Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT) on Thursday defended opening a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Utah but questioned a lack of coordination between federal and state officials throughout the process.
The West needs another holding center for millions of illegal immigrants who flooded into the country during the Biden administration, and are now being deported by President Donald Trump, Cox said during his monthly press conference. Amid continuous protests against the facility, the governor also downplayed Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall’s concerns that ICE’s newly purchased center in the city would place a strain on the surrounding infrastructure and economy.
Still, Cox, viewed as a respected voice of moderation and bipartisanship in the state and nationwide, voiced some criticism about how the Trump administration is rolling out the detention facility. The federal government has broad authority to establish detention centers due to the Constitution’s supremacy clause. But federal officials did not give the governor any notice that they were purchasing the Salt Lake City warehouse to use as a detention facility, he said, calling the lack of communication “a little frustrating.” The governor is calling for enhanced coordination to make sure the facility is created and managed “the right way.”
“When the sale went through, we were not given any notice,” Cox told reporters. “No members of our congressional delegation were given any notice. No locals were given any notice. That’s, I think, a little frustrating for everyone. We want to work closely together to get things right.
“My thoughts: We need an ICE facility. We need to get the right kind of ICE facility. Now there’s a right way to do that and a wrong way to do that.”
ICE acquired the warehouse west of Salt Lake City International Airport last week for $145 million. The development places the facility in the state’s most liberal hot spot, making it an easy target for progressives in the area skeptical of ICE, particularly after two Minnesotans were killed in immigration enforcement-related shootings earlier this year. In the latest protest, on Wednesday evening, police arrested three demonstrators who vandalized the facility with a spray-painted “Kill all Nazis” message and broke multiple windows.
“I understand the concerns of those protesters,” Cox said Thursday. “We’re going to work to try to get this in the best possible place.”
The governor said the closest ICE facility is situated in Las Vegas, arguing that Utah has needed a holding center for illegal immigrants “for years and years.”
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“We don’t have enough resources to get people who have caused some serious trouble in Utah where they need to be,” he said, “and it’s not just Utah, by the way. Idaho, Montana, lots of states that have to transport down there, that facility was routinely full.”
“We have millions of people that should not be here,” Cox concluded. “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.”
