http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/193275/4/

Friday, September 15, 2006
Immigration office gets more authority, resources

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ALAN CHOATE - Daily Herald
An upgrade in status for Utah's immigration enforcement office should make detaining and deporting illegal immigrants easier and more efficient, officials said Thursday.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Utah, known as the Salt Lake City Detention and Removal Office, is being elevated to a "field office directorate" with authority over immigration cases in Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Montana.

The office is currently under the ICE directorate in San Francisco.

Department spokeswoman Jamie Zuieback called the change a "natural progression" as ICE seeks to beef up immigration enforcement.

"We're constantly looking for ways to improve on operations," she said. "By having a field office director who is a senior law enforcement officer, who reports to Washington, D.C., we're hoping to increase our efficiency and effectiveness."

She said the decision should become final in about a month, and that a timeline for establishing the office hasn't been determined.

The field office director would report directly to officials in Washington, D.C., removing a layer of administration and bringing more decision-making power to the region.

"A Salt Lake FOD will give our enforcement officers a streamlined reporting chain that lets them coordinate directly with ICE headquarters in Washington," said U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, in a statement announcing the change. It will also mean more enforcement personnel as the office expands.

The administrative designation is expected to have real-life effects, said Melodie Rydalch, spokeswoman for the Utah U.S. Attorney's Office.

"Immigration is a big priority in this office," she said. "Anything that makes the process work smoother -- which I think this will -- it takes away the level of having another office in another state overseeing us.

"We do have great ICE employees here now and a great working relationship. It's going to take a very good working relationship and make it better."

Hatch's statement said the change is based on "office workload, demographics, geography and statistics," although the numbers behind the decision weren't made available Thursday.

Rydalch said the prosecution in Utah of "aggravated re-entry" cases likely contributed to the decision.

Those cases involve people who enter the country illegally, commit a felony-level crime, are deported -- and then enter the country illegally again and commit another crime.

"A lot of them are violent criminals. They prey on other members of the ethnic community as well as other people in the state," Rydalch said. The U.S. Attorney's Office works closely with immigration officers and local law enforcement agencies to close those cases.

There have been 167 of the cases this year. There were 267 aggravated re-entry cases in 2005, 220 in 2004 and 200 in 2003, Rydalch said. Many other types of immigration offenses are prosecuted as well, but there's been a special focus on these cases.

"That's where we've concentrated our resources," she said. "We feel like we filled up a federal prison with those defendants in the last eight years."

In addition to the Salt Lake City ICE office, immigration officers are stationed in Provo, Ogden and St. George, Zuieback said. ICE is a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.