As the 2008 session drew to a close, the Utah Legislature passed a comprehensive bill on illegal immigration with several provisions regarding the role of local law enforcement. But Utah County Sheriff Jim Tracy and his counterparts from across the western United States are looking to Congress, not the states, for answers.

"They've made very little progress in doing anything concrete," Tracy said of Congress.

Tracy said the WSSA made three specific requests of Congress: seal the border, don't create any unfunded mandates requiring counties to enforce immigration law, and reform the process by which temporary workers from other countries can obtain visas to work in the United States legally.

Tracy and the WSSA also want some kind of system in place that would allow officials at county jails to check the immigration status of inmates, either by providing the jail direct access to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement database, or through regional illegal-immigration task forces that would be modeled on the drug task forces in operation across the country.

The effects of illegal immigration are felt most strongly in border states such as Arizona, where Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has grabbed national headlines for his department's aggressive enforcement of immigration law. But Tracy said the impact is also felt in Utah County and elsewhere in the state, which he said is a destination for immigrants, legal and otherwise, due to large numbers of agriculture jobs and seasonal work.

Tracy and the other western sheriffs want more physical security at the border, whether it be by fences, federal agents standing shoulder to shoulder, or other means.

"Whatever it takes," Tracy said. "It's a sieve, so really, whatever we do here, literally it can be undone by the flood of people behind this illegal person immediately. We're trying to stop the stream of water once it's already out the end of the hose. We need somebody to pinch the hose."

The WSSA also urged Congress to reform and speed up the process by which immigrants can get work visas, especially for temporary workers who intend to return to their home countries at some point. Tracy said it's obvious that there is a great need for immigrant labor in this country and suggested that a process could be implemented to not only streamline the visa process for people wishing to come to the U.S., but also to give illegal immigrants who are already here a way to legalize their status.

"I'll leave that to the politicians. If it could be done both [ways], it might be helpful," Tracy said. "But I know there's a lot of feeling out there that everybody that's here illegally ought to go back and start over. I'm not real adamant."

Possibly most importantly, Tracy and the other western sheriffs don't want Congress, the states or anyone else to enact unfunded mandates which cause local law enforcement to enforce immigration law on their own dime.

The WSSA has repeatedly voiced its opposition to a section of a bill proposed in Congress in 2003 called the CLEAR Act -- Clear Law Enforcement for Alien Removal -- which would have withheld federal funding for sheriff's offices that did not take a greater role in enforcing immigration law at their own cost.

Forcing the Utah County Sheriff's Office to enforce immigration law, Maricopa County-style, would necessitate the hiring of more deputies, as well as a significant increase in jail space, Tracy said. The sheriff's office is already expanding the Utah County Jail to accommodate an increased need for more traditional law-enforcement issues.

"I believe most sheriffs would have a hard time finding space for another 30 percent of their jail population just due to immigration issues if that became a primary focus," Tracy said. "I have a hard enough time with funding from the County Commission to just fund the necessary law-enforcement functions that are required in this county as it's continuing this growth."

The state Senate approved the final version of an omnibus immigration bill during the last week of the 2008 legislative session. The bill included a provision that requires sheriff's offices in Utah to make a "reasonable effort" to determine the immigration status of anyone booked into a county jail. It also requires Attorney General Mark Shurtleff to enter into negotiations with the U.S. Department of Justice to provide ICE training to deputies at any sheriff's department that is interested in taking part.

The bill will not go into effect until June 2009, and Tracy said his department is trying to figure out exactly what it will require his department to do.

Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, said the provision requiring jails to check inmates' immigration status is unclear about how that would be done.

"The statute is not specific as to how they actually accomplish it, but it sets out the parameters of what [they have] to do," Valentine said.

Tracy would love nothing more than a reliable method to do just that. The problem is that county jails do not have access to the ICE database. When Utah County Jail officials suspect that an inmate may be in the country illegally, they call the ICE office in Orem and ask someone from the agency to come to the jail and investigate to determine if they want to put a hold on that inmate.

The problem is that ICE cannot always make it to the jail. In late January, an illegal alien named Gabriel Hernandez was booked into the jail on a negligent homicide charge, a Class A misdemeanor, after he allegedly lost control of his car on an icy road in Spanish Fork and accidentally killed an 83-year-old man who was checking his mail. Jail officials called ICE to see if the agency wanted the jail to hold Hernandez before he bailed out, but Tracy said the ICE agent in Orem told them he did not have the time to come to the jail.

Hernandez made bail and did not attend his arraignment hearing in late February. Police suspect he has gone back to Mexico, and the victim's wife fears that Hernandez will never face justice. But if county jails were able to check inmates' immigration status, such problems could be avoided in the future, Tracy said.

For county jails in Utah to have access to the federal database, deputies must complete an ICE training program for police officers and sheriff's deputies.

Lt. Jake Adams of the Washington County Sheriff's Office said his department plans to send several deputies to the multi-week training program.

The program does not permit deputies and officers to enforce immigration law while on patrol or on the street, Adams said, but it gives them access to the ICE database and gives them the authority to hold inmates who are in the country illegally.

"It would give us a little bit of say in who gets detainers placed on them and who doesn't," Adams said. "The community is really, I would say, demanding that more be done by ICE, and frankly, ICE doesn't have the resources to meet the demand. So, it's falling to local agencies to really pick up the slack there."

Tracy said he would love to get access to the ICE database, but said he would want state or federal assistance if his deputies were to take part in the ICE training program.

"We support the federal efforts in this regard, but it is a federal issue, and we need them to step up to the plate if they want our participation at any higher level than currently exists," he said. "If [the training] did allow us that database, I would be more inclined to do it, because then we could literally have done more on this Hernandez case than what we could do possibly now."

• Jeremy Duda can be reached at 344-2561 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it