During a Thursday PBS news conference, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said that the Biden administration had let Americans down “at every turn” when it came to immigration law enforcement.
In line with what the Deseret News had already reported, Cox said that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement doesn’t send all illegal immigrants who break state law to Nevada detention camps. Instead, some of them are let back into society.
The state could hold these “lawbreakers” longer than the criminal justice system allows, giving ICE time to start the deportation process. However, Cox said, “The Biden administration has put these rules in place that make it impossible for our jails to do that.” “It is very frustrating, and so is it for our sheriffs.”
Do people who break the law in Utah get locked up?
The Deseret News reports that immigrants in the country illegally who are caught on criminal charges are held in Utah jails and go through the state’s justice system just like any other criminal.
“We are holding migrants who come here illegally and break the law,” Cox said.
Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement is told before criminals who are in the country illegally are let go. After being freed, the migrants are given to ICE agents, who are supposed to take them to official detention camps.
But, as the Deseret News previously reported, there aren’t any ICE detention centers in Utah because the Biden administration makes it hard to hold inmates. Cox said that ICE offices in Utah, Idaho, and Montana reach holding centers in southern Nevada that house people being detained by ICE.
The federal government should take these illegal immigrants and lawbreakers back to the prisons where they are being held so that they can be processed, Cox said.
But that hasn’t always been the case, which is why the Salt Lake City Field Office quickly took back a memo that called Utah a sanctuary state last year. This is something that many political candidates have said, including state Rep. Phil Lyman, R-Blanding, Cox’s primary opponent.
Why doesn’t Utah have an ICE holding Center?
Cox said that Utah officials have offered to let Immigration and Customs Enforcement rent a number of buildings so that they can properly process people who come to the state illegally and break the law.
“We’d love to have a place to hold people here.” “And we’ve made a number of offers to make that easier so there isn’t this transportation backlog,” Cox said. “And they were not interested in our offers.” I think they like the problem and like making it worse, which is a shame. And that is very upsetting.
He talked to people from the Department of Public Safety, the sheriff’s union, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and even the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, and said, “We’re getting to a better place.”
Cox said that the agency needs more money to police U.S. immigration law, but that “they could do more with the money they have in hand.”
Cox said, “The federal government is failing this country at every turn when it comes to border security, processing illegal immigrants, and deporting people who have broken the law.” “And it’s not just in Utah.” Every state has it going on.
