Since August, 14% of the nearly 3,000 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests in Utah were of people agents found by coincidence, not those they were specifically looking for.
Over the same time period, the rate was 24% nationwide.
Federal government data obtained by the Deportation Data Project through Freedom of Information Act litigation now distinguishes between “targeted” and “collateral” arrests.
Eulogio Alejandre, chair of the Ogden-based Latino group LUPEC, is skeptical of ICE’s numbers.
Given what he’s heard from friends and family in Los Angeles about U.S. citizens being arrested, he suspects more than 24% of arrests nationwide are collateral, though he acknowledged that’s based on anecdotal evidence.
He said working people in Ogden are scared to go to the gas station or grocery store because they’ve heard ICE has been there.
“And of course, entertainment in the evenings, dances, quinceañeras, all of those things are not well-attended right now, because, again, the fear is that they'll be confronted by ICE at any one of those situations,” he said.
Immigrants without legal status aren’t the only ones with fears, Alejandre said. He’s taken to keeping his U.S. passport card in his wallet.
“I still carry all my documents because I don't want my life to be disrupted, even for an hour or two,” he said.
In the past, ICE has used the term "collateral" to describe people without legal status it encounters while looking for specific individuals, otherwise referred to as targets. In an email to KUER, a spokesperson wouldn’t confirm the definitions of “targeted” and “collateral” and stated that “the data, once it leaves ICE, is no longer ICE data.”
Arrests under the Ogden ICE office skewed even more toward targeted. Less than 4% were collateral. The office covers Weber, Davis, Box Elder, Cache, Rich and Daggett counties.
Collateral arrests made up a larger portion in areas under the St. George office and the Salt Lake City Docket Control Office. ICE did not answer KUER’s question about what area the docket office includes, but if it’s all the counties not covered by the three Utah sub-offices, it would include Salt Lake, Morgan, Summit and Tooele.
Even if the new numbers suggest a more intentional approach in Ogden, Alejandre doubts that it will make people feel more comfortable in public.
“The fear is already there, not necessarily from looking at numbers nationally,” he said. “It's from watching the news. It’s from the rhetoric spilled out by the people in the administration. It is not necessarily because of what is happening on the ground.”
Immigration attorney Carlos Trujillo said that Utah’s collateral arrest rate, while below the nationwide rate, is still too high.
“We're talking about people that can be arrested that don't even have a criminal record,” he said, and could be in the process of seeking asylum or obtaining a green card through marriage when ICE encounters them.
Just over half of Utah’s targeted arrests were of people who had been convicted of a crime. But only 23% of collateral arrests were of people with a conviction.
Trujillo saw this play out in the case of a client with a pending asylum case and no criminal record. He was working as a delivery driver when ICE approached him at a Walmart in Washington County.
“Just because they want the number of arrests to be high, they just take advantage of it and they do the collateral arrest,” he said.
He thinks Utah has seen fewer collateral arrests because ICE has fewer officers in the state than in other places. If a surge happens and more officers arrive, he suspects the rate would increase.
There were 4,164 ICE arrests in Utah in 2025 — nearly four times as many as in 2024. After peaking in December, arrests fell in early 2026, but they were still higher than before President Donald Trump returned to office.
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
