald Trump just did what no other president has ever done in the context of urban unrest: He sent federal troops to a state without a request from the governor. By federalizing California National Guard members on Saturday, the president abrogated Governor Gavin Newsom's authority over his own Guard. During both previous instances of a presidential order to deploy National Guardsmen to American cities—the Los Angeles riots in 1992 and the Hurricane Katrina response in 2005—the state's governor was overseeing a public-safety apparatus that had been overwhelmed. Trump, seizing on unlawful behavior that included vandalism, violence, and refusing to disperse during protests against ICE raids in L.A., announced that 2,000 reservists would be deployed to the city, unilaterally and contra Newsom's advice. Trump's decision—to exercise his Title 10 authority to federalize the National Guard under his command—was not based on a careful assessment of the operational needs on the streets of Los Angeles. Even if the White House's escalating rhetoric and threats of full military deployment were justified by circumstances that merited overruling a governor, the notion that the armed services will stop protests and quiet widespread outrage about Trump's immigration-enforcement policies in California is naive and flawed. Implicated in Trump's decision was a lot of prior controversy—immigration and deportation, ICE raids, tension between blue states and the White House, a personal beef with Newsom—but the president's assertion that a troop presence is the answer to public unrest is particularly dubious. Historically, these deployments have proved of limited value even when the president and governor agree on goals. Sending in the military as a hostile force is a recipe for trouble. During the 1992 L.A. riots, after four white police officers were acquitted of assaulting Rodney King, 63 people were killed amid widespread arson and looting as rioting spread through the city. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina killed nearly 1,000 people in Louisiana and left New Orleans with no functioning government and little law enforcement. In each case, National Guard deployment was essentially a response to the incapacity of the local police force—either because the cops had become the focus of hostility or because they simply could not meet the demands of the crisis. And in both instances, the governor requested the federal intervention. David Frum: For Trump, this is a dress rehearsal One key lesson of the L.A. deployment was that a failure to define command-and-control responsibilities resulted in operational problems and delays. The National Guard under Governor Pete Wilson's authority was supposed to protect first responders (especially firefighters) and emergency work crews trying to fix critical infrastructure. Trained to help with crowd control, these troops also supported police patrols—to protect shopping centers from looting, for example. The soldiers' initial deployment was slow, and they were not fully prepared for the mission. But in the days that followed, the rioting subsided and the National Guard was able to perform much of its mission and provide relief to the overstretched police forces. By then, however, Wilson had lost confidence in the National Guard's leadership and was unnerved by the scale of disorder. He asked the White House for help, and President George H. W. Bush sent in 3,500 federalized troops. Despite deploying in a less demanding situation, these federalized soldiers were unable to provide the effective support required on the ground. In the end, the state Guard proved the more flexible and adaptable force. The new military task force formed by the federal deployment never satisfactorily resolved issues with its mission, its communications, and its rules of engagement. The problems of this uneasy collaboration with local and state police agencies filtered down, hampering the street-level response. The events of L.A. in 1992—and the explicit lessons that state, federal, and military authorities took from them—are why, until now, the task of dealing with civil unrest or natural disasters has remained largely with the National Guard acting under state jurisdiction. The National Guard has also been integrated into homeland-security efforts on the same basis. If one Guard force encounters a situation that exceeds its capacity, it can turn to another state's Guard under mutual-aid agreements. Mutual aid does not seem to have been on Trump's mind last weekend. The National Guard exists to provide governors with additional power to protect their citizens, and to do so in support of local first responders. Trump's hasty federalization of troops is unwise and unhelpful, before we even consider what malign political motive may lie behind the order. Right now, the Pentagon appears not even to have arranged sleeping arrangements for its troops, let alone determined the rules of engagement on the streets; the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the deployment was so 'wildly underprepared' that troops are sleeping in cramped quarters on the floor. At best, this deployment will be completely unnecessary. At worst, it will be deeply counterproductive. But Trump's motive is transparent—and he will surely engineer an occasion to keep escalating his power plays, until they seem normal.
USA Today
40 minutes ago
- USA Today
Congress introduces bill addressing national guidelines for college sports
Congress introduces bill addressing national guidelines for college sports With the settlement of three athlete-compensation antitrust cases against the NCAA and the Power Five conferences having received final approval from a federal district judge on June 6, members of the U.S. House of Representatives have moved into action with new legislative proposals regarding national rules for college sports. On Wednesday, June 10, Reps. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., and Janelle Bynum, D-Ore., introduced a bill that comes shortly after Reps. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., and Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., circulated a discussion draft of a bill that would largely put into federal law the terms and new rules-making structure of the settlement. The discussion draft is set to be the centerpiece of a hearing June 11 by a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Bilirakis, who has been involved in previous college-sports bill efforts, chairs the subcommittee. Guthrie chairs the full committee. The bill – in addition to being a bi-partisan presentation – continues recent work related to college sports from McClain, who is the current House Republican Conference chair. That makes her the GOP's No. 4-ranking member in the House. In April, McClain introduced a bill that would prevent college athletes from being employees of their schools, conferences or an athletic association. The discussion draft – as posted on Congress' general resource site, - includes language that specifically would allow the NCAA, and potentially the new Collegiate Sports Commission, to make rules in areas that have come into legal dispute in recent years and in areas that the NCAA wants to shield from legal dispute. The discussion draft, first reported on by The Washington Post, also includes language that would require most Division I schools to provide a series of benefits for athletes that are currently called for under NCAA and some conferences' rules but do not have the force of federal law. In addition, the discussion draft includes a 'placeholder' section for language that likely would be connected to providing antitrust or other legal protection for various provisions. According the discussion draft, an 'interstate collegiate athletic association' would be able to 'establish and enforce rules relating to … the manner in which … student athletes may be recruited' to play sports; 'the transfer of a student athlete between institutions'; and 'the number of seasons or length of time for which a student athlete is eligible to compete, academic standards, and code of conduct'. The NCAA's rules regarding when recruits can be offered money in exchange for the use of their name, image and likeness; athletes' ability to freely transfer; and the number of seasons in which they are eligible to compete all of have been – or currently are being – addressed in federal and state courts across the country. That has raised concerns for NCAA officials about the future of rules such as those concerning academic eligibility requirements The discussion draft also includes language that would require most Division I schools to provide a series of benefits for athletes that are currently called for under NCAA and some conferences' rules but do not have the force of law. These include medical coverage for athletically related injuries for at least two years after the conclusion of an athlete's career; guaranteed financial aid that would allow an athlete to complete an undergraduate degree; and 'an administrative structure that provides independent medical care and affirms the unchallengeable autonomous authority of primary athletics health care providers (team physicians and athletic trainers) to determine medical management and return-to-play decisions related to student athletes.'
