“Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”— Gandalf the Gray
If the good people of Minnesota are finally able to shake off the current invasion of thuggish federal immigration forces and return to their normal lives, it will be because of the way they have behaved in this crisis.
The protests have been peaceful. The attention has been constant. The motivation has been justice.
Utahns should be pretty good at that, too. If it comes to it.
The mayor of Salt Lake City, Erin Mendenhall, and the mayor of Moab, Joette Langianese, have made it clear that there is no appetite here for the untrained and unregulated brutes who now make up far too much of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol.
Officials in those cities, at least, have said that local law enforcement is dedicated to keeping everyone safe, and that means no cooperation with ICE.
It isn’t only the clearly unjustified killing of two Minneapolis residents — Alex Pretti and Renee Good — but also claims that federal immigration officers have the power to arrest, detain and deport anyone, even children, based on no more than having dark skin or an accent, or to enter private homes and businesses without a judicial warrant.
It is, as Mendenhall says, “scary” and “completely and utterly deplorable.”
There is some reason to hope that such widespread and blatant lawlessness will not happen in Utah, as the Trump administration has clearly targeted its brutality on states that didn’t vote for him.
If it does happen here, we should follow the example of our friends in Minnesota. Keep everything peaceful. Do not give the administration what it so clearly craves, which is more excuses to crack down, to use violence, even, as Donald Trump himself chillingly has hinted, to cancel the 2026 elections.
Utahns can display their own version of Minnesota Nice even while being bold. We have seen examples in Salt Lake City, students in the Granite School District and from locals and Sundance Film Festival-goers in Park City.
It helps that just about everyone has a video camera in their pockets to document any immigration abuses that may occur here.
It is a common teaching of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that everyone should “stand as a witness.”
In a religious sense, it means to live one’s faith at all times. But for those who live to see such times as these, it means, as the song said, “Everybody look what’s going down.”
Editorials represent the opinions of The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board, which operates independently from the newsroom.
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