Utah County Sheriff's Office ends agreement to house convicted undocumented residents




The Utah County Board of Commissioners recently approved the Utah County Sheriff’s Office request to terminate a long-standing agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The agreement, which began informally as early as 1993, allowed ICE to house convicted undocumented residents at the Utah County Jail after guilty dispositions. According to Mike Forshee, undersheriff of the Utah County Sheriff’s Office, the undocumented residents came from Utah, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

For many convicted undocumented residents, deportation is a part of their sentence. But they can appeal their deportation if they are married to a U.S. citizen, seek asylum or believe that they will be harmed in any way after being deported from the United States.


But while they await their hearings, they are housed at the Utah County Jail, which is quickly running out of room to house them.

“It’s just gotten to the point that they’re roughly 20-25 percent of our jail population,” Forshee said.

Last week, 310 convicted undocumented residents were housed at the jail, nearly a third of the approved population cap of 1,100.

In the agreement, ICE has reimbursed the county jail for operating costs, which Forshee said has helped local taxpayers avoid substantial tax bonds.

But if the ICE agreement were to continue, Forshee said a new facility would be necessary within a few years.

“We either need to build a new jail in two years, or we do away with this (the agreement) and we don’t have to do a significant bond for five or six years,” he said.

Not housing 300 undocumented convicts from across the region will ease the strain on the staff, facilities and county as a whole, Forshee said.


“We’re not mad with ICE. We’re just trying to do the right thing for the taxpayers who are really funding it,” he said.

The Utah County Sheriff’s Office submitted a 120-day notice to ICE last week after the termination was approved. During that time, those detained by ICE will be slowly phased to other ICE-contracted facilities.

“I don’t expect a bus to show up here and take 200 people out of here,” Forshee said. “That’s not going to happen.”

Carl Rusnok, regional director of communications for ICE, said other alternatives are being evaluated to meet the deadline.

“ICE has enjoyed a cooperative agreement with Utah County to house ICE detainees at the Utah County Jail,” Rusnok said in an email. “All efforts will be made to remove the ICE detainees from the facility within the 120-day contractual deadline.”

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