'We need an ICE facility': Cox expresses support for immigrant detention center

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Gov. Spencer Cox backs plans for an immigration detention center, saying it's needed to contend with the influx of immigrants during President Joe Biden's tenure.
He's reached out to federal officials on the issue and said plans, for now, are in a "holding pattern."
News a facility is coming to Salt Lake City has prompted backlash and protesting from some.

SALT LAKE CITY — Gov. Spencer Cox supports bringing an immigrant detention center to Utah and said his office has reached out to federal officials to collaborate on the plans.

"My thoughts — we need an ICE facility. We need to get the right kind of ICE facility," he said Thursday at a press conference with Utah reporters that covered a range of topics.

News emerged last week that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had bought a 24.9-acre parcel containing an 833,000-square-foot warehouse in an industrial section on the west side of Salt Lake City. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security confirmed plans to build a detention facility in the city and the news has prompted pushback and criticism from Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall, Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson and many others opposed to the plans.

Cox, though, publicly addressing the issue for the first time on Thursday, said he had worked with the administration of President Joe Biden on the issue, saying, "This isn't just a partisan thing." The nearest immigration detention center is in the Las Vegas area and it's routinely full, he noted, also saying that the possibility of bringing such a facility to Utah isn't a new topic.

"And so we know we've needed this for a long time. We've tried to work with different presidents to get something done. We knew that they were looking at Utah," he said.

The governor said his administration, Utah's delegation to Washington, D.C., and local Utah leaders weren't given any notice that a specific proposal was in the works, prompting frustration. But Cox seems to have moved past that, saying his office is in contact with federal officials about the plans, though specifics about the facility are in short supply.

"It's something we need to get right. We've reached out to the administration to let them know that we want to work with them on whatever that looks like," he said.

Plan development, though, is "in a holding pattern right now" as leadership at the Department of Homeland Security shifts from Kristi Noem, fired earlier this month, to Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Oklahoma, who is in the midst of confirmation hearings for the post. Other U.S. locales where plans for ICE facilities have emerged are likewise waiting "to have these conversations" with federal officials.

ICE finalized acquisition of the warehouse site on March 11, paying $145.44 million for the location. The news sparked immediate backlash and protesting outside the governor's mansion in Salt Lake City on Tuesday and outside the detention center site at 6020 W. 300 South west of Salt Lake City International Airport on Wednesday, when three people were arrested.

Mendenhall has questioned whether the industrial area where the detention center is to take shape has the sewer infrastructure required to serve a building that would house immigrant detainees. She also worries it would potentially hamper economic development of the industrial zone and create traffic issues.

Such issues "are things that we'll have to work through," Cox said, but he also noted the authority the federal government has when it comes to addressing immigration issues.

"I think it matters what I think, and I think it matters what local government thinks, but the federal government can do this whether Salt Lake City likes it or not. They have the ability to do that," Cox said.

He also pointed a critical finger at Biden, saying the need for the facility stems from the influx of immigrants during the Democratic leader's tenure.

"We have millions of people that should not be here," he said. "And so now we're picking up the pieces because every single state system has got completely overwhelmed, and now we have to process millions of people, and many of them should not be here, and that means we have to figure out a way to get them back, which means there has to be a detention facility."

Some critics of the detention center plans fear it would lead to an uptick in immigration enforcement action in Utah, but Cox countered that.

"I don't think it does anything to ICE enforcement in Utah," he said. He noted the concerns Trump expressed in the wake of aggressive enforcement action in Minnesota that led to the deaths of two protesters, prompting backlash from some.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.