Every month Immigration and Naturalization Service officers scour Utah's county jails and deport some 90 criminal illegal immigrants.
INS officials say that agency now deals almost solely with "removables" — those criminal illegal immigrants sitting in county jails or federal prison. The agency has little time to conduct surprise business raids or target illegal immigrants who have become productive members of society.
While removables come from almost every county and commit an array of crimes, one illegal activity reigns king among illegal immigrants.
"Most of them are in (jail) on drug charges, that goes without saying," said Steve Branch, INS resident agent in charge. "Drugs are definitely the largest problem."
In years past, Utah, most notably Salt Lake City, had been a stopping point along a multi-city drug highway running up from America's southern border. Now, however, as Columbian and Mexican drug cartels have become more sophisticated, crime syndicates are specifically targeting Utah.
"We are seeing an influx of criminal illegal aliens," Assistant Salt Lake Police Chief Roy Wasden said. "They are recruited to come here in an organized effort to distribute drugs."
Recruits for large drug bosses set up shop in Utah and don't leave until they get busted, Wasden said.
Besides the drugs, gangsters become immersed in other criminal activity as an arm of the vicious drug cartels of South America and Mexico.
"These (criminal illegal immigrants) involved in the drug culture are very violent people. . . . We have tried a number of measures to get them off the streets," Salt Lake Police Lt. Phil Kirk said.
But Kirk's department and other police agencies must ultimately rely on the INS to deport immigrant gangsters.
The federal government has responded to Utah's criminal illegal immigrant problem by allocating funding for three additional section offices in Ogden, Provo and St. George to complement the existing Salt Lake office. The plan designated 18 new INS agent positions for the three offices, but so far only 10 have been filled. Branch said red tape has hampered agent hiring, and he openly wonders if the positions will ever be filled.
Meanwhile, his group of Salt Lake agents is becoming increasingly spread thin across the state. "It's killing us," Branch said about his agency's employment problem.
The understaffing means the INS has taken a sort of back seat to its own purpose, leaning on other police departments to weed out criminal illegal immigrants and then swoop them up post-arrest.
Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson recently told the Deseret News he is concerned about the city's increasing illegal immigrant population, and said he would like more INS agents in Salt Lake City.
"Even being an illegal alien is against the law, but at the same time we know it's a fact of life and helps many businesses in this county," Anderson said. "We should be compassionate while not making it easy for the criminals."
Drug Enforcement Agency spokesman Don Mendrala said criminal immigrants present a unique problem for his department because they are polytraffickers. "They can get anything you want, meth, heroin, marijuana. They can get it," Mendrala said.
Because immigrant traffickers are so highly connected in their homelands, they are able to produce any product the market demands, Mendrala said. And with drug lords now focusing directly on Utah — avoiding many middlemen along the sale route — profits for dealers are up, making Utah, with its depleted INS, an ideal market for trafficking and related violent crime that shadows drug use.
You can reach Brady Snyder by e-mail at bsnyder@desnews.com.