To soothe the fears of Cache County residents, Logan City Councilman Ernesto Lopez collaborated with the Logan City Police Department and the Cache County Sheriff’s Office to hold a Q&A session discussing the organizations’ relationships with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The event panel included the Logan City Police Department’s chief, Jeff Simmons, and Cache County Sheriff Chad Jensen. Over 60 people attended.
Simmons highlighted Logan City police’s disconnect with ICE.
“Logan City police and most city departments around the state — we are operating exactly as we have for many, many years," he said. "Despite what happens at the national level, our focus is on public safety, and that is our work, and we're plenty busy doing the normal work that we do without having to get into immigration. So that being said, Logan City police has no authority to enforce immigration law … nor do we want that power at all.”
Jensen, on the other hand, explained the Sheriff’s Office is and has been working with ICE for years.
“We always have worked with immigration on different things," Jensen said. "It's just more vocal now, I think, in the news.”
Both law enforcement officers explained they have no power to stop ICE from coming into Cache County, but that ICE has contacted them before arriving both times it has made arrests.
Jensen further explained that ICE does not have the resources to arrest all immigrants in Cache County, as the jails do not have the capacity. Instead, its focus is on what Jensen describes as “very targeted criminals.”
“ICE has to be very targeted on what they're doing, on who they're going after," Jensen said, "because there's not capacity in the state of Utah for them to do very much work outside of very targeted criminals.”
Throughout these statements, volunteers handed out and collected question sheets to audience members, many of which addressed Jensen’s signing of a memorandum of understanding to participate in ICE’s Warrant Service Officer Program.
“The only thing that changed from what we are currently doing, have been doing for my entire career, is my staff — if they're ever trained by ICE, which we haven't seen the training yet ... can do the investigation," Jensen said. "They can get into the federal database to determine somebody's immigration status. Just because we can do the homework does not mean my staff can do anything with immigration law.”
Simmons and Jensen concluded by telling the audience their main priority: victims.
“I don't care about anybody's immigration status," Jensen said. "I care about victims, and that's my only concern, is victims.”
“The most important thing to know is, we want victims and witnesses of crimes to be safe when they call Logan City PD," Simmons said. "Immigration status will not be asked for or shared when you try to seek help.”
