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SALT LAKE CITY -- A new immigration task force in Utah will seek out drug dealers and human traffickers. What it isn't is Senate Bill 81.
The idea came out of a legislative task force on immigration that's been meeting for the last year. Rep. Brad Dee, R-Washington Terrace, is one of the co-chairmen. "It would be a strike force to do felony interdiction, dealing with illegal immigration," he explained.
His House Bill 64 authorized the funding, $891,000, to create the strike force.
Dee says as part of his task force's work, he traveled the state and did a lot of listening, and this was one solution to come out of those discussions. "With all the testimony we've taken, [felony crime] is the area that has been [the biggest] concern," he said.
Dee supports SB 81, which has come under fire from some area police departments as being difficult to enforce. But he says this isn't SB 81, nor does it try to be. What it does that's different is target the approach toward felons, such as human traffickers or coyotes, drug dealers and those who commit identity theft.
"Instead of shotgunning it, we ought to take a rifle approach, and we ought to target it on that very thing that really matters the most in illegal immigration," Dee says, "and that is the felony crimes being committed."
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff says it doesn't make his office an immigrations enforcement agency. He was concerned that could make law-abiding immigrants reluctant to help stop serious crimes in their community.
e-mail: bbruce@ksl.com
