"WE OPPOSE ILLIGAL IMMIGRATION AND ALL FORMS OF AMNESTY, OR LEGAL STATUS, FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS"

The federal government’s failed policies and inability to protect our country’s border is causing upheaval and strain on states across the nation, including Utah. We are being forced to deal with the public safety, financial and humanitarian consequences of President Biden's failure to enforce immigration law. The result is that over two-thirds of captured illegal aliens are released back into our community here in Utah.

The Biden administration continues to make detention of illegal aliens difficult or impossible for local authorities to handle. Several federal agency's tactics are designed to discourage local jails from cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) threatening the public safety of all people living in Utah.

ICE’s detention standards have become more absurd as a reaction to multiple lawsuits filed by many anti-enforcement groups. The Biden Administration’s response has been more stringent federal standards for ICE “detainees.” Whether intended or not, the consequences of these standards are that they cannot be met by our county jails.

The Biden Administration claim's the Sheriffs don't cooperate with ICE, but in reality, our jail facilities are designed for local law enforcement needs not hotel space with room service for illegal aliens. Look, there are no front and side entrances or barber shops or even nighttime creams available before bedtime, so we don't qualify to house ICE "detainees"...and this is what the Biden Administration calls being "uncooperative." And according to the Biden Administration, this is why we are a sanctuary state. Got it?

The challenge to our Sheriff’s cooperation is that any jail space provided for these “detainees”, is subject to audits conducted by multiple dysfunctional federal agencies like ICE’s Office of Detention Oversight (ODO), the DHS Office of Inspector General, DHS’s Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Office (CRCL), and DHS’s new Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman (OIDO).

These offices do not coordinate their visits and, as a result, inundate the jail space making it harder for our county jail to serve the public safety needs of local taxpayers. And now there’s even talk that more inspections and audits are needed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Of course, anything to keep the problem festering.

Egads! 

Legislators from Utah recently erupted over an internal letter written by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Field Office Director (FOD) for the Salt Lake City office, in which the FOD designated Utah a sanctuary state. WHAT! In the letter, the FOD explained to his superiors at ICE headquarters that his officers were encountering serious restrictions on their ability to carry out federal law in Utah due to “terminations of intergovernmental service agreements" with ICE by several Sheriff’s offices in Utah. Apparently carrying out federal law requires our Jails to accommodate hotel guests. NOT!  

Bottom line, ICE is unable to take custody of many illegal aliens arrested by local law enforcement due to a lack of detention space created by their own unrealistic standards. And they will continue to lose detention space from local Utah jails as DHS demands grow more out of hand.

The release of illegal aliens is the goal of the anti-enforcement crowd, and it seems to be the goal of the this administration. It's time for our Republican elected officials to protect our public safety while enforcing the principles within our Party Platform. ​