Heber City residents may have noticed increased traffic stops over the weekend as the Wasatch Back Major Crimes Task Force conducted a criminal interdiction operation on Friday and Saturday.
The focus of the mass operation was “identifying and disrupting criminal activity, with particular attention to traffic violations, drug offenses and alcohol-related crimes,” according to a Heber City Police Department press release.
The operation was led by the Heber City Police Department, with assistance from one Park City Police Department drug task force officer, three Summit County Sheriff’s Office K-9 units and their deputies and an officer from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Heber City Police Chief Parker Sever said focused crackdowns on crime are carried out by the Police Department around once a year. Summit County Sheriff’s Sgt. Skyler Talbot confirmed this, adding that the Sheriff’s Office has assisted with such operations in years past.
The Wasatch County Sheriff’s Office declined to participate in the operation.
“I felt like, given the environment that exists across the country right now in terms of some tactics that some ICE agents are reportedly using, I didn’t want to cause any of our citizens concern by participating,” explained Wasatch County Sheriff Jared Rigby. “We just wanted to be careful with our citizens, to not be hitting any concerns or any raw nerves.”
ICE’s involvement in the operation drew controversy on Saturday when former Wasatch County Sheriff’s deputy Brian Rowser posted on Facebook after hearing about the operation from contacts in local law enforcement and people he said had spoken directly with Heber City Police Chief Parker Sever. Rowser refused to name his contacts or what specific law enforcement agencies they were from.
Rowser was concerned that an ICE agent riding along with Heber City police officers during the operation could result in the agent initiating traffic stops. ICE agents can only initiate traffic stops when they have reasonable suspicion of an immigration violation.
“This permits ICE … to simply stop what will likely be a person of color in a car, have the officer make a traffic stop presumably looking for a DUI, but then, the person is in contact with ICE,” Rowser wrote.
Police Chief Sever later clarified ICE’s involvement in the operation.
One ICE agent was included, who has been assigned to the area for the past two and a half years. Sever refused to facilitate an interview with the ICE agent but explained that he works with the Heber City Police Department in criminal situations involving undocumented immigrants. City funds do not pay his wages.
Sever said the Police Department did not invite any additional ICE agents to participate in the weekend operation.
He added that the ICE agent was a passenger in a police vehicle with a supervisor during the operation and did not initiate any traffic stops. He said the agent was included to assist in traffic stops involving undocumented immigrants who did not have any form of identification on them.
“We stopped many people that were not documented. If they had ID, they were just moved on their way. If they had no form of identification, we needed to identify who they were. He assisted us with that,” he said.
He said the ICE agent verified identities by using a fingerprint reader and checking the fingerprints against an ICE database. Sever was not familiar with exactly what information the database included.
He called verifying identities through an ICE agent “the least intrusive and traumatic way” to do so. He said it made things “more convenient” and “less scary” for those not carrying any form of identification.
“If they have no form of ID, he goes out, identifies them. They’re immediately released. If we aren’t able to do that, we have to arrest them, take them to jail. They get to spend a couple hours there getting identified. Then they get released,” Sever said. “In the meantime, we might have to tow their car. We might have to take care of kids, all those other factors. So, it’s actually less impactful for them to assist us.”
He said undocumented immigrants who were pulled over for traffic citations were not arrested by the Police Department or ICE, even if they were identified as undocumented.
One person who was an undocumented immigrant was arrested during the two-day operation. According to Sever, he fled from police officers on foot after being pulled over for a traffic violation and tried to escape by running through an apartment that was not his and through the back window. He had prior DUIs and an open container in his vehicle, and he later admitted to using cocaine and alcohol.
The ICE agent involved in the operation placed a detainer on the person during his arrest.
Sever said that even if the ICE agent had not been there, the person would have likely been transferred into ICE custody after being booked into the Wasatch County Jail, which has a 287(g) Warrant Service Officer agreement with ICE through the Wasatch County Sheriff’s Office. The agreement allows the jail to transfer an undocumented immigrant arrested for a crime unrelated to their citizenship status directly into ICE custody.
There were five total arrests over the Wasatch Back Major Crimes Task Force’s two-day operation.
Several incidents arose from K-9 alerts. One stop led to the location of methamphetamine and brass knuckles in a vehicle whose passenger was a convicted felon.
Another stop led to the seizure of fentanyl, Xanax pills, marijuana and two firearms. The individuals involved were booked into the Wasatch County Jail on felony charges, according to the Heber City Police Department’s press release.
Sever said that of the five people arrested, four were white and one was Hispanic.
Although the two-day operation could be perceived as a response to Thursday’s anti-ICE demonstration organized by middle and high schoolers from the Wasatch County School District, Sever said the operation had been planned for weeks and had nothing to do with the protest.
He said he had never arrested someone solely for their citizenship status in his 30 years in law enforcement, and he had not seen any conduct from the ICE agent assigned to Heber City that concerned him in his two years as police chief. He said all collaborations between the two entities involved ICE supporting the Police Department, not the other way around, and that the ICE agent had never approached the Police Department asking to conduct a raid.
“He cares about this community, and he just wants to do what’s right. And he’s never one time asked us to do something that has ever drawn me any concern as far as that he’s going to go to our schools, or he’s going to go to our churches, or he’s going to just deport people for any reason,” he said.
He encouraged those who are undocumented immigrants to not be afraid to report crime.
“If you’re the victim of a crime, do not be scared to report it to the Police Department. You can come here. We don’t care about your immigration status. What we care about is taking care of you as a victim,” he said. “There’s no scenario that someone comes to the PD and says, ‘Somebody robbed me,’ and then we arrest them and have them deported.”
Rowser had a different perspective.
“When our immigrant population learns that ICE is occasionally riding with our local officers, it’s going to cause very reasonable distrust,” he said. “A woman that gets assaulted but has questionable immigration status cannot comfortably call the police knowing there is a chance the responding officer may have ICE riding along with them.”