Two deputies in the Weber County Sheriff’s Office have the authority to arrest people for their immigration status. That’s because the agency partners with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement through the Task Force Model of the 287(g) program, which gives deputies the power to enforce immigration laws once they’ve gone through some ICE training.
Still, not every unauthorized immigrant these deputies encounter is taken into custody.
Between late November and late January, 34 of the 72 immigrants without legal status that the deputies encountered were transferred to ICE. The rest were given a warning or cited for state or local charges and then released, according to data from the Weber County Sheriff’s Office.
Most of these interactions occurred at traffic stops.
“My deputy can tell you that he's pulled over many individuals that are here illegally, and we have done nothing,” said Sheriff Ryan Arbon.
Being in the U.S. illegally is a civil, not criminal, offense.
There are three main criteria for when someone is detained for ICE: if they have a deportation order, they re-entered the U.S. illegally or they have a criminal history, Arbon said.
“When we were deciding if we wanted to work with ICE, we want to know exactly what's expected out of us, and they presented us with a plan and generally a criteria that they're asking us to support them in,” he said.
He added that this lines up with the department’s priority of public safety. His deputies have arrested immigrants for things like driving a stolen motorcycle without a license or presenting fraudulent IDs. They were later transferred to ICE.
Beyond those three main criteria for ICE detention, a Weber County deputy can also take someone into custody at the agency’s request.
That’s what happened with two of immigration attorney Dan Black’s clients.
First, in December, one client was pulled over for speeding on I-15. He was charged with infractions for speeding and driving without a license, since his Mexican commercial driver’s license was not valid for his pickup truck. A county sheriff’s deputy informed him of that fact and then took him into custody on behalf of ICE.
The man entered the U.S. on a since-expired visa and is married to a U.S. citizen. Overstaying a visa does not disqualify someone from obtaining a green card through marriage.
He spent more than two weeks in detention, first in the Weber County Jail and then the Uinta County Jail in Evanston, Wyoming, before being released on bond.
KUER cannot confirm further details of his arrest because the sheriff’s office’s actions under its agreement with ICE are not covered under Utah’s public records laws.
The county’s contract with ICE requires the sheriff’s office to coordinate with ICE’s Office of Public Affairs before releasing information to the media, and information developed under the agreement falls under ICE’s control.
KUER’s requests for records from Utah Highway Patrol and ICE are still pending after more than 11 and nine weeks, respectively.
Another one of Black’s clients, also married to a U.S. citizen, was a passenger in a landscaping vehicle that a sheriff’s deputy pulled over in January. The deputy requested his identification.
Sheriff Arbon said law enforcement officers have a responsibility to know who they are interacting with, and it’s not uncommon for them to request ID from passengers who could drive the vehicle away if the driver is arrested.
“When we have somebody, we don't know who they are, and then ICE, we’ll call up ICE and say, ‘This is what we got,’” he said. “They have their files, and then we rely on the information they share with us of how to handle them.”
In this man’s case, ICE wanted him.
“If this was solely us, we wouldn't have done anything,” Arbon said. “But when we're checking for someone's status, and then they put a detainer on there, then we honor those detainers.”
The man was taken to the ICE office in Ogden for processing and then transferred to the Weber County Jail. Between there and a detention center outside Las Vegas, he spent about two weeks in custody.
KUER’s request for Weber County Sheriff’s Office records relating to the man’s traffic stop and his booking into the jail was denied.
His attorney, Dan Black, did share the ICE arrest document with KUER. It states that the Weber County Sheriff’s deputy initiated a field investigation and determined that Black’s client was in violation of immigration law, and that the man’s criminal history checks were negative.
Both clients were released from ICE custody after paying the bond. To get a green card, they must go through a backlogged immigration court instead of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Arbon stressed that his deputies only make immigration arrests of people they encounter during regular law enforcement.
“None of our staff are out actually participating in warrant-type work or raids or sweeps, anything like that,” he said.
But Black sees the deputies as operating more like ICE agents. Speeding and driving without a license do go against public safety, he said, and that’s why police and courts exist.
“It's not about getting them off the streets because they're speeding. They're getting taken off the streets and detained for weeks for immigration,” he said.
For his client, who was the passenger in a work vehicle, there was no public safety benefit, Black said.
“There was no law enforcement action that needed to happen there. The only purpose was to turn him over to ICE.”
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
Produced with assistance from the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
