What happened at Colt Grill? ICE raid in tourism hot spot is ‘wake-up call’

VILLAGE OF OAK CREEK — Rick Busbea voted for President Donald Trump because he was upset about the unprecedented surge of migrants during the Biden administration.

“You can’t have totally unprotected borders like that,” the 66-year-old retired Air Force veteran said.

But when federal immigration enforcement officers raided a barbecue restaurant next to the hardware store where he works in this picturesque tourist village in Yavapai County, even Busbea, a staunch Trump supporter, had mixed emotions.

“I wasn’t sad, per se,” Busbea said. But he “felt bad” for some of the undocumented workers swept up that day in mid-July 2025, when federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers raided the Colt Grill, BBQ and Spirits in the Village of Oak Creek near Sedona, along with three other Colt Grill restaurants in Yavapai County.

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Yavapai County, with about 250,000 residents, is the fourth most populous county in Arizona. The county in north-central Arizona is often referred to as the “red heart” of the state. It is home to the stunning red rock scenery of Sedona, an internationally known tourist destination. Yavapai County also has a reputation as a bastion of politically active Republican voters. Trump won Yavapai County with more than 66% of the vote in 2024. The overwhelming support helped Trump lock in a decisive victory in Arizona, a key battleground state.

But the ICE raids at the Colt Grill restaurants in Yavapai County exposed how immigrants, many of them undocumented, play a significant role in the tourism industry, one of the main economic drivers in Yavapai County, and in restaurant and hospitality businesses across the country.

Now, more than a half-year after federal immigration enforcement officers raided the popular Colt Grill restaurants, some Yavapai County residents remain supportive of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown but have misgivings about the arrests of hardworking undocumented workers.

Others are bracing for more ICE raids to come.

Does county’s tourism economy depend on immigrants?

Robert and Brenda Clouston, the husband-and-wife owners of the Colt Grill restaurants, and two undocumented employees were accused by federal prosecutors of running a scheme that involved smuggling undocumented workers from Mexico to work at the restaurants, according to federal indictments.

The indictments also accuse them of creating a fake cleaning business to hide payment to the workers.

They are also accused of paying the undocumented workers below minimum wage, not compensating them for overtime and not paying proper employment taxes for the workers, according to indictments.

Their trial was originally scheduled to start on March 3 in federal court in Phoenix. But at the defense lawyers’ request, the trial date was moved and was now scheduled for June 2, according to court filings. Efforts to reach the Cloustons through their attorney and a family member were unsuccessful.

Some Yavapai County residents say the ICE raids at Colt Grill restaurants showed how the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign has reached even remote corners of the United States.

Scenes of relatives crying outside some of the Colt Grill locations while ICE officers detained and questioned workers inside still haunt some of them.

“I do feel for the families, that initial terror of not knowing if your loved one is going to be deported. That’s scary,” said Cathy Kenna, 67, a bereavement counselor and Cottonwood resident. She said she witnessed one young woman engulfed by relatives’ hugs after she was released by ICE officers and ran out of the Cottonwood Colt Grill location.

Some residents say more immigration arrests in Yavapai County, practically unheard of in the past, are inevitable given the $170 billion in funding allocated for immigration enforcement, detention and deportations under the so-called Big Beautiful Bill Trump signed into law on July 4.

ICE has already returned to Yavapai County at least once.

On Jan. 14, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested a woman in the parking lot of a Safeway supermarket in the town of Cottonwood, according to the Cottonwood Journal Extra newspaper.

“What we got here is ICE, guys, they just snatched this lady,” the news outlet quoted a man who had posted a cell phone video online.

ICE said the woman, Isela Hernandez Lugo, was detained after a vehicle stop and was found to be an undocumented immigrant from Mexico living in the U.S. The arrest was a “targeted” enforcement action, said Yasmeen Pitts O’Keefe, an ICE spokesperson in Phoenix. Hernandez Lugo was released on bond on Feb. 18 as an alternative to detention but remains subject to deportation proceedings, Pitts O’Keefe said.

The January arrest in the Safeway parking lot on the heels of the Colt Grill raids further raised tensions in a county where tourism is a key industry, and where hotels, upscale resorts and restaurants depend on immigrants, including those without legal status, to staff lower-wage jobs that are hard to fill because of labor shortages made worse by the high cost of housing, some business leaders and residents said.

The hospitality industry is one of the main economic drivers in Yavapai County’s Verde Valley, which includes Sedona and Cottonwood. Hotels and restaurants in the Verde Valley employ 4,000 workers and generate about a quarter-billion dollars in annual revenue, the third highest of all industries, according to the Arizona Commerce Authority.

“It was a wake-up call,” said Christian Oliva del Rio, president and CEO of the Greater Cottonwood Chamber of Commerce.

Oliva del Rio said it was a “shocker” that Colt Grill has been accused of employing undocumented workers. But it’s well known that immigrants play a “big role” in all of the county’s tourism-related industries, and he would like to see more ways to make it easier for immigrants to work legally in these industries.

The Colt Grill raids have already impacted the county’s workforce, Oliva del Rio said. He knows of some Latino workers who moved out of Yavapai County after the raids. Others changed their behavior to try to avoid contact with ICE. Before the raids, they “would have openly gone and done their jobs,” Oliva del Rio said. Now they are “choosing what time of day or night they do their jobs.”

Oliva del Rio, a citizen born in the United States to immigrants from Spain, said even he is scared because of his darker skin and a Spanish last name. He has started carrying his passport to prove he is a U.S. citizen in case he is stopped by ICE.

“When you go to Safeway in little rural Cottonwood, and there’s ICE agents, you, know, pulling somebody out of their vehicle, that’s scary. I never thought I would see that in my time,” Oliva del Rio said. “And now I look at it on a national level as well, what I’m seeing is very scary. … I feel like it’s getting worse.”

‘If they get caught, then they should pay the price’

Twenty-eight undocumented workers were arrested on immigration violations during the ICE raids, and about 200 Colt Grill employees lost their jobs after the restaurants closed.

Two of the four Colt Grill locations, the one in Prescott Valley and the one in Cottonwood, remained closed as of mid-March. The building in Cottonwood was scheduled to reopen as a new restaurant, Aqui Kitchen and Agave Bar, under a new owner, according to a town official.

Two other locations in Prescott and the Village of Oak Creek reopened under a new name, Doc’s BBQ and Whiskey, and new ownership, said Damian Hartze, the director of operations for Happy Hog Ventures LLC.

The new owners include Kell Palguta, the mayor of Prescott Valley, Hartze said.

Doc’s BBQ in Prescott opened in December and the location in the Village of Oak Creek opened at the end of September. The two locations employ about 45 to 60 people, Hartze said. The business also owns Fat Frog Sports Grill in Prescott. Hartze said he hired two of the former Colt Grill cooks to work at Fat Frog, and 10 to 15 former Colt Grill workers to help staff the two Doc’s BBQ restaurants.

Busbea, the retired Air Force veteran, is known for posting comments about his support for President Trump and his mass deportation campaign on social media. He honks his horn in disapproval when he drives past anti-ICE demonstrators and his wife sometimes “flips them off,” he said.

He was at work at the hardware store the day ICE raided the Colt Grill next door in the Village of Oak Creek. The hardware store and restaurant are located in a strip mall at the foot of Bell Rock, one of Sedona’s iconic red rock formations.

After a customer informed him the ICE raid was taking place, Busbea walked outside onto the patio, where he saw ICE officers in the Colt Grill parking lot below.

“It was actually very quiet and subdued,” Busbea said. “That was the first clue we had anything was happening.”

The ICE officers, Busbea noted, acted “very professional, very matter-of-fact.”

Busbea said he frequently ate lunch at Colt Grill and recognized some of the Colt Grill workers ICE detained, including a cook who sometimes came into the hardware store to buy barbecue supplies.

“A couple of the bussers that went around and cleaned up stuff afterwards and one of the cooks I recognized,” Busbea said. The cook was “a pretty nice guy, but he spoke no English.”

Busbea said he “felt bad” for the workers because according to the indictment the owners basically were treating them as “slaves” by not paying them fairly and they couldn’t couldn’t complain because they were undocumented.

At the same time, Busbea said, the undocumented workers deserved to be deported.

“I don’t think they should be here, so, you know, you take your chances, is what they’re doing, and no one should feel bad when they take their chances and they get caught,” Busbea said.

“You know, criminals commit things every day hoping not to get caught, but if they get caught, then they should pay the price, and it’s the same with these guys,” Busbea said.

Prescott resident and business owner Tom Fite, 53, shared similar views.

Anyone in the country without legal status risks being deported, Fite said. He made a comparison to a lesson he learned after his own arrest for shoplifting as a youngster.

“When I was a kid and I shoplifted, and I got caught, it was the best thing that had happened to me. So I’m a big believer on things getting set right. That’s usually what needs to happen,” Fite said.

Along with his father, Fite runs Fite and Son’s Mercantile and Ice Cream, a shop that caters to tourists and sells ice cream, fudge, nuts and souvenirs.

The shop is next door to the former Colt Grill in downtown Prescott. Fite said he frequently lunched there and got to know some of the workers, some of whom told him they had left their families in Mexico to work in the United States. He sometimes invited them over to his store for free ice cream.

Fite said he recognized one of the detained workers as ICE officers led them into a van.

“I don’t blame them for wanting a better life,” Fite said. But undocumented workers were better off in their home countries “with their wives and their kids,” he said.

Fite acknowledged that Yavapai County has a labor problem. It was increasingly difficult to find dependable employees to work at his store, he said. In the past year alone, 12 workers had come and gone.

Fite said he could see how some businesses might turn to undocumented workers given labor challenges.

“If it was a (single) restaurant and they had it for years and it was struggling, I guess I would have been a little bit more like, ‘Yeah, I get it,'” Fite said.

But the allegations against the owners of the Colt Grill restaurants suggest the owners were motivated more by “greed,” Fite said.

Workers’ status was an open secret, former bartender says

At the Colt Grill location in Cottonwood, it was openly suspected by workers that people who worked for the owners smuggled undocumented people into the United States to work at the restaurants and provided them housing, according to Cody Drake, who worked as a bartender at the Cottonwood location and left before the raids.

Three years ago, several employees who had been fired “for one reason or other” by the owner, Robert Clouston, circulated a letter reporting the restaurant’s activities to ICE, Drake said. The workers wanted to get back at Clouston for firing them, Drake said. Drake said he also heard workers complain about the restaurant withholding tips.

The federal indictment accuses two people who worked for the owners, Luis Pedro Rogel-Jaimes, 33, and Iris Romero-Molina, 29, with smuggling people from Mexico to work at the restaurants.

Roger-Jaimes and Romero-Molina are undocumented immigrants from Mexico, federal prosecutors said.

Drake said he was friends with one of the cooks who complained that he worked 12 to 14 hours a day. The cook told him he could not “just quit and leave” because he still owed money to the couple for bringing him to the United States, getting him a job at the restaurant, and his living expenses, Drake said.

What happened the day of the raids

The day ICE raided the Colt Grill restaurant in the Village of Oak Creek, Jacki Rice was sitting in her backyard with her 33-year-old daughter, Hannah Knouse, a real estate agent. It was nearly 100 degrees that day, recalled Rice, 61, a retired schoolteacher and administrator.

Rice’s phone buzzed and she saw a text that said, “ICE Raid at Colts VOC.”

Rice said the text made no sense at first.

“We’ve been watching ICE raids in LA, you know, in cities, not here. This is like little Sedona,” Rice said.

Rice and Knouse raced to Colt Grill in their car minutes from the house.

The parking lot was empty, but then they noticed two young women outside.

They were “bawling and shaking in front of the restaurant,” Knouse said.

Rice walked over to them. A teenage girl Rice did not know threw herself into Rice’s arms and began sobbing.

“This girl, she hugged me and cried and cried,” Rice said. “And then she told the story that her father had just started working at Colts and he’s a really good man, he’s not done anything wrong and they’re gonna take him away and he didn’t bring papers. I was just holding her while she cried.”

Rice and Knouse asked the 14-year-old, whose name was Ximena, if they could record her.

They posted the video later on social media of Ximena crying about ICE taking away her father, who was the breadwinner of the family.

Rice and Knouse said they walked around to the back of Colt Grill restaurant, where they saw seven to 10 black U.S. Department of Homeland Security SUVs and Yavapai County sheriff’s vans, along with numerous ICE officers and sheriff’s deputies.

Rice said a local journalist told her the ICE officers were investigating a case of human trafficking. That prompted her to confront one of the officers about why ICE was detaining and arresting the workers.

“My big question was, if you’re here (to investigate) a federal human trafficking offense, why are you arresting the potential victims of that?” Rice said.

She said it’s a struggle to find and keep workers to fill lower-wage jobs in Sedona.

“It is really sick to shift in focus and go from the perpetrators of human trafficking with an organized system to traffic humans — vulnerable people wanting, needing better resources in their lives — and to shift that focus to also detain, deport, arrest victims,” Rice said.

“Nobody can afford to live here that is going to work for those wages, so they have to commute,” mostly from Cottonwood, which has a sizable population of Latinos and Latino immigrants, many of whom work in the service industry in Yavapai County, Rice said. “The immigrant population here is a huge benefit in that whole equation.”

Not everyone in Yavapai feels the same way as Rice and Knouse, who live in Sedona, a more progressive enclave in ruby-red Yavapai County.

After the ICE raids at the Colt Grill, Rice said her Next Door app was filled with comments from residents expressing their support for the ICE raids, including the arrests of the workers.

“There are so many very boisterous, loud, Trump-supporting people here that celebrated ICE being here,” Rice said.

The supporters of the ICE raids posted comments like “They are doing their job. Good job. If they didn’t come here illegally, they wouldn’t be arrested, detained, deported.”

“It was a little disturbing that group of people totally bypassed the owners’ (alleged) crimes, and went right to how justified it was to get rid of the workers,” Rice said.

‘This community … would crumble without our immigrant community’

The ICE raids at the Colt Grill restaurants in Yavapai County galvanized other residents to form groups to provide information to immigrants about their legal rights in case they are questioned by ICE, said Amanda Lange and Mayra Garcia Hernandez. They are members of a grassroots group called the Immigration Action Group, part of the nationwide Indivisible movement.

The group has formed a “rapid response team” that checks out reports of ICE activity in Yavapai County and alerts people when ICE officers are spotted, similar to groups that have formed in Phoenix and other large metro areas.

“There has been a lot of interest in that particular work,” Garcia Hernandez said.

About 16% of Yavapai County’s population of 250,000 are Latinos and about 6% of the county’s population are immigrants, about half of them from Latin America, according to 2024 census data.

Garcia Hernandez, a high school counselor, said her family goes back three generations in the Cottonwood area. Her grandfather came from Mexico to work in the hospitality industry.

Yavapai County is a close-knit community where residents tend to know their neighbors, Garcia Hernandez said. That has prompted growing concern that the Trump administration’s expanding immigration campaign could lead to undocumented people they know being arrested and deported, Garcia Hernandez said.

Residents are feeling like this “is unacceptable and they need to join something to support their community members,” Garcia Hernandez said.

Lange said she doesn’t view the group’s actions as impeding ICE officers from doing their jobs. She said the group is trying to protect the rights of immigrants from indiscriminate immigration enforcement actions that in her view have gone too far.

“They are coming into our communities and getting low-hanging fruit,” Lange said. “I’m sure it’s a hard job, but these are not criminals. These are our friends and neighbors and people we work alongside.”

ICE should focus on deporting criminals who pose a danger, not people who are “deeply rooted in our community, pay into our tax system and are not afforded benefits,” Lange said.

“This community, Sedona, would crumble without our immigrant community because they perform so many functions for all the resorts, all the hotels, restaurants, the landscaping they do for people,” Lange said.

“We all know the jobs (immigrants) do for us. It’s hard work, and we don’t see a lot of White people out there doing it.”

The Immigration Action Group has been trying to track what happened to the undocumented workers who were swept up in the ICE raids at the Colt Grill restaurants, Garcia Hernandez said.

Many of them were detained and placed in immigration detention centers, she said. Some remain behind bars, others have been released on bond, she said.

Some already have been deported, including a 24-year-old woman named Ingrid Ayón, who was working as a busser at the Colt Grill restaurant in Cottonwood the day undercover ICE officers arrived and locked the front door.

Reporting by Daniel Gonzalez, Arizona Republic