Utah's top immigration enforcer, Steve Branch, detests the word "raid." He prefers to call the February bust at Champion Safe in Provo and the December 2001 sweep at the Salt Lake City International Airport "operations" — and whatever they're called, they're not a high priority for the new Department of Homeland Security.
"We could go out every day" to workplaces and find undocumented immigrants, Branch said. "It's not our priority."
At a nearly two-hour Homeland Security "outreach" meeting Friday at the Salt Lake Main Library, Branch sought to explain the tasks of the new Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Even if an employer is found to have workers with fraudulent documents, Branch said, a raid is not necessarily imminent. "We're not going to go pick up those workers. We're not going to detain them or even put them in proceedings," Branch said. Instead, the employer will be told to release those workers. "The employer is in compliance (with federal law) by releasing them."
"That's a dramatic turnaround from the way it's been," said Tony Yapias, director of the Utah Office of Hispanic Affairs. "It makes sense."
With an estimated 75,000 illegal immigrants living in Utah, ICE isn't about to round up so much as a fraction, Branch said. Yet he often hears allegations that his agents are plotting "raids." Large-scale busts of undocumented workers "are not going to be the norm; there are too many of them," he said.
One Hispanic leader called him to say he'd heard ICE was planning multiple roundups over Memorial Day weekend. "No way," Branch said he told him. "First of all, our people working on Memorial Day? Come on."
ICE's highest priorities, Branch said, are fighting terrorism and promoting national security.
Did the detention of Champion Safe workers improve homeland security? "Probably not," Branch acknowledged. But "that was a situation in which an employer had blatantly disregarded the laws. (There were) other circumstances I can't go into because it's an ongoing investigation."
At immigration detention centers across the country, some 22,000 people are jailed on any given day, according to Branch. That's a tiny dent in the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. Yet filling those detention centers is not his agents' top priority. Detaining one person costs about $50 a day; multiply that by 22,000 and "that's quite an expense to the taxpayers."
Branch added that if an immigrant contacts his agency with information about an employer who is knowingly using undocumented workers, he probably would not initiate deportation proceedings against that immigrant.
"If a person is here — legally, illegally — and they're being exploited, we want to know," he said, adding that "we're just as interested in going after smugglers, employers who are abusing workers. Aliens are human beings. Every person that is physically here is covered by the U.S. Constitution. If a person comes in (to the ICE office), they don't have to fear being removed, if they want to come forward and give us information. We will take that information and pursue that case."
Yapias said that may have been what happened before busts such as the one at Champion Safe. "Latinos are turning Latinos in to immigration," he said. An undocumented person may be promoted over a legal resident, so the disgruntled one calls ICE. "It's unfortunate and sad: Our own people turning against each other."
When the Champion Safe workers were detained, fear spread across several counties, with Latino advocates asking whether state and local police would be acting as immigration agents. No way, said Utah Public Safety Commissioner Robert Flowers. When a state trooper stops a motorist for speeding or another suspected traffic violation, it's not the trooper's job to enforce federal immigration law.
"Don't put a failed national policy on me," Flowers said. "What we have, I believe, is an immigration policy that's not effective right now. And we have a work force (of immigrants) that's really needed in this country." If the motorist has a driver's license and vehicle registration, "we don't ask to see their (immigration) papers. The state's policy is to treat everybody the same."
E-MAIL: durbani@desnews.com