Jose Alberto Lozano-Flores, a 29-year-old criminal illegal alien from Mexico, is accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl at Freedom Park in Star and then kidnapping her. On the evening of July 22, 2026, according to the Ada County Sheriff’s Office, he assaulted the girl, forced her into his vehicle, and took her away. The next day, deputies found them at Quinn’s Pond in Boise, part of the Greenbelt that has become a magnet for this kind of crime. He faces felony lewd conduct with a child under 16, first-degree kidnapping, and misdemeanor resisting and obstructing.
DHS confirms the obvious. He is an illegal alien. He entered through New Mexico in 2023, was caught by Border Patrol, agreed to return to Mexico, then snuck back in. ICE has lodged a detainer and now Idaho must not release him.
Unfortunately, criminal illegal alien activity is not rare. Idaho’s Operation No Return and related ICE efforts have pulled dozens of criminal illegal aliens out after their local sentences instead of dumping them back on Idaho streets. The list includes Antonio Velasco-Gonzales for lewd conduct with a child under 16, Henry Diaz-Escobar for the same plus indecent exposure. More illegals have convictions for sexual assault, strangulation, selling weapons, witness intimidation, grand theft auto, domestic violence with traumatic injury, injury to a child, kidnapping, stalking, burglary, repeated DUIs, hit-and-runs, drug trafficking, and assault.
Recent enforcement also netted Brayan Adiel Gramajo-Reyes, a Guatemalan illegal alien charged with encouraging illegal entry, falsifying employment documents, and unlawfully employing aliens while exploiting unaccompanied minors for labor. Large sweeps such as the Wilder horse-track operation have scooped up over a hundred illegal aliens in a single action.
These are not abstract numbers. They are crimes against children, domestic battery, strangulation, DUI, assault, and trafficking. And there is one question of this outrageous paradigm that we are failing to find answers to – do these people have jobs?
Some of these illegals crossed the border years ago, not last week. Were these illegal aliens just jobless drifters living off squirrels running around the Greenbelt in Boise? Just wanderers living off-grid like a regular ol’ Jeremiah Jalisco-Johnson? Or were they drawing paychecks from employers who decided foreign-born labor mattered more than the safety of Idaho girls?
Enough is enough. Idaho already has its own criminals and its own mentally ill violent people to worry about. We do not need to import more. Yet employers keep hiring people who have no legal right to be here. That paycheck is the magnet. That paycheck is what keeps predators like Lozano-Flores here long enough to attack our citizens, our children.
The sad truth is, when we do find the employer of violent criminal aliens, the system appears to circle the wagons and protect them.
Look at Sajid Soto and Idaho Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen’s farm. In 2021, Soto was charged in Bonneville County with choking his wife in front of children and possessing meth. Prosecutors gave him a sweetheart deal, minimal jail, charges later dismissed after probation. The law says, he then should have been deported. Instead he was back working on the farm. Only after Republican activist Ryan Spoon of Ada County tipped ICE did federal agents finally arrest and remove him. Mickelsen’s operation escaped the criticism it earned. She claimed compliance with the rules. If that’s true, those rules need changing and Mickelsen should have been the one to spearhead that change. Instead, she claimed she was the victim. But I digress. The hard fact remains: a foreign national with a documented record of strangulation and drugs was allowed to stay in the community and collect a paycheck from a sitting State Representative’s company until a citizen forced the issue. ICE arrested him on Mickelsen’s property in 2025 and he was deported back to Mexico.
When it is confessed in an open hearing, by the industry’s own lobbyist, that the Idaho dairy industry’s workforce is 70% illegal, half the legislature fight like hell to stop any bill that would turn that ship around.
The legislature has tried to cut welfare subsidies and handouts that act as magnets. That work is necessary. Yet even a few Big-Ag Republicans vote against those bills so their dairy friends do not have to pay higher wages or provide benefits once the state stops subsidizing their illegal workforce. That is not conservatism. That is protecting a labor racket at the expense of Idaho families.
As long as employers face little real risk for knowingly hiring unauthorized workers, the economic pull remains. Federal law already bans it. The legislature must finish the job: mandate E-Verify, create real state-level penalties for knowing employment of unauthorized aliens, and strip away any practical shielding of violators. Several 2026 bills moved in that direction but ultimately failed. They must be strengthened, passed, and enforced without special treatment for politically connected operations.
The legislature must also find a balanced way for law enforcement to identify and publicly record the employer of every illegal alien arrested for serious crime. Make that information public. Shame is a powerful tool. Employers who knowingly put Idaho communities at risk for cheaper labor should face the full light of day. And, while we’re at it, Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen and her recent primary voters should be shamed in public for putting their communities at risk.
Mass deportation of illegal aliens, especially those with criminal records, must accelerate. ICE detainer compliance is non-negotiable. Local jails and state facilities cannot remain revolving doors that return predators to our neighborhoods after short sentences. The incentive structure that brings them here, jobs without accountability, must be dismantled.
Idaho is not yet California. We still get to decide whether we protect our children or keep subsidizing the presence of people who do not respect our laws, our culture, or our land. Employers who knowingly endanger communities for labor costs must face consequences. Criminal illegal aliens who commit lewd acts against children, domestic violence, and other serious crimes must be removed and never returned.
This ends when the incentives end and the removals become routine, rapid, and certain. Idaho must not fall.