People of various faiths can agree with Catholic bishops in Wyoming and Utah who oppose construction of a detention center in Evanston, Wyo., to house immigrants detained in the Salt Lake Valley.
In October of 1856, President Brigham Young implored members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake to go “to the rescue” of fellow church members who were struggling and dying in early winter conditions on the cold highlands of Wyoming.
Young said, “Many of our brethren and sisters are on the plains with hand-carts, … and they must be brought here. … Go and bring in those people now on the plains, and attend strictly to those things which we call temporal, … otherwise your faith will be in vain.”
Church members courageously followed that admonition and went “to the rescue” of the stranded Latter-day Saints in Wyoming and brought many of them to safety in Salt Lake City.
Today, some people want to do the reverse by sending immigrants from Salt Lake to a prison in Wyoming. This will happen under a plan to build a federally funded, privately contracted detention center in Evanston for immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the Salt Lake area.
Early Latter-day Saints rescued immigrants struggling in Wyoming and brought them to safety in Salt Lake. Now our government wants to break up immigrant families in Salt Lake and send them to struggle in Wyoming.
Recently, leaders of the church stated it is “with great concern and compassion that we observe the plight of more than 70 million people around the world who have fled their homes seeking relief from violence, war, or religious persecution.” And they encourage us all (church members and friends) to “create welcoming communities” for these immigrants.
We should be supporting immigrants, who are seeking a better life in Utah, just as early settlers helped the immigrants on the plains of Wyoming in 1856.
Let’s go “to the rescue” of our immigrant neighbors by rejecting this effort to build an immigrant detention center in Evanston, or anywhere else. To become involved and to voice your concerns go to keepfamiliestogetherut.org.
Marc Coles-Ritchie
Marc Coles-Ritchie lives in Salt Lake City with his family. He is a vegetation ecologist and works for conservation of public lands in Utah.