- Several federal agencies, including ICE, will come to Provo seeking recruits amid the unfolding immigration crackdown.
- The job fair comes following the passage of a U.S. budget plan containing $170.7 billion in new funds, some of it to hire up to 10,000 new ICE agents.
- Some Utah law enforcement officials have expressed unease about losing their officers to federal agencies.
PROVO — With federal officials looking for more bodies to help with the ongoing immigration crackdown, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be coming to Provo as part of the agency's recruitment efforts.
"Ready for an adventurous career in federal law enforcement? Join us at the DHS Career Expo in Provo, Utah. ICE has job openings for brave men and women at field offices across the nation," reads a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement social media post from Wednesday.
The event, organized by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, will be held Sept. 15 and 16 at the Utah Valley Convention Center in Provo, and registration is required. Recruiters from a range of federal agencies are seeking new employees, including Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and more, according to a website for the event.
The potential poaching of local law enforcement officers by federal agencies as President Donald Trump seeks more manpower to help in efforts to detain and deport immigrants in the country illegally has been a sore point for some. The issue flared last month after Immigration and Customs Enforcement sent out a recruitment letter for new agents, even as it seeks cooperative operating agreements with local law enforcement agencies.
"I think it's an unprofessional way to go about hiring; I think it's a bit classless," Kane County Sheriff Tracy Glover, the head of the Utah Sheriffs Association, told KSL-TV. "For the federal government, through ICE, to ask us to help them do their job under 287(g) agreements and then kind of come around and flank us with a recruitment letter, like that was a bit unprofessional in my view."
The Kane County Sheriff's Office, several other Utah sheriff's offices, the Riverton Police Department and the Utah Department of Corrections have entered into cooperative arrangements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in recent months to aid in the federal government's crackdown on illegal immigration. The accords are dubbed 287(g) accords.
Whatever the case, federal officials are eager to bolster their ranks, and they're offering incentives of up to $50,000 for new recruits, according to the website for the Provo event. Border Patrol agents can potentially get bonuses of $20,000 to $30,000, depending on where they're willing to go, while new Immigration and Customs Enforcement recruits can earn signing bonuses of up to $50,000 paid out over five years.
The Provo event is geared to "U.S. citizens committed to serving the department in support of achieving the freedom, prosperity and democratic rule that the U.S. Constitution promotes and the American public deserves," reads Department of Homeland Security promotional material for the job fair.
Trump's budget bill, signed into law in July, contains provisions for $170.7 billion in new funding to assist with "immigration- and border enforcement-related activities," according to the American Immigration Council, an immigrant advocacy group. Of that, some $29.9 billion is earmarked for "enforcement and removal" efforts, including the hiring of as many as 10,000 more Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents.
With the $29.9 billion allocation, "the current administration will be poised to dramatically expand community arrests and expand cooperation with state and local law enforcement agencies," reads a report by the council on the budget bill.
