OPINION: Let’s avert a local ICE disaster

The Post Falls Government ordered the Post Falls Police Department to partner with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Given new and expanded powers, local police will be arresting and sending to the County jail anyone who cannot prove their legal citizenship. Post Falls City now joins the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office in this ICE partnership. It is the first Idaho city to do so.

Democrats trust that local law enforcement professionals will show better judgement than ICE officers, who are hastily hired and deployed with disastrous results. 

We believe the men and women of the Post Falls Police Department are good people, professional law enforcement officers. Their misguided mayor is entangling them with a massively problematic agency. 

Local police will now be expected to detain people who are not suspected of breaking the law, but who are merely suspected of being in the country without documentation. Oftentimes that determination is based on skin color alone.

Once detained, these people can then be sent from the Kootenai County Jail to the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, Wash. NWDC is one of a growing number of privately owned and operated centers where detainees are kept for indeterminate sentences and pressured to self deport.

Immigrants are not illegal aliens. And yes, they have certain protected rights under our U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately, the Trump administration plays fast and loose with these immigrants’ rights.

The courts are slowly correcting this injustice. Keep an eye on Rodriguez v. Porter, a major civil rights class-action lawsuit that challenges a massive October 2025 raid at La Catedral Arena in Wilder, Idaho, where over 200 law enforcement officers detained 400 spectators. Plaintiffs, including U.S. citizens and minors, assert they were zip-tied and held in inhumane conditions for hours without access to food, water, or bathrooms. 

Is ICE the type of organization that the good people of Post Falls want to entangle themselves with?

Post Falls’ Mayor Randy Westlund claimed that this agreement will aid in removing “criminal aliens” from our midst and thereby increase public security. Such claims are dubious at best.

The mayor is dead wrong about “criminal aliens.” Immigrants are not criminals, not even those who are undocumented. Study after study, from the Cato Institute to the National Institute of Justice, research has consistently shown that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than U.S.-born citizens.

In fact, the majority of ICE detainees have no criminal record. And ICE-related activities in municipalities endanger the public and raise the incidence of violent interactions. 

Since Trump took office, 55 people have died in ICE custody, based on ICE's official detainee death reports. Since January 2025, at least seven people have been fatally shot by ICE agents during enforcement operations, according to Reuters' review of recent cases.

It’s worth emphasizing that immigrants contribute more to our economy than they take from it. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), Congressional Budget Office, and National Academies have all concluded that immigrants contribute significantly to the economy. Immigrants pay billions annually in payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and many contribute to Social Security and Medicare despite being ineligible for most federal benefits.

Unauthorized workers contribute an estimated 3% of U.S. private-sector GDP annually, representing trillions of dollars in economic output over a decade. Researchers estimate that legalizing these workers would increase productivity further.

And the only reason immigrants remain undocumented for years is Republican refusal to legislate comprehensive immigration reform.

The nationwide ICE roundup is a disgrace. By taking part in it, the Post Falls government and its police department will become complicit in one of the uglier chapters in American history. Let’s all hope they avoid an even greater ICE disaster.

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Evan Koch is chairman of the Kootenai County Democratic Central Committee.