Weber County is ready to get paid for the time it spends helping U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
It’s been a year since ICE announced reimbursement for local agencies that contract with them. The funding was part of the so-called Big Beautiful Bill that passed in 2025.
The Weber County Commission approved its reimbursement agreement Aug. 18. Utah County approved one in May. And they may not be the only local leaders finalizing a deal: five other Utah sheriff’s offices and two police departments also participate in the programs eligible for reimbursement — the Task Force Model and Jail Enforcement Model.
Weber County Sheriff Ryan Arbon said the only thing that changes under this new contract is reimbursement from ICE.
“Operational, everything’s the same,” he said.
Two Weber County deputies are trained to enforce some immigration laws under a 287(g) agreement, he said. They have the authority to arrest people for their immigration status — a federal issue — and transfer them to ICE.
They’ve been logging how much time they spend working on behalf of ICE, and the federal government will now reimburse for that time based on the deputy’s salary, said Julie Stoddard, financial services manager at the sheriff’s office.
Time spent on immigration work is “pretty minimal,” she said. From January through July, deputies logged 236 hours, less than eight hours per week. In the last three months of 2025, it was 54 hours total.
The county plans to bill $3,387 for 2025 and $14,789 for 2026 so far, but there are no specific plans for the money, Stoddard said.
“When we've got officers out there, and they get involved in a more complicated case, obviously, they're going to have more overtime,” she said. “It just helps us offset our operating costs.”
ICE does offer bonuses for local agencies that find immigrants it’s looking for, but the county is not participating in those, Stoddard said. Sheriff Arbon said deputies are not targeting people for their immigration status.
“There's no, ‘Hey, go find this one or this one,’” he said.
Arbon stressed the department is going after people who meet certain criteria: felony illegal reentry to the United States, a prior deportation order or a criminal record — though there is some wiggle room. When a deputy contacts ICE after encountering someone whose identity they cannot confirm, the agency can request that the deputy take that person into custody.
“For us, we're looking at, is public safety, getting the criminals off the street.”
Here’s what ICE’s data shows: 39 of the 91 immigrants arrested in Ogden through the 287(g) program this fiscal year had a criminal conviction. Thirty-five had no criminal history, and the remaining 17 had pending charges.
Those numbers come from government data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by KUER.
Through a separate one-time payment under 287(g), the county received $115,000 in October 2025, Stoddard said. That included $100,000 for a vehicle and $7,500 for equipment for each of the two trained 287(g) deputies.
Arrests under 287(g) agreements appear to be a small fraction of ICE arrests in Utah. The agency recorded about 4,900 arrests in the state from Oct. 1, 2025 through Aug. 5, 2026, according to the government’s data. Six percent are listed with the apprehension method “287(g) Program.” But Ogden is, by far, the city with the most 287(g) arrests.
Almost 60% of ICE arrests in Utah this fiscal year were people already in jail or prison, according to ICE’s data.
For Arbon, the only downside to setting up reimbursement is the paperwork.
The ACLU of Utah, however, is frustrated with the program’s lack of transparency. The service agreements approved by Weber and Utah counties are generic, and they state that reimbursement rates are laid out in another document called the OF347. Attorney and immigrant rights legal fellow Molly Karasick believes the public has the right to know the details.
“So where is that form?” she said.
Counties can’t share it on their own. Utah County told KUER “the OF347 form includes a provision that requires the County to to receive approval from ICE before disclosing the record to the public.” And KUER’s records request to ICE for reimbursement agreements with Utah agencies has been pending since June 30.
Karasick is also concerned that reimbursement could offer a financial incentive for local agencies to spend more time on immigration and less time on local matters.
“We have to question whether financial incentives, not the needs of the communities, will ultimately drive how local law enforcement agencies' resources are allocated,” she said.
Then there’s the matter of what work, exactly, will be compensated.
The service agreements state that local agencies will be reimbursed for trained officers’ “time spent conducting purposeful and intentional” immigration enforcement activities. Karasick wonders how that works when deputies are not going out of their way to find people without legal status, like how Arbon describes things in Weber County.
“What is ‘purposeful and intentional?’” Karasick said. “And how can you be doing two purposefully and intentionally different jobs at the same time?”
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
