After 15 years, do Utah Compact principles on immigration and policing still hold true?

MOAB — Utah's county police departments are back in the middle of the debate on immigration as the Trump administration pushes ahead to carry out mass deportations.

In 2010, local law enforcers found themselves in a similar position, when Arizona developed a hardline approach to immigration. Utah went in a different direction, acting in line with the Utah Compact, a set of guiding principles seen as more compassionate and cautious.

The compact stated "local law enforcement resources should focus on criminal activity, not civil violations of federal code." Fifteen years later, the KSL Investigators asked some of the state's local law enforcers whether that principle still rings true today.

Fear and reassurance

Moab Police Chief Lex Bell posted a message to his community in February letting them know his department is focused on the safety of all community members, regardless of immigration status.

Bell told KSL he sent the message after learning from the Moab Valley Multicultural Center — where he and his officers play a weekly game of soccer with kids and teenagers — that some residents were anxious.

"It kind of broke my heart to hear that they were afraid now, or that anyone was afraid to call us for help," Bell said.

Rhiana Medina, the center's executive director, said the police department's message was reassuring.

"We get people coming in and asking questions, or you know, expressing that they are afraid," Medina said.

In a tight-knit town that welcomes visitors from all over the world, Bell said fear of even contacting or cooperating with police hurts everyone's safety.

"If we don't have people willing to be witnesses, then there are going to be some really bad people that get away with some bad things," Bell said.

Varied perceptions

Reaction to Bell's post online was mixed, and a recent Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll, conducted by HarrisX in February, also reflects a split.

In the survey of 805 registered voters, 48% said undocumented immigration made their community less safe, while 31% said it had no impact and 9% said it made their area more safe.

The KSL Investigators surveyed every county jail in Utah. Twenty-one of 25 responded, with six identifying undocumented Utahns in their jail. Iron County recorded the most, at seven.

Data from the Utah Department of Corrections indicates unauthorized immigrants make up 5% of the prison population. That's consistent with what KSL reported back in 2010.

How does that compare to overall population figures in Utah? It's hard to say exactly. The Center for Migration Studies estimated about 100,000 undocumented immigrants made up about 3% of the state's population as of 2022, according to the most recent data available.

Of that group, the majority came from Mexico (60%), followed by Venezuela (8.7%) and Guatemala (4.5%).

Studying incarceration rates across the country, the National Bureau of Economic Research reports that immigrants were 60% less likely to be incarcerated than those born here.

In the day-to-day work of policing, Moab Police Sgt. Monty Risenhoover told KSL that immigration status isn't his focus.

"I don't believe it's ever a question I've asked anyone," Risenhoover said. "It's not really relevant in the moment."

That's consistent with the Utah Compact's guidance for local law enforcement to focus on criminal violations, not civil ones.

But not everyone agrees with that approach. Asked whether Utah law enforcement should help deport immigrants whose only infraction was crossing the border without documentation, 56% of voters surveyed in the Deseret News/Hinckley poll said yes.

New law, old practice

This year, the Legislature passed a law requiring sheriffs and corrections officials to "notify and coordinate with the relevant federal immigration authority" before releasing undocumented immigrants serving sentences for serious crimes.

Tracy Glover, president of the Utah Sheriffs' Association, told KSL that "in Kane County, it literally won't change anything."

Glover has talked to sheriffs across the state about jail operations and told KSL that notifying federal authorities is already common practice.

"I've not found a jail that hasn't been making notifications," Glover said.

Utah's Bureau of Criminal Identification already makes a "redundant notification" as well, he said, after taking fingerprints.

But that doesn't mean they're proactively searching for immigration violations.

"I don't want people to think we're out doing sweeps or roundups or those kind of things," Glover said. "That's not really our job."

One sheriff's office in Utah is making immigration enforcement a bigger part of its job. Washington County is partnering with ICE to identify "removable aliens" in its jail and assign deputies to a task force. Washington County Sheriff's Sgt. Lucas Alfred told KSL the plans are still taking shape.

Utah sheriffs and ICE haven't always seen eye to eye.

ICE angered state leaders and sheriffs when it designated Utah a "sanctuary state" in 2023, citing sheriffs' "non-detention" policies after Cache, Utah and Washington counties ended contracts to hold civil detainees with federal immigration cases.

Gov. Spencer Cox and the sheriffs' association shot down the "sanctuary state" designation, with the sheriffs saying they dissolved the partnership because Biden administration ICE standards were too strict and the threat of lawsuits from watchdog groups was too great.

"We had a lot of roadblocks with that," Glover told KSL. "The political environment is what it is. We can't affect that too much. We need to be as steady as we can be in law enforcement."

He and Bell said that steadiness is key as law enforcers across the state balance their official duties with maintaining the community's trust.

"There's no room for people to be afraid to contact us for help," Bell said.

Contributing: Emiley Morgan Dewey

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