Canyon County, Idaho Probation Officers Sent ICE a List of Foreign-Born Probationers, Emails Show

A probation department in southwestern Idaho has been feeding Immigration and Customs Enforcement a list of everyone born outside the United States who happens to be on its caseload, according to more than 140 emails obtained by InvestigateWest through public records requests.

The emails, sent between May and July 2026, show Canyon County misdemeanor probation officers coordinating directly with ICE's Boise field office. One officer, senior probation officer Norma Naranjo, emailed six ICE agents on May 13 to confirm a probationer's check-in time the next morning: "His meeting has not changed and he is expected to be here tomorrow morning at 7:30 a.m." When the man showed up early, Naranjo emailed ICE again: "He is here are you guys on your way?"

The records are heavily redacted. It's not clear from them whether ICE agents actually detained the man at his appointment, according to InvestigateWest.

The list itself wasn't vetted. One probation officer told InvestigateWest the names he submitted included everyone in his files who reported being born outside the U.S. No cross-check against actual immigration status.

Foreign-born is not the same thing as illegal. Naturalized citizens are foreign-born. Green card holders are foreign-born. People with pending asylum claims are foreign-born. None of that means someone lacks legal status, and immigration attorneys quoted by InvestigateWest and The Independent warn that a list built this loosely risks catching people who have every legal right to be in the country.

What the county says

Jeff Breach, director of Canyon County's Misdemeanor Probation Department, declined an interview but answered written questions. He said the list includes "individuals whose place of birth is a foreign country — and can also include individuals that have been previously flagged with an immigration hold."

Breach drew a clear line on responsibility: "Verifying and determining legal presence/status, along with any related enforcement, is within the purview of federal authorities." In plain terms, his office says it's not their job to sort out who's here legally. That's ICE's job. He says his department treats ICE like any other law enforcement agency it works with, handing over information so ICE can "carry out their lawful duties."

Local probation offices aren't immigration courts. They don't have the authority or the systems to adjudicate someone's status. Expecting a misdemeanor probation department to run federal immigration verification before sharing a name is asking it to do a job Congress assigned to the Department of Homeland Security.

Steve Cushman, Canyon County's director of constituent services, told reporters this isn't new. He said he believes the practice of ICE requesting these lists goes back to the Obama administration, and Breach said ICE typically asks for them annually, across administrations of both parties. If accurate, that undercuts any claim this is some novel Trump-era escalation dreamed up by a rogue county office. It's a longstanding federal-local arrangement that predates the current administration by over a decade.

The precision problem

Local and state law enforcement cooperating with federal immigration authorities on people already in the criminal justice system, on probation, in jail, serving sentences, is long-standing practice in Idaho and plenty of other states.

The issue is precision. If the list is just "everyone born somewhere else," with zero effort to filter out citizens and green card holders, then ICE is working off a haystack, not a target list. Immigration advocates cited by InvestigateWest and The Independent point out that ICE agents under the Trump administration have already detained U.S. citizens and people with pending green card or asylum applications during broader enforcement pushes. A sloppy source list from a county probation office makes that kind of mistake more likely, not less.

DHS reported roughly 51,000 migrant arrests in July 2026 nationwide, according to figures cited by The Independent, part of a sustained enforcement surge. Whether Canyon County's list contributed to any of those arrests, or led to any citizen or lawful resident being wrongly detained, isn't established in the available records. The redactions leave that open.

Fox News, the New York Times Post reprint, and the Eagle Country wire summary all ran essentially the same account without independently confirming outcomes for the man in the May 13-14 emails. None of the outlets reviewed have reported whether ICE ultimately took him into custody, whether he had legal status, or what happened afterward. InvestigateWest's public records requests are ongoing, and whether more emails or outcome data surface will determine if this becomes a bigger accountability story or stays a one-county footnote.