When beloved Idaho community member is deported, brain dead MAGA pastor blames Biden [View all]

Long read. Summary: Refugee from Bhutan settled in Idaho, married a MAGA type and had a kid. has arrests which caught up with him during Trump's ICE raids. He was deported. Idiot Trump voting pastor blames Biden.

A refugee’s deportation rattles a deeply conservative town: ‘What Trump has done is not Christlike’
Binod Shah, a refugee from Bhutan, went to church, got married and started an auto shop in Twin Falls, Idaho. But an arrest record got him caught in the ICE dragnet

At 18, Stephanie joined a Christian ministry that took her to Uganda and later Indonesia, where she taught English for two years among Indigenous communities and at an orphanage. When she returned to Idaho, she enrolled at Aletheia Christian college, about 10 miles north of Twin Falls. There, the college’s founders, Pastor Randall Davis and his wife, Dr Diane Davis, who is also a professor at the college, introduced her to the growing Bhutanese refugee community in Twin Falls, including a young man named Binod Shah.

Sometimes, the conversations turned to politics. Stephanie, a conservative, says her moral compass was set by belief in scripture, strong borders and opposition to abortion. “Binod liked playing devil’s advocate when we talked about politics,” she recalled. “He did agree with some of Trump’s policies, especially on the economy.”


Weeks later, Trump was elected president again, after campaigning on the promise of ruthless mass deportation of undocumented people in the US, particularly those with a criminal background. In Idaho, he won 67% of voters, including members of Stephanie’s family (Stephanie declined to say how she voted). Randall and Diane voted for Trump, as did Stewart and many of Binod’s customers and co-workers. In spite of the looming deportation order, they did not think Binod, a refugee, would be caught in Trump’s anti-immigrant dragnet.

Randall has known Binod for more than 16 years. A self-described conservative constitutionalist Christian, he blames Joe Biden for Binod’s deportation. “Biden was completely responsible for it. Trump wasn’t,” he said. In Randall’s view, Trump was “just fixing the border”, cleaning up after Biden’s failure to control immigration, and Binod was collateral damage.


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/12/refugee-deportation-idaho-trump