PROPAGANDA: CBS News Desperately Tries to Create New ICE Victims

Jorge Bonilla
February 11th, 2026 12:55 AM

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Immigration is shaping up to be the hit-button issue of this midterm election. One drawback, though, is that these types of stories require a steady flow of victims in order to keep the issue in front of the public. With the unrest in Minnesota off the news, CBS News thinks they may have struck gold.

Watch as Matt Gutman goes to Idaho to investigate an ICE raid and is tipped off about an ACLU lawsuit:

TONY DOKOUPIL: Second, in another CBS News exclusive tonight, a question of tactics in the story of an immigration raid in rural Idaho. While allegedly focused on Mexican cartel activity, the raid, in fact, swept up more than 300 U.S. citizens, along with 100 undocumented immigrants, just five of whom were later arrested on gambling charges. In the process, children as young as 14 were zip-tied and questioned on their immigration status. Here is chief national correspondent Matt Gutman.

PROTESTER: Are you going to shoot me if I don't…?

GUTMAN: When about 200 armed agents stormed this horse racing event in rural Idaho, Anabel Romero said she had no idea who they were.

ANABEL ROMERO: All I'm asking for clarification. Who are you? Why am I being detained?

GUTMAN: And their response?

ROMERO: Their response? I'm going to blow your [bleep] head off.

GUTMAN: Canyon County share Kieran Donahue was there on horseback. 

KIERAN DONAHUE: So this was a very, very large-scale operation, maybe the largest I've ever been involved with.

GUTMAN: The sheriff says nearly 500 people were at the October 19th event. 375 of them U.S. citizens or legal residents, including some 60 children. The sheriff says the event was linked to Mexican cartel activity and asked ICE to join. But so far only five people have been arrested for nonviolent, illegal gambling. In a lawsuit filed tonight, the ACLU is accusing Donahue and the federal government of using excessive force, including against children.

JENN ROLNICK BORCHETTA: Law enforcement should not be zip-tying children. They have done long-lasting damage to children.

GUTMAN: Can you show me, SueHey, where you had bruises?

SUEHEY ROMERO: I had bruises all right here among both wrists.

GUTMAN: Romero and her 14-year-old daughter SueHey, both U.S. citizens, say agents herded them along with Romero's 2 younger children to the racetrack.

Was it scary, you two? 

There, officers zip-tied SueHey. That's her 8-year-old sister by her side.

SUEHEY: I was there, like, crying. I can't even get words out. I was, like, struggling. Can’t even get words out.

GUTMAN: With her hands bound behind her back, Romero says she was unable to console her daughter.

ROMERO: I can't hug her. I can't hold her because these guys won't let me go, and I'm like she's only 14.

GUTMAN: In an email, the Department of Homeland Security first told CBS News it was a conspiracy theory, and in a second email they denied ICE agents zip tied children.

DONAHUE: The youngest that was zip-tied was 16 years old, and he had a mustache. There were kids in there. They weren't zipped -- those little ones were not zip tied.

GUTMAN: This is a picture of SueHey, we met her this morning, she is 14 years old. She is, I would say, a child, a girl who was zip tied, and these are the bruises from those zip ties. Have you seen or heard that?

DONAHUE: No, I had not. I had not seen that. But I will tell you this. I've been in this business a long time. I haven't gone against gang members who are a lot younger than that.

GUTMAN: She was with her 6-year-old brother and 8-year-old sister.

DONAHUE: But you are taking that out of context. We do not know her-

GUTMAN: What kind of context do you need? There is a girl with two small children with her, how dangerous could she possibly be?

DONAHUE: We don't know.

GUTMAN: Now the sheriff is facing community backlash. 

Have ties been broken with your community?

To some degree, I believe they have come absolutely.

ROMERO: My parents, they came over here to the United States to give us a better life, so we didn't have to suffer, and that day, I felt like our freedom was taken away from us.

GUTMAN: Matt Gutman, CBS News, Wilder, Idaho.

The first inconsistency with this story appears to be the balance of U.S. citizens to illegal aliens. When Tony Dokoupil introduces the story he makes reference to 300 citizens and 100 illegal aliens. Matt Gutman refers to 375 U.S. citizens or legal residents plus 60 children- deemphasizing the number of illegal aliens present, or whether there are any at all.

There is an effort to make the raid resemble Minneapolis or Chicago, but this event went down at a local horse racing track. Hence, the arrests for illegal gambling. The local sheriff indicates that there was suspicion of cartel activity, but this is deemphasized in the report.

There is a clear dispute as to which minors were zip-tied. But this doesn’t get earnestly resolved. Instead, we get Gutman yelling at the sheriff and asking him whether he’s lost standing in the community. There seemed to be little interest in getting to anything else than establishing the next round of immigration victims for the next several cycles in order to further undermine law enforcement.

I will note that there is still no coverage of the illegal alien truck driver that killed four Amish in Indiana. If only those Amish were rainbow flags…

 

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