Gov. Spencer Cox speaks with reporters during a news conference in Salt Lake City, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (Pool photo by Chris Samuels/The Salt Lake Tribune)
About 20 days after Donald Trump was elected as the next president, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox unveiled his intent to back federal deportation plans with state resources, releasing a set of priorities to help deport undocumented immigrants who commit crimes.
While the governor hasn’t shared many details on what the effort would look like in Utah, Cox reiterated Thursday during his monthly news conference broadcast by PBS Utah that deportations could start with a focus on those who have broken the law while living in the state.
“We’re going to start with criminals, people who are breaking the law and causing harm to America. That’s where we have to start. Let’s get the worst element out. Let’s focus there. That’s something we haven’t been able to do, and the backlog is ridiculous,” Cox said.
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When speaking of undocumented immigrants, the definition of who is a “criminal” has been unclear since Cox first announced his deportation plans. Some Utah residents have asked whether crossing the border illegally would itself constitute a crime, leaving some foreign-born Utahns worried about their future in the state.
“That’s not where our focus is,” Cox said. “Our focus right now is on those who are committing other crimes.”
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And that includes any type of crime, violent or not violent, he said.
“If you commit crimes, yes, yeah, yeah, if you commit crimes, I don’t care if they’re violent or nonviolent. Yes. You should not be here,” he said. “You shouldn’t have been here in the first place.”
Cox’s initial statements in support of deportation drew criticism from immigrant advocacy groups in Utah, such as Comunidades Unidas, which said these types of efforts “threaten to further marginalize and dehumanize the broader immigrant community.”
Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla and House Minority Leader Angela Romero, both Democrats representing Salt Lake City, also condemned the governor’s November statements at the time, saying it could equate immigration with criminality.
“While we all want to hold criminals accountable and ensure public safety, this approach risks creating fear and misrepresenting undocumented individuals, many of whom contribute significantly to Utah’s economy, culture, and workforce,” the legislators said in a statement. “In these conversations, we must distinguish between those who commit crimes and those seeking better lives for themselves and their families.”
Currently there are more than 200 migrants held for all types of crimes in the state, Cox said. In his November statement he said that those immigrants make up 4.6% of Utah’s prison population, costing the state nearly $16 million per year.
The Utah Department of Public Safety will handle the state’s deportation plans, Cox said, potentially with some help from the National Guard.
However, Cox said Thursday he doesn’t have details yet on what deportation efforts will look like under the new Trump administration. While the incoming president has made big promises on ambitious deportation plans, Cox hasn’t been part of any discussions about the steps moving forward.
“We’re very anxious to get Gov. (Kristi) Noem appointed and confirmed,” he said of his South Dakota counterpart, who is Trump’s pick for Homeland Security secretary. “So that we can start down this path. This is something we’ve been wanting to do for years.”
With U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) being so “broken,” Cox doesn’t foresee mass deportations happening anytime soon, calling a scenario in which 20 million people are deported “not logistically possible right now.”
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“They can’t even take 100 criminals, serious criminals, in this state and deport them. ICE has been broken in this state, for this leadership has been an embarrassment,” he said. “The sheriffs in our state have lost faith in ICE leadership in our state under the Biden administration.”
The governor said there have been countless examples of ICE sending migrants to Utah even if the immigrants haven’t requested to come to the state. It’s a claim that an ICE official denied earlier this year.
“They’ve lied about transportation. They’ve lied to us about bed space. We’ve offered fixes, we provided them facilities to lock up these criminals and they won’t negotiate. They won’t return calls. They lie about Utah being a sanctuary state,” Cox said on Thursday. “The ICE leadership in Utah has been embarrassing.”
However, while some Republicans wish to see even more restrictions on legal immigration, Cox is not part of that group.
“I want to be very clear about this. We care about those who have come here legally. It’s really important that we fix legal immigration,” he said.
This position isn’t anything new for Cox. And it isn’t just a Republican talking point, he said.
“My friends on the left are saying the exact same thing,” Cox said. “It’s been remarkable to see the transition that’s happened in the Democratic Party, to hear governors in blue states saying the same things we’ve been saying for a long time.”
The issue isn’t about Latino communities either, he said, as there are “people, dangerous elements who have come from the Middle East, dangerous elements who have come from China,” he said. “So this isn’t just about the Latino community. It is about law and order.”
“We just haven’t had an administration or an ICE leadership that has been willing to do the hard work,” he said of the Biden administration.
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