In The News
ICE enforcement in a small Utah town sent a community into fear. Local police played a key role.
The Salt Lake Tribune, by Samantha Moilanen, Oct. 4, 2026.
In the small agricultural town of Moroni, the turkey-processing plant has been part of daily life for more than 85 years.
The facility, one of the largest employers in Sanpete County, has helped support generations of families in the town of about 1,500 people. Today, it operates under the Norbest name as part of Pitman Farms, which bought Norbest in 2018.
So when workers finished their shifts late Wednesday night and reported seeing immigration agents stopping people outside the plant, word quickly spread through the community.
US Supreme Court allows Trump to resume deportations outside immigrants’ home countries
Utah News Dispatch, by Ariana Figueroa, Sept. 29, 2026.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday granted, for now, the Trump administration’s request to continue rapid third-country deportation of immigrants to countries not their own.
The decision will allow the Trump administration to carry out its aggressive deportation method of quickly removing immigrants to one of the countries — some with human rights concerns — the administration has agreements with to take third-country removals from the United States.
The high court will hear oral arguments in December, and directed the parties to answer several questions including if the district court has jurisdiction over the issue, if the lower court can deliver classwide relief and whether the Trump administration’s rapid third-country removal policy is lawful. Tuesday’s order will remain in effect until the justices reach a decision in the case.
‘They disappear’: ICE shuttles Utah detainees all over the country. Finding them can take days.
The Salt Lake Tribune, by Andy Larsen and Jose Davila IV, Sept. 28, 2026.
One Utahn who was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Salt Lake City was first taken to Wyoming, then Nevada, California, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi before finally landing in Guatemala.
Another was picked up in West Valley City and moved 19 times before eventually being released.
Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, ICE has arrested and detained more than 7,400 people in Utah — about the population of Nephi. And almost 95% of those people were later moved to detention facilities out of state, according to early August numbers from the Deportation Data Project.
Venezuelan men shipped to brutal prison under Alien Enemies Act ask court for due process
Utah News Dispatch, by Ariana Figueroa, Sept. 25, 2026.
WASHINGTON — An appeals panel Friday seemed inclined to agree that more than 100 Venezuelan men the Trump administration sent to a brutal prison in El Salvador are entitled to due process hearings to challenge their removal, which was made under an archaic 18th-century wartime law.
Arguing on behalf of the class of men who were removed under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, Lee Gelernt of the American Civil Liberties Union told the three-judge panel that the men, who were accused of being suspected members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, were entitled to hearings to challenge those accusations.
But instead, Gelernt said, the men were denied their due process rights and spent four months in a brutal Salvadoran prison.
Utah among top 10 states for rate of ICE arrests
The Salt Lake Tribune, by Addy Baird , Sept. 12, 2026.
Utah had the ninth-highest immigrant arrest rate in the country from the fall of 2022 to this spring, ranking above New York and California in a new study.
From October 2022 through March 2026, Immigration and Customs Enforcement made 7,817 arrests in Utah and averaged six arrests per day, according to the study done by a group of immigration lawyers and based on data from the University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project.
“Immigrant communities across Salt Lake City, Provo, and the agricultural valleys of the west have sustained industries from construction and mining to food processing and hospitality for generations,” attorneys from The Mendoza Law Firm who worked on the study wrote.
Salvadorans await word on protected status as midnight deadline approaches
Utah News Dispatch, by Ariana Figueroa, Sept. 9, 2026.
WASHINGTON — Temporary protected status for 170,000 Salvadorans is set to expire at midnight Wednesday, but the Department of Homeland Security said protections will remain in place until the Trump administration makes a decision to extend or terminate El Salvador’s designation, in place since 2001.
“An announcement on El Salvador’s TPS will be made at the appropriate time,” a DHS spokesperson said in an email to States Newsroom. “Until such announcement is made, Salvadoran individuals present in the U.S. under TPS retain protection.”
Based on the temporary protected status statute, if a determination to extend or terminate a country’s protections is not made by the government by the expiration of the deadline, then TPS is automatically extended for six months.
These northern Utah cities have seen the most ICE arrests under Trump
The Salt Lake Tribune, by Andy Larsen, Sept. 6, 2026.
How have the activities of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) changed in northern Utah since President Donald Trump took office?
Significantly.
In northern Utah, ICE is averaging more than 10 arrests per day since Trump’s second inauguration, more than 300 per month. That’s nearly three times ICE’s arrest count during the last two years of the Biden administration, when ICE averaged 2.5 arrests per day, or 76 per month.
That’s one of the conclusions we can draw from the Deportation Data Project, which released new data on the subject late last month. The DDP, from the University of California, Berkeley, is a well-regarded research project that relies on federal Freedom of Information Act public records requests to track every immigration-related arrest, detention, and deportation that ICE undertakes. These records span from October 2022 through Aug. 5, 2026.
The Salt Lake Tribune, by Courtney Tanner, March 18, 2026.
The University of Utah’s top cop says he does “not want our department to participate” in any federal immigration enforcement on campus.
There are no such operations planned or expected at this time, Chief Safety Officer Keith Squires told the U.’s board of trustees last week. He is in regular communication with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s regional directors, who have said they won’t be conducting enforcement at Utah’s public universities or colleges.
But if that were to change, Squires said, he doesn’t want the U.’s campus police department to be deputized to assist — something other city and county law enforcement agencies in throughout the state have agreed to.
“University police have not and do not intend to engage in federal immigration enforcement,” Squires said. “We have not been requested to, and I do not want our department to participate.”