Salt Lake Mayor says police won’t assist ICE during immigration raids

SALT LAKE CITY – Mayor Jackie Biskupski is once again standing against the Trump Administration, saying she will not let the city or the police department help ICE with immigration raids.  Does this really change anything for Salt Lake Police?

As far as officers are concerned, things are “business as usual.”  Detective Greg Wilking says their department really doesn’t interact with ICE that much, at all.

“We don’t go and contact them on a regular basis, and likewise, they don’t contact us on a regular basis,” he says.

This is not political stance by the department, since they also don’t get in the way of ICE doing their job.  Wilking says it’s more a matter of jurisdiction.

“They do their thing, we do ours.  That’s how it’s been.  We don’t enforce immigration, here as the Salt Lake City Police Department, and we don’t have any plans to start,” Wilking says, adding, “We don’t also have the time to do those investigations.”

Wilking says ICE provides their own officers when they want to conduct immigration raids, or if they want to arrest someone who has overstayed their visa.  If ICE wants an immigration hold on someone who has been arrested, Wilking says the Salt Lake County Jail handles that.

“If we’re going to make an arrest on an individual, we’re not asking for documentation,” he says.