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-Land of the Free

Utah Is a Sanctuary State, but One Leader Is (Finally) Standing Up for the Law

2023-10-25

[RedState] There’s a saying among the faithful here in Utah, that we believe in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law – and we do!

Well, sort of.

In May, it was revealed that Utah had become an unofficial sanctuary state by the regional office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement – ICE, for anyone who’s been under a rock the last eight years – because “non-detention policies have compromised the Salt Lake City Field Office’s ability to support the U.S. Border Patrol and their efforts to stem the current border surge.”

Usually, sanctuary status is announced proudly by liberal mayors before they go home to their gated communities. But this one slipped under the radar in Utah – known as so reliably conservative for so long that we’re the only state where Bill Clinton came in third.

While the sanctuary status designation is news, our misguided leniency is itself not.

Illegal immigrants have been able to get driver's licenses here since 2005. In 2011, the legislature amended state code to grant work permits to them, and this year the legislature made it easier for companies to hire them by increasing the legal threshold for E-Verify from 15 employees to 150. The children of illegal immigrants have had access to in-state tuition since 2002, and this year state Sen. Luz Escamilla made sure they could get free health care too.

Now although the ICE memo was blasted to many state leaders, none of them responded until Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs brought the issue up earlier this month. Among the (many) problems on which Staggs has raised the alarm is that apparently one or two sexual assaults in Utah are committed every day by illegal immigrants.

But the good news there for sex criminals is that the state lowered the maximum penalty for Class A misdemeanors in 2019, making it harder to deport people whose first encounter with the United States was to break our laws (rather than – again – obey, honor, and sustain them).

Our embarrassingly liberal Gov. Spencer Cox has been quick to claim that “Utah has never been, and under my ‘leadership,’ will never become a sanctuary state for illegal immigration” (quotation marks added). But Cox has been very vocal about wanting to flood Utah with as many immigrants as possible regardless of the fact that under his “leadership,” Utah has become worst in the nation for housing affordability.

And instead of helping, our state’s corrupt, real estate developer-led legislature benefits doubly from the surge in illegal immigrants, on the one hand employing them to cheaply build over-priced, high-density housing projects then again stuff them in as tenants.

While most of Utah is still Utah, the Salt Lake Valley has become an unrecognizable mini-Los Angeles.

Those of us who have been watching from the sidelines were grateful to see Staggs’s leadership on this issue – rather than continue to let bad people exploit our kind-heartedness. He is currently running for the US Senate seat vacated by Mitt Romney, but Utah’s least-favorite son is still doing his best to pollute our elections. If Staggs can win the prominence that comes with a victorious Senate election, he might be able to turn things around.

Posted by:Skidmark

#3 Big City SLC will overtake all other folks in Utah, just like any big city in even the reddest state, see Boise,ID for confirmation...

Posted by: 746 2023-10-25 11:14

#2 Let them move in at Mitt's place. He can tell them all his 'Pierre' stories.

Posted by: ed in texas 2023-10-25 09:11

#1 North of Green River there's a LOT of open desert available for immigrants.

Posted by: Skidmark 2023-10-25 01:37

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