Curtis Bramble alerted federal agents about a mass gathering of undocumented workers at the state Capitol last winter — but the agency charged with enforcing immigration law didn't show up.
Study of this scenario illustrates the daunting complexity in the arena of enforcing immigration law.
"What he was asking us to do was to go down there and racially profile the people who were there," said Sid Siders, a special agent for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The incident also underscores a new focus by officials of ICE, formerly Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the federal prosecutors who take illegal residents to trial.
During the last legislative session, Bramble, a Republican state senator from Provo, sponsored a controversial bill that gave illegal immigrants driving privilege cards and repealed a law allowing a temporary tax identification number to be used to obtain a Utah driver's license.
About 1,500 protesters took over the Capitol one day when the bill came before lawmakers.
Bramble presumed most of the demonstrators were in the United States illegally. Likely many were.
The senator says now his goal was not to "set up the paddy wagons and drag them away."
"I believed that if it were illegal aliens that were protesting and if the federal agency had a visible presence, it would have a tempering effect on the nature of the protest. That's all," Bramble said. "It was not meant to be heavy-handed to ID and deport or those types of activities."
But ICE officials did not attend the protest.
Instead, they spent that day chasing drug runners, human smugglers, hostage takers, document forgers and those committing marriage fraud and other crimes.
"Our goal is to pick off people much higher on the food chain," said Virginia Kice, an ICE spokeswoman based in Laguna Niguel, Calif.
This statement seems to belie facts about the presence of undocumented workers in Utah.
There are an estimated 85,000 undocumented immigrants in Utah. It is a felony for each one to be here.
But officials say there are limited resources and limited jail cells, and every Spanish-speaking Latino is not an illegal resident.
"People have a misunderstanding about what we do," Siders said.
Immigration enforcement breaks into several parts.
Local police who come across some people in routine traffic stops and learn they're here illegally can hold them for federal immigration officials.
These people go to a special immigration court — or federal court if they are suspected felons.
Federal agents investigate and locate people who have ditched immigration court proceedings or who have committed crimes.
Federal prosecutors decide which criminals should do time for offenses committed in Utah.
There is little time to watch over a protest at the Utah statehouse.
That is not enough for Bramble.
"I think it is absolutely unacceptable that illegal aliens would protest at any state Capitol," he said. "There are rights reserved for citizens. There are basic human rights, and there are constitutional rights reserved for citizens. The right to free speech is a constitutional right. I believe that's a right of citizenship.
"I don't think the illegal aliens should be protesting and demanding rights that are not afforded them."
ICE agents say they are doing plenty day to day to crack down on illegal immigrants, particularly the criminal element. They also devote a good share of their time looking for those — criminal or not — who, despite court orders to leave the country, have not done so.
Miguel Garcia walked out of his Kearns home early one morning last month dressed in a gray fleece pullover and paint-spattered pants with masking tape X-ed across the frayed knees.
A few hours later, a U.S. government plane delivered him to El Paso, Texas, where he walked across the Paso Del Norte bridge back to Mexico.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents staked out his house for weeks before making their move at daybreak on a Thursday. Armed with a deportation order, they arrested Garcia as he climbed into his pickup filled with painting equipment.
Dressed in pajama bottoms and T-shirts, Garcia's wife and children stood on the curb in shock and anger. Tears streamed down 11-year-old Pedro's cheeks as the white prisoner van pulled away. An immigration agent patted the boy's head, saying, "It'll be OK."
"You don't just pick and choose who (you arrest), do you?" said a bewildered Jessica, 18.
To a certain degree, the answer is yes.
Though federal authorities routinely say they're going after the baddest of the bad, it isn't necessarily so. While criminals are a top priority, the agency is under pressure from Congress to arrest those with outstanding "removal" orders. The new agency doesn't call them "deportations" anymore — for political reasons.
In any case, Garcia, 42, was among some 400,000 "absconders" still in the United States.
"A lot of these people think if they stay off the radar, they won't need to be concerned," said Steve Branch, ICE officer in charge in Salt Lake City.
Though hundreds of miles from the border, Utah has active immigration enforcement and prosecution teams. They don't typically chase the taco stand guy, but they don't ignore people whom they find to be undocumented.
ICE agents who arrested Garcia that September morning also took four "incidentals" into custody, Mexican nationals who happened to be in the apartment of an intended "target" of that day's raid. The man they sought was not there.
Agents arrested the four, including two wearing work shirts from a popular fast-food restaurant, because they did not have visas or green cards. They were photographed, fingerprinted, given notice to appear in immigration court and released.
Formal removal proceedings for them will begin in a few months. The men declined interviews.
Nationally, ICE removed 157,281 illegal immigrants in fiscal 2004, 53 percent of whom were identified as criminals — those deportable based on criminal convictions in the United States.
In Utah, from Oct. 1, 2004, to July 31, 2005, there were 1,250 administrative (noncriminal) arrests for immigration violations and 177 criminal arrests. Federal prosecutors obtained 122 indictments related to immigration violations during that period.
Utah also has an immigration court, which began operating this past summer. The court, administered by the Department of Justice, conducts formal administrative proceedings to determine whether foreign-born individuals charged with breaking immigration laws should be deported. Prior to its creation, local cases were heard in Denver via teleconference.
In the past 5 1/2 years, the court has ordered 1,874 people in Utah removed from the United States, according to the Executive Office of Immigration Review.
Among nonborder states, Utah is one of the most diligent for prosecuting undocumented immigrants in both federal and immigration court.
Nonborder states typically do not have an immigration prosecution team in the U.S. Attorney's Office and spend only a fraction of their time on immigration, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Dustin Pead, who heads the immigration prosecution section in Utah.
The state is particularly tough on people who are deported and return to commit serious crimes ranging from drunken driving to assault to murder.
"You come back, you come to Utah, watch your back," Pead said. "We're going to come after you."
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University tracks Justice Department cases and issued a statistical report in August.
In 2004, the number of immigration-related cases for the first time surpassed drug-related cases in federal courts nationwide. Immigration now accounts for 32.5 percent of all prosecutions, up 14 percent over five years ago.
One-fourth of the federal indictments obtained in Utah involve illegal immigration, second only to gun-related indictments, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for Utah. It has prosecuted 2,102 immigration cases since 1997, about 90 percent of them successfully.
"We don't lose many cases," Pead said. "We are very aggressive."
According to TRAC, 98 per million residents in Utah were referred for prosecution in federal court last year, which isn't a large number. But based on a TRAC statistical analysis, the state ranks ninth nationally among 90 U.S. attorney districts in terms of odds for prosecution and 11th for gaining convictions and prison terms.
Federal investigators say they focus on those suspected of human trafficking, hostage taking, drug smuggling and documents fraud — all of which goes on in the Beehive State.
Authorities this past November broke up a crime ring in which illegal immigrants were preying on their own.
Two men forced a van to pull over in southeastern Utah using what appeared to the driver to be blue police lights. The two men pistol-whipped the driver and front-seat passenger before abducting them and the van's five other occupants. All seven were undocumented immigrants.
The men drove the hostages to Kayenta, Ariz., where a total of five captors called the hostages' family members in the states demanding $500 ransom for each person.
The abductors usually get the money because no one calls police for fear their illegal status will be discovered, Pead said. Family members consider it the cost of doing business to get their relatives into the country.
In this case, however, a family member did call authorities. The tip led to a federal indictment against five men.
One man pleaded guilty in federal court last month and agreed to testify against the others. He could serve up to 14 years in prison, while the others face 30-year terms if convicted.
"We're taking people off the street who need to be taken off the street," Pead said.
Miguel Garcia doesn't appear to be a criminal.
"I'm working. I support my family. I pay my taxes. I do nothing wrong," he said.
His immigration file includes a notation that Berwyn, Ill., police arrested him for battery, but the record lacks a description of the alleged incident. It does contain his fingerprints.
Garcia said the same police officer stopped him three times in one month looking for another Miguel Garcia. He did not recall being booked or fingerprinted.
Not sure which information was accurate, agents at the ICE office electronically sent Garcia's prints to the FBI. They came back a short time later verifying the man in custody and the man arrested in Illinois are the same.
Garcia, who has lived in the United States since walking across the California border in 1981, fell into the system after being arrested in Illinois. Though never charged with a crime, he came to the attention of immigration authorities because he didn't have documentation.
An immigration court placed a "voluntary removal" on his record, meaning he had to leave the country on his own. An attorney he paid $500 told him not to go and that she would take care of everything. She didn't.
Upon discovering Garcia hadn't left but moved to Utah, the immigration court imposed a final deportation order in absentia. Under U.S. immigration law, Garcia had his day in court and was not entitled to another hearing before an immigration judge.
His sister-in-law, a U.S. citizen, recently filed an application sponsoring him for a green card, but it has not been accepted.
"I try to stay here legally," Garcia said while waiting to be fingerprinted and photographed at the ICE processing center in Murray. "Too much laws."
U.S. immigration agencies came under fire after 9/11. Politicians and citizens complained they were too lax.
Congress lengthened the list of deportable offenses it considers aggravated felonies or crimes of "moral turpitude." It applies to noncitizens whether they are in the country illegally or have green cards. Lawmakers also mandated ICE track down those who have final removal orders.
ICE agents say they find themselves between a rock and a hard place. They're damned if they run a seemingly hard-working, peaceful person like Garcia out of the country and they're damned if they don't pursue someone who turns out to be a terrorist.
"We get beat up either way," ICE agent Todd Nay said. "Once you accept that, you can do your job. You develop some thick skin."
Agents simply follow the laws of the land, Branch says, adding to do otherwise would be a mockery.
Some say the pendulum has now swung too far the other way, especially when families are involved.
"The government doesn't separate families," said Kice, the ICE spokeswoman. "Families make choices that put their family unity in jeopardy."
Thursday is not a good day for an undocumented Mexican national to be arrested in Salt Lake City, especially one who has no standing before a judge. That is the day ICE takes a busload of "illegal aliens" to the airport for a one-way trip to Mexico.
If Garcia had been arrested before Thursday and gone to the county jail, it would have given him time to contact an attorney.
"I'm so sad because I got separated from my family," he said. "They (immigration agents) cut away my heart."
Arrested about 7:30 a.m., Garcia was in the air about 1 p.m., along with 34 others from Utah, including several heavily tattooed gangbangers from jail. The cons laughed and talked about being back in a week. Garcia frowned, his dark eyes downcast.
"If at all possible, we try to get them out of here as soon as possible," Nay said.
ICE agents allowed Garcia to call his house while he waited for the airport bus to leave. His wife, daughter and sister-in-law came to the center with a change of clothes. Their 10-minute visit ended in a tearful embrace. They left him a blue duffel bag containing more clothes, a bottle of Gatorade, a bag of tortilla chips and an apple.
"Mexico?" an ICE detention guard said, while tagging the duffel bag.
"Colombia," Garcia replied, turning to wink.
Garcia says he doesn't know what he's going to do once he reaches Ciudad Juarez, just across the Texas border.
"He take care of me, that guy up there," he said, nodding heavenward.
A few minutes later, tongues flapping on his laceless shoes, he walked in shackles and chains to the waiting bus.
The new INS
The alphabet soup of the American immigration system can be confusing. In a nutshell:
There is no longer any agency known as U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS. In March 2003, INS became part of the Department of Homeland Security and was split into two bureaus.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, handles investigations, detention and deportation operations and federal protective services.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, is responsible for the administration of visa petitions, naturalization petitions and asylum, and refugee applications.
Coming Friday: The cost of social services
E-mail: romboy@desnews.com; lucy@desnews.com