What began with immigration agents spotted near a turkey processing plant in a small central Utah town last week ended with five people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a community gripped by fear, with some residents afraid to leave their homes or let their children go to school.

The agents were riding along with North Valley Police Department officers during routine traffic stops. The department has a task force model 287(g) agreement with ICE that it signed on Aug. 4.

Now, after the detentions rattled the tight-knit community, Police Chief Steve Gray says the department is reevaluating that agreement, and apologized for the fear that it caused.

“I feel for the people who felt they could not send their kids to school or go to work to provide for their families, and I promise you I never wanted that to happen,” Gray wrote in a statement on Facebook posted Wednesday. Gray added that he will work hard to “tell our citizens we are there to protect them and serve them.”

Gray declined to elaborate on the arrests or his statements beyond what he wrote in the post.

The night of the arrests

The detentions and traffic stops, Gray said, mostly unfolded over five hours on Sept. 30 across three Sanpete County towns — Moroni, Mount Pleasant and Fountain Green.

Officers are required to go through a training course under the agreement, Gray said.

As part of that training, ICE had contacted the department to request “ride-alongs” so agents could demonstrate how the program works, Gray said. Federal agents arrived around 6 p.m., Gray said, and tagged along with three patrol officers who were told to conduct traffic stops and respond to calls.

Although no businesses, including the turkey plant, were targeted, Gray said most stops happened along Main Street in Moroni and near the plant.

Officers pulled drivers over for traffic violations, Deputy Chief Logan Ludvigson said, such as speeding or having a headlight or license plate light out. Some drivers received citations and others got warnings, Gray said. During the stops, ICE agents made the arrests.

Gray said he does not know why the five people were detained or where they were taken after ICE agents assumed custody. They had been temporarily held at the police department until agents were done tagging along on traffic stops, he said.

ICE agents have since left Sanpete County, though Gray said this was not their first visit and likely will not be their last.

“A lot of times we are not aware they have been down or have knowledge of any detentions,” Gray wrote.

The next day, Gray said his officers told him “certain tactics” ICE agents used during the stops, investigations and detentions did not align with department “values, policies and procedures.”

That is why, Gray said, the department is reviewing its agreement with ICE and does not anticipate moving forward with it.

The department’s agreement with ICE

The department, along with the Gunnison Valley Police Department, also in Sanpete County, signed 287(g) task force model agreements with ICE in August.

They are two of only three police departments in Utah with this type of agreement; Riverton has had its agreement since August 2025.

The task force model is the most intensive of ICE’s 287(g) agreements. It allows designated local officers to investigate and make immigration arrests as part of their regular police duties, including during traffic stops.

Participating in the program, Gray said, opens up access to federal funds. These payouts, The Wall Street Journal reported, can help fund police cars, equipment and overtime pay, making it enticing for small departments to jump on board.

Gray, however, said North Valley police have not received any federal funding through the program and will not seek any in the future.

In his post, Gray claimed that state law prohibited his deputized officers from checking people’s immigration status prior to arresting them, that those officers didn’t have access to immigration-related records and that they couldn’t detain people for immigration violations, anyway.

“It was always our intention and never otherwise that our involvement would be after a legal physical arrest” for a crime outlined under state law, Gray wrote. Officers would then take that person to jail and contact ICE “if applicable,” he said.

The agreement between the department and ICE doesn’t seem to be publicly available. But similar task force agreements between ICE and other Utah law enforcement agencies do give deputized officers the power to arrest people they believe are in violation of immigration law in a variety of cases.

State law also says that law enforcement officers “may attempt to verify the immigration status” of an individual prior to arrest in some cases.

As for access to records, both the National Immigration Law Center and the American Immigration Council report that 287(g) officers can access federal law enforcement databases for immigration information.