2026 is on track to be a record-breaking year for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Utah. The agency made 3,467 arrests from January through July, up from 2,116 over the same period the previous year. That’s on top of a threefold increase in arrests in 2025 when President Donald Trump returned to office.
Here’s where the agency has been most active in Utah during the federal government’s current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, 2025. The data runs through Aug. 5, 2026.
Utah cities with the most ICE arrests since Oct. 1
Federal government data obtained by the Deportation Data Project includes a field for the city where each arrest took place. In Utah, West Valley City has the most arrests this fiscal year, with 793. Then come Spanish Fork, South Salt Lake, Ogden and Salt Lake City.
All of these cities have a jail or prison, except for West Valley. Many ICE arrests — 58% in Utah this fiscal year — are transfers of people who were already in custody. Since there’s no jail in town, it’s unclear where custodial arrests occurred in West Valley City.
ICE did not answer KUER’s question about it but did provide a statement.
“DHS nor ICE have verified the accuracy, methodology or the analysis of the project and its results. ICE does not provide comment about unverified sources nor comment on its alleged findings. The bottom line is that the Deportation Data Project is not accurate.”
The Deportation Data Project gets its data directly from the federal government through Freedom of Information Act requests.
Seeing West Valley City at the top of the list was no surprise to Democratic state Rep. Angela Romero, who represents parts of Salt Lake City and West Valley City. She said half of her district is Latino, and the impacts of immigration enforcement are inescapable.
“I worry about just children being able to play outside because their parents are worried about them getting picked up,” she said.
To see where ICE has been most active, KUER looked at noncustodial, or at-large, arrests. Those happen out in the community, not transfers from other law enforcement agencies.
West Valley City also has the most noncustodial ICE arrests of any Utah city, followed by Salt Lake City, St. George, Ogden and Orem.
Comunidades Unidas, an immigrant advocacy nonprofit in West Valley City, has shifted to accommodate people who don’t want to come to the office. Brianna Puga, the lead community organizer, said people weren’t showing up for regular food pickups, one of the services they offer, so they deliver now. The nonprofit’s offices are just down the street from the region’s ICE field office on Decker Lake Drive, which serves four states.
And people are getting around differently. When residents do leave home, Puga said they’re taking public transit more to avoid being pulled over for a traffic violation. She meets them in their neighborhoods and at libraries, parks and malls.
The fear isn’t new, she said. Things have been different since President Donald Trump won reelection.
“Whenever I go to Rancho Market now, it feels quiet, it feels stiff, it feels dead,” she said. “It feels like there isn't any of that cheerfulness, any of that energy anymore because we're constantly now, like, watching our backs.”
More than a quarter of those arrested have no criminal background
Since Oct. 1, 27% of ICE arrests in Utah have been of people with no criminal charges or convictions. Looking only at at-large arrests in the community, that figure is much higher: 54%. For local law enforcement working with ICE in the 287(g) program, half of arrests have been of people with no criminal background.
Being in the U.S. illegally is a civil violation, not a criminal offense.
“I feel lied to,” said Ogden activist Kim Haslam. “Because I feel like the leaders in our community keep telling us that they're just going after the worst of the worst and getting criminals off the street, and people in the community have been letting them know that is not true.”
Haslam volunteers with a group called Ogden United, which helps local immigrant families get groceries, transport kids to and from school and pay for things like flights to reunite with a deported family member.
She was recently in touch with the wife of a man whose ICE arrest angered local activists. In body camera footage of the incident, an Ogden police officer makes a call, apparently to a supervisor, and explains what happened: an ICE agent in an unmarked car asked him to pull a driver over, and the officer said no. The driver of the suspected car then flagged down the Ogden officer and said he was being followed. The officer talked with the ICE agent and told him, “I'll just walk up and talk to him. If he’s stopped, if you want to just pull up behind him and make contact with him.” The ICE agent then arrested the man.
“We've been told that people can trust OPD,” Haslam said, “but I think that video has caused a breakdown of trust.”
Rep. Romero worries people who need help won’t call the police because they’re afraid.
Haslam and other activists want clear guidelines from Ogden police on how officers interact with ICE. Mayor Ben Nadolski said during a recent city council meeting that a policy was already in the works.
Park City stands out for non-custodial arrests per capita
For community arrests per 1,000 residents, Park City tops the list. Arrests there spiked in April, in line with local news reports. That’s based on KUER’s analysis of cities with five or more noncustodial arrests.
Maggie AbuHaidar, executive director of the Wasatch Immigration Project, is skeptical that all 28 noncustodial arrests tagged with Park City actually happened within city limits — as opposed to nearby neighborhoods like Kimball Junction, which would affect the per capita figure.
“Based on my experience and having my ear on the ground, these numbers feel off to me,” she said.
Still, she said more than 70% of clients are changing their daily habits due to fears of ICE, according to a survey the Wasatch Immigration Project conducted in the spring. And two high-profile ICE operations occurred during the data’s timeframe, with about 10 people detained at each, she said.
West Valley City is second for arrests per capita, followed by Washington and St. George. Arrests in southwest Utah shot up this spring, when ICE began flying detainees through the St. George airport.
While she gets emotional speaking about ICE in her community, Romero is grateful for local activists. She doesn’t think ICE would have called off its plan to build a detention center in Salt Lake City without the protests.
“I see these people who are not from the Latino community organizing these watches, putting pressure on us as elected officials to do something, and it amazes me of the power of community,” she said.
But state lawmakers are limited in what they can do. She wants residents to keep pressuring their federal representatives to reform the immigration system and “hold the president accountable,” she said.
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
Methodology: ICE apprehension data for fiscal year 2026, obtained from the Deportation Data Project, was filtered by apprehension state to show Utah arrests. The data was arranged in a table with rows for each city and columns for each type of arrest (287(g) Program, Custodial, Non-custodial). To clean the data, entries with different spellings of the same city were combined. Per capita figures rely on July 1, 2025 population estimates from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.
