Utah County Sheriff’s Office agrees to work with ICE, but says no to labor raids

Hundreds packed Wednesday’s Utah County Commission meeting, with dozens over the course of four hours decrying a set of proposals that would see the Utah County Sheriff’s Office work more closely and more often with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

At the end of the comment period, all three Utah County commissioners approved the agreements.

Before his vote, Commissioner Skyler Beltran said he “took a lot of things away today” and will follow up to make sure people feel their “voices were heard and considered.”

“It matters,” he said. “You spent hours here on a [Wednesday] afternoon — for free — because you care about other people. You care about your community. You inspired me.”

Commissioners Beltran, Brandon Gordon and Amelia Powers Gardner opened public comment on the set of 287(g) Program agreements at around 2:30 p.m. and heard from the last concerned speaker at about 6 p.m. They also received more than 300 emails on the subject, Beltran said.

The agreements allow ICE to grant local law enforcement the authority to perform immigration enforcement under the federal agency’s oversight, either during normal police duties or through an ICE-led task force.

That green light is a “force multiplier,” ICE states on its website. The agreements will also allow the Utah County jail to hold federal detainees for ICE beyond their scheduled release time.

Such agreements exist in nearly every state, according to ICE, but until this year there were none between ICE and Utah law enforcement.

With Wednesday’s vote, the Utah County Sheriff’s Office now joins six other Utah law enforcement agencies with ICE agreements. At least one other agency — the Cache County Sheriff’s Office — has agreements pending, according to ICE.

Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith spoke at the meeting, telling attendees that the agreements won’t change “much at all what we have been doing.”

“We fight crime,” he said, ”and we will continue to fight crime."

Through the agreements, Smith said, ICE will also need to be more transparent with his agency, which includes sharing access to data about immigration enforcement operations and training materials.

He added Wednesday that despite these agreements, he is “not comfortable with ICE raids, and I have assurance from ICE that those will not happen here.”

But community members who spoke Wednesday said they were distrustful of ICE, even if many conceded they trusted the local sheriff’s office.

None who spoke supported the proposal, including at least one child who said a classmate had been taken by ICE in January.

“I’m here today because something happened in January that I can’t forget. My friend and classmate Ashley was taken by ICE,” said 12-year-old Adelaide Thiot.

“One day she was here laughing with us, playing with us. The next day, she was just gone,” Adelaide said, “No goodbye. No explanation. Just fear, silence and an empty seat in class.”

She said that now one of her other classmates is in “constant fear for herself and her family.”

In two-minute increments, each commenter like Adelaide tried to appeal to commissioners with reason, ethics or emotion. They quoted federal studies and data, the Bible, the Book of Mormon and Anne Frank’s diary. They alluded to the state’s historic, Mormon pioneer-driven support of immigrants and the Utah Compact on Immigration, which was last reaffirmed in 2019.

Susan Cissoko, who is originally from Puerto Rico, told attendees her husband emigrated from Africa — so she knows the process is protracted and costly.

She worried that the threat of ICE enforcement could hurt local, immigrant-owned businesses in Provo. Mostly, though, she sought advice for how to talk about what is happening with her children and family. She spoke to commissioners as her son Sylvain stood between her and the lectern, his head barely peaking over the top.

“My question is, as a parent, do you have experience? How do you talk to your kids about ICE coming into communities? ... Give me a hand out,” she said, “because parenting sucks. This makes it harder.”

Many speakers similarly worried about the potential chilling effect of these agreements and the fear it would spread. But Ruth Gonzalez-Muhlestein, with the Latino community organization Amistad Collective, said the group has been holding “Know Your Rights” events since January.

“Many people are mentioning that immigrants, and specifically the Latino community, will be afraid to go out, to go to school, to work, or to the grocery store,” Gonzalez-Muhlestein said, “but they’re already afraid.”

As the speakers continued, and commissioners offered occasional feedback that they were seeking the public’s questions and had heard many repeated talking points, some began to wonder if their comments were being heard.

One public commenter, who identified himself by the first name Math, “like the subject,” said: “The more pessimistic of us believe that you have already made up your mind on the vote. Have you? Have you sat here, wasted all of our time as the people you govern, and ignored all the parents and children and the people who have shed tears on this stand, on the stand in fear of what is already happening?”

Before this year, even Smith was also not in support of such agreements.

In his former role as president of the Utah Sheriffs Association, he had previously lambasted them, saying that upholding federal jail standards was too onerous and housing their detainees was too costly — and would open up counties to lawsuits.

Federal guidelines indicate that neither jail standards nor the daily rates have changed in recent years. Smith’s office did not immediately respond to The Salt Lake Tribune’s request for comment to those questions. The Utah Sheriffs Association also did not return a request for comment.

What has changed, Smith said Wednesday, was the leadership at ICE’s Salt Lake City field office.

Relationships had soured between sheriffs statewide and the former field office head, Michael Bernacke, after Bernacke in 2023 sent a now-rescinded memo calling Utah a sanctuary state for its lack of jails contracting with ICE.

At the time, Smith told The Tribune that he believed the memo’s “purpose” was that, “at some point, it would be used politically to try to force Utah sheriffs into housing [ICE] inmates.”

Gov. Spencer Cox, along with the sheriffs association, called for Bernacke’s ouster in January. Cox commented on 287(g) agreements and the concern in Utah County on Thursday, during his regular monthly news conference. He said the state had a “good working relationship with our 287(g) partners.”

“We’ve always made it clear that we have to follow the law in the Constitution,” Cox said, “and racial profiling isn’t acceptable in our state.”

He did note, however, that “we don’t control ICE.”

Cox later added that ICE enforcement in Utah has been “handled very well” so far, and declined to speak directly on happenings in other states, other than it “hasn’t been flawless.”

“I think there’s been some mistakes made, and it was always going to be bumpy,” he said, “But I would just point out that, again, that if not for the terrible mishandling of immigration policy by the previous administration, we would not be having to deal with this.”

At least two of the county commissioners Wednesday night said they had personal ties to the situation.

Gordon, the commission chair, told attendees that he enjoyed an “authentic Mexican meal” prepared by someone with Mexican and American citizenship, and learned how hard even that citizenship process was, just the night before. And also, he said, his brother-in-law worked as an ICE agent for decades. Once during the meeting, he called out speakers for their decorum after what he perceived as attacks on ICE agents.

Then, ahead of her vote, Gardner spoke to her own experiences with immigration as well as her family’s fear of unknown visitors coming to her home.

“I may have blue eyes, but I have a brother who has been deported. I have a sister who was a DACA child. And I had to tell my children today not to answer the door. We hear you and we understand. And we want to make this a safer place.”

The commissioner’s family emigrated from Canada.