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OGDEN — Worried about the local upshot of the inflow of undocumented immigrants into the country, three Utah sheriffs have made recent forays to the U.S.-Mexico border to get first-hand accounts of what's happening there.
Weber County Sheriff Ryan Arbon, one of the three, said Utah is feeling the ripple effects of illegal immigration. Part of his aim was to get a clearer understanding of the issues factoring in the surge in the number of undocumented immigrants in the border area.
"What does happen there does impact Utah, does impact our county. We just don't know the full extent," he said Wednesday, a day after returning from a visit to the Arizona-Mexico border area. Local residents have been inundating his office with calls expressing concern over border security, he said, and he needs more and better information from federal officials to adjust to the problem.
"We have struggled working with federal agencies," Arbon said, getting too little information from federal officials about border activity.
Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith said an increased inflow of illegal fentanyl from Mexico is one of the end results of lacking border security. He's president of the Utah Sheriff's Association and traveled to the Arizona-Mexico border area in late April with Kane County Sheriff Tracy Glover, the vice president of the association.
"That's what we're seeing on the streets in our community," Smith said. "That's a direct result of the federal government's failure on the border."
Smith, pointing his finger in particular at U.S. lawmakers and policymakers, said federal officials are "falling on their face" on the issue. He suggested local law enforcement officials should be granted authority to deal with illegal immigration, which is the domain of the federal government. "At the end of the day, if they're not going to do their job, we're ready and willing to step forward," Smith said.
He referenced controversial efforts by state lawmakers in Texas to tackle illegal immigration, now the focus of a court challenge, as a potential model for action. "We know we're not a border state but we are suffering from the border crisis like everybody else," Smith said.
The visits by Arbon, Smith and Glover come amid intense scrutiny of the border situation by federal, state and local officials as well as the general public. Gov. Spencer Cox, and U.S. Reps. Burgess Owens, John Curtis and Celeste Maloy made their own visits to the border area earlier this year as apprehensions of undocumented immigrants surge and President Joe Biden faces increased criticism on the issue from GOP lawmakers.
'Every state is a border state'
Arbon and four other officials from the Weber County Sheriff's Office visited U.S. Border Patrol officials and Cochise County, Arizona, Sheriff Mark Dannels during their Arizona visit. Cochise County sits along the Mexico border. The varied meetings hit home to him that the new immigrants are coming from around the globe and that they're dispersing around the United States after entering the country, not remaining on the border.
"We do know people are coming to Utah. We know that for a fact. We just don't know how many," Arbon said. Those apparently seeking asylum are released to U.S. nongovernmental organizations after they're processed, Arbon said, and those groups help them with their subsequent adjustments to the country.
Arbon said law enforcement officials from around the country, including in Minnesota, Washington and California, have also visited Cochise County as they deal with their own inflows of apparent undocumented immigrants. "They're going to their states and they don't know why and how and all that," he said.
Among the fixes needed to address the situation, Arbon said, are improved means of vetting and processing those coming to the border to get a better handle on who they are. "We need more resources, more staffing and we need to improve the asylum process," he said.
The broader public, meanwhile, needs to understand that what happens on the U.S.-Mexico border doesn't just impact that area. "Everyone needs to recognize every state is a border state," Arbon said.
