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Within the past few months, several Utah immigration and criminal defense attorneys said they’ve had clients arrive to meet with their probation officers to fulfill their court-ordered requirements only to find U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers waiting to detain them.
The clients were serving their probation through Utah Adult Probation and Parole, their attorneys say — a program under the Utah Department of Corrections that, according to the Salt Lake Legal Defender Association’s website, typically supervises people convicted of class A misdemeanors or felonies.
Glen Mills, the Utah Department of Corrections’ director of communications, said the department has shared with ICE the names of everyone it’s supervised through its probation and parole program for at least 10 years.
He said it is up to ICE to decide what to do with that information.
“We have a longstanding history of coordinating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on both the incarceration and supervision fronts,” Mills said in a statement on behalf of the department. “We aren’t doing anything new, and we don’t have plans to change that.”
In a statement sent to The Salt Lake Tribune, an ICE official said the agency “fosters collaboration with all law enforcement agencies to identify removable criminal aliens.” The organization said doing so saves “scarce government resources,” because ICE doesn’t have to search for people.
Attorneys argue that the method is costing trust in the state’s probation program.
‘Surprised at the probation office’
Utah immigration and criminal defense attorney Adam Crayk said probation officers should be advocates for their clients.
That relationship falls apart, he said, when Utah immigrants on probation find themselves detained by ICE while trying to work with their probation officers on everything they’ve been court ordered to do.
“Why would you ever go and check in? Why would you ever complete the obligations that the court has ordered upon you when you know that you’re just going to get turned into ICE?” Crayk said.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Adult Probation and Parole in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, March 25, 2025.
Utah immigration and criminal defense attorney Chris Keen said he’s seen collaboration similar to what’s happening in Utah between probation officers and ICE in Idaho, where he said he takes cases as an immigration attorney and where he has no trust in the state’s probation organization.
“I would think, ‘Don’t the probation officers feel like they’re just being used? And don’t they feel any remorse at being dishonest with people, telling them to come in to report and then they’re picked up by ICE?‘” he said.
He said he had more trust in Utah Adult Probation and Parole until recently.
In late December, one of his Utah clients was detained through a probation appointment, and it surprised him. Newly reelected President Donald Trump had yet to take office, and he’d never worried that probation officers here would work with ICE to detain a client.
What’s more, he said, ICE had ample opportunity to detain his client when he was in jail for more than 80 days prior to his probation. Instead, Keen said, ICE officers waited until that person got out of jail, paid their fines and complied with what the court asked them to do before “they’re surprised at the probation office.”
In one case, Daniel Ball — a criminal paralegal who works with Keen — said the probation officer themself detained their client and took them to the Utah County jail, where he said the detainee waited for about 24 hours for ICE to arrive.
Caught between ethical obligations
Keen, like Crayk, said he hopes his clients can rely on private probation companies rather than the state. But that determination is up to a judge.
Those judges will be faced with a tough situation, Crayk said: If they grant the request and potentially keep the probationer out of immigration proceedings, will it appear as though they’re “trying not to engage in this mass deportation” that’s garnered some Utah GOP lawmakers’ support?
“It becomes this really interesting issue of where people’s beliefs lie, to a certain degree,” Crayk said.
Then, if a judge declines, Crayk added, “think about what the lawyer is now forced to do.”
He wondered if he should send his clients to Utah Adult Probation and Parole or warn them that if they go, there’s a high chance an ICE officer will be there waiting for them.
“I have an ethical obligation to obey court orders,” Crayk said. “But I also have an ethical obligation to zealously represent my client. … You’re going to have to explain it, and explain it in a way that you’re not recommending them to violate a court order, but you also recognize that these people have families.”
Ultimately, he said, it needs to be the client’s choice whether they follow court probation orders and are detained by ICE or disobey what a judge asked them to do.
And, even if judges are receptive to the idea of private probation options, Utah immigration lawyer Orlando Luna pointed out that it’s more expensive than the state’s service, and he worries about language barriers.
Mills, with the Corrections Department, said that while the application of its relationship with ICE “can ebb and flow as administrations come and go,” the department is “ready to work with them, and have for years.”
He said the department doesn’t “have a position” on whether Utah Adult Probation and Parole’s collaboration with ICE could lead to immigrants on probation skipping required meetings for fear of ICE detainment.
In their statement, the ICE official said “working with other law enforcement agencies minimizes the potential that an individual will re-offend.”
“Aliens in the probation and parole system are convicted criminals who are fulfilling their local justice obligations,” the statement says. “They are, however, still deportable aliens who are subject to arrest and removal by ICE.”