Nobody in Wilder, Idaho expected this. The tiny farming town of 1,725 people—where nine out of ten voters backed Donald Trump in 2024—is now scrambling to figure out what comes next after federal immigration agents swept through in mid-October and arrested more than 100 Hispanic workers at a local horse racetrack. So far, 75 people have been deported, and the farms that keep this place running are facing a labour shortage with no easy fix in sight.
They might not have actually seen it coming. I grew up in a place like that and the echo chambers are real and debilitating. There is a reason most rural areas only have fox as their news broadcaster. Information deprivation and misinformation has been the plan for decades.
“Nobody could have seen this coming” said about an event that everyone else saw coming still doesn’t make me very sympathetic.