Wyoming jail tapped to hold out-of-state immigrant suspects, including some from Utah

EVANSTON, Wyoming — The Uinta County, Wyoming, jail in Evanston is being used to temporarily hold immigrants in the country illegally, including some out of Utah, as the federal government’s ongoing crackdown on illegal immigration unfolds.

Uinta County Sheriff Andy Kopp offered some of the details of the new arrangement while a Utah immigration attorney, Carlos Trujillo, said news of the Evanston jail’s role in holding immigrants for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement tracks with the experiences of some of his clients. Evanston is located in southwest Wyoming, 5 miles from the Utah state line and about 84 miles from Salt Lake City via I-80.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities in the Las Vegas area should be the principal destination for detained immigrants from Utah suspected of being in the country illegally, Trujillo said. But if they are full, he went on, immigration authorities “start parading them — Evanston, Wyoming, or other places — until they can find a bed.”

The new iteration of the arrangement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement started in late May, Kopp said. The Wyoming county, though, has a standing agreement with the agency through the U.S. Marshals Service allowing it to temporarily hold immigrant detainees, which is typical in many locales.

“Detainees are typically held for no more than 72 hours. After that period, they are either released back to ICE or transferred to longer-term ICE facilities, depending on the specifics of each case,” Kopp said in an email. The detainees — up to 25 at any one time — can come from “several surrounding states,” he said, with federal officials making the placement determination “based on proximity, space availability and logistical considerations.”

In the late 2010s, Uinta County was the site of a proposed detention facility for immigrants from around the region who are in the country illegally. But CoreCivic, a private company, walked away from a controversial 1,000-bed proposal in early 2020, according to WyoFile, a Wyoming news organization. The news outlet said Sabot Consulting in March pitched a proposal for a 900-bed immigrant detention center in Kemmerer, Wyoming, but the plan got “a poor reception.”

A spike in ICE arrests

The need for agreements with entities like the Uinta County jail would seem to have an obvious explanation — the heightened focus under President Donald Trump on detaining immigrants in the country illegally, a priority for him. During a tour of a new detention facility in the Florida Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” earlier this month, Trump said he’d like to see more temporary detention facilities in “many states,” CBS News reported.

In fact, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests in Utah and neighboring states have tripled since Trump started his second term in January, according to the Deseret News. In Utah alone, ICE arrests jumped 150% from 127 in December, before Trump took office, to 317 in May and 125 in the first 10 days of June, the newspaper reported.

Similarly, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University in New York that tracks federal data, reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement held 56,816 people across the country in detention as of July 13. That’s up 43% from 39,703 as of Jan. 12, just before Trump took office.

By accepting immigrant detainees from outside Uinta County, the Evanston jail’s role contrasts with traditional cooperative agreements, under which local jails hold suspects for federal immigration authorities who have been detained in the normal course of local law enforcement agencies’ duties. The Uinta County Herald first reported on the issue last week when Kopp discussed the matter during a Uinta County Commission meeting.

Immigration officials “said they need us more than we need them,” Kopp said, according to the newspaper. He estimated the arrangement could generate $40,000 to $50,000 a month for Uinta County through Trump’s term, based on a daily billing of $120 per inmate.

Kopp provided some details about the new arrangement with KSL.com, but didn’t respond to a follow-up query seeking more information. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials didn’t comment when queried.

While immigration authorities may need more space to hold those detained amid the ongoing immigration crackdown, Trujillo warned of placing people accused of violating federal immigration law with other criminal suspects. “You’re treating the detained immigrant as a criminal just because they have a pending (immigration) case or they have to go through the process, the immigration process,” he said.

Kopp said the immigration holds at the Uinta County jail “would be criminal in nature,” according to the Uinta County Herald, but Trujillo disputed that, referencing a recent case. “That is a lie because I can recall at least one of my clients that touched that place and had no criminal record whatsoever,” the lawyer said.

The daughter of an immigrant living in Utah who was detained last week by immigration authorities and transferred at least temporarily to Evanston offered a similar account in a verified GoFundMe request for donations to help her father. “He is not a criminal, he is a hardworking man who has spent his life providing for others, working long hours to support his family and build a future for us here,” she wrote.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said Thursday that he wasn’t aware of any requests to build immigration detention facilities in Utah and that no plans were in the works. Last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a “request for information” for ideas on building a new immigration detention facility serving the Salt Lake City area, though it’s currently “inactive.”

Related stories: How shifting immigration policies impact Utah families