Following a request from the Department of Defense, the Utah National Guard is asking for volunteers to support the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The request came earlier this week, said Lt. Col. Chris Kroeber, public affairs officer for the Utah National Guard.
The email seeking volunteers was sent to guardsmen Aug. 21.
The details of the mission are still to come, Kroeber said. But the guard would support local agencies through administrative roles such as transportation, fingerprinting and data entry.
This lines up with what Gov. Spencer Cox had to say at his August monthly news conference.
“What we've said from the very beginning is this: that we are willing to work to support the efforts to remove people who are here illegally,” he said, but with some caveats, including that it would be only a support role.
“Our National Guard will not be putting hands on people, will not be arresting people. That is not the role of the National Guard, and we would not allow that to happen,” Cox said.
The second condition, the governor said, “is that the federal government has to pay for this, that it can't come out of state funding.” Transportation, which he said takes lots of time away from federal agents, is one area where the state has offered to help in the past.
It remains to be seen exactly which agencies the guard would work with, Kroeber said.
“Until we get actual orders and get a little bit further into the planning of this, we don't have those types of details to know exactly who we're supporting.”
Kroeber expects the work to start mid-September, although a date hasn’t been set yet, and run until about mid-November.
The guard is waiting to see how many people sign up after emailing its Utah members. They’re not sure exactly how many troops they need, but he said they don’t typically have a hard time getting volunteers. By Monday, the guard should have some idea of how many have volunteered, Kroeber noted. Details of the work, including where guardsmen will be and what uniforms they will wear, remain to be determined.
“We don't go into any mission without quite a bit more understanding of what the mission is,” Kroeber said. “And so that's just what we're doing right now, is in the process of figuring that out.”
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
