ACTION in Utah: one of several: mid November

 THANK YOU FOR TAKING ACTION!

Please call your state lawmakers, post on social media, and speak with your neighbors in opposition to a GIANT ICE DETENTION CENTER IN UTAH

Author

UTAH has been spared the worst ICE actions in 2025 but that could change if a 10,000 bed detention center were built here.

• Governor Cox welcomes this dangerous plan
• Such a camp would increase the capacity by a factor of 3!!!!!
• Utah currently has ~ 5000 correctional beds.
• If Utah truly welcomes the world for the Olympics in 2034, having ICE racially profiling residents and visitors is "a bad look".
• Detention centers are incubators for diseases, particularly when many reports of unsanitary conditions, no clean water, lack of hygiene, overcrowding, and scores of violations occur. COVID outbreaks are a worry and they could overwhelm rural health systems
• Cruel and unusual punishment is reported in many facilities,
• Oversight has been stopped-illegally, amid a four-fold increase in deaths within such facilities
• Conditions are so bad that Republican House member Mike Kennedy has submitted a bill requiring that minimum standards be met at all federal detention. facilities.
• One ICE facility is known for its maggots and numerous runs of ambulances

THE ACTION ITEM:

Please Call your state lawmakers, post on social media, and speak with your neighbors in opposition to a detention Center in Utah

More Talking points:

• Inhumane treatment of our neighbors is in violation of the fundamental tenets of almost every world religion.
• Inhumane conditions are well-documented in several detention centers and the rates of death have climbed under this dictatorship. 
• https://www.hrw.org/report/2025/07/21/you-feel-like-your-life-is-over/abusive-practices-at-three-florida-immigration 
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• The conditions there—dirty cells crammed with dozens of detainees, limited drinking water, cold sandwiches for meals, open toilets—were so appalling that a federal judge on Tuesday called them “disgusting.”
• The first year of the second Trump administration has been even deadlier than 2020, when the unchecked COVID-19 pandemic contributed to the high death toll in detention facilities. SOURCE:  AMERICAN IMMIGRATION 
  COUNCIL. in late October 23 persons have died.
• People have also died, been shot at, assaulted, and harmed in other ways as agents attempt to round up people for detention centers:
• Marimar Martinez, in Chicago was warning her community of immigration enforcement actions. Annoyed by this, agents boxed in her car, hit and damaged her car, then Exum, a border Patrol Agent  called her a b@@@@ and fired 5 bullets into her at point blank range.  Amazingly she survied this attempted murder. Exum drove his damage government vehicle to Maine, requested that the damage on the vehicle be repaired, destroying evidence of his aggression, and he boasted of his marksmanship in a group chat.  Original false claims by the federal government asserted that citizen Martinez was one of 10 vehicles that boxed in agents, and that she brandished a gun. 
•  Jaime Alanís, 57, died a day after falling off a greenhouse roof during an immigration raid of a cannabis farm.
• Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, 38, was pulled over and eventually shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Franklin Park, Illinois on September 12, just after dropping off his two children at Passow Elementary School and Small World Learning Center, a daycare located blocks away from the incident. Federal agency falsely claimed he has dragged a federal agent but video evidence clearly refutes this claim.
• Utah ALREADY has a black mark for its Japanese-American detention center at Topaz Mountain.  Let's not repeat that history.
• Sheriffs and Police Chiefs in Utah do NOT welcome ICE or Border Patrol into our communities.  Logan, Utah led the way in hosting a packed community meeting to inform the public about policies and laws that impact our immigrant communities.
• UPR story about the meeting (except that the audience had >100-110 people in attendance, not ~60).
• Herald Journal's Article about the meeting.
• ICE and Border Patrol have a well-documented record of lying about their actions, their intentions, and several judges have rules them to be 'unreliable' and liars.
• Chief Bovino lied in court about actions in Chicago and was called out by a judge for the lies.  Bovino admitted to lying, according to some reports.

ACTIONS WE CAN TAKE:

    TRAIN to protect our neighbor

Several trainings exist:

one option

Another option

Knowledge: Gerrymander is cheating-Logan showed up to protest about Utah legislature doing it

 

Here are 3 points in strong opposition to this effort to trick Utah voters into approving even more legislative gerrymandering. 

1. Sponsors are hiding their cheating from Utah voters. How do we know this?   Anyone can bring up the online listing of the biggest cities in Utah, sorted by population: Salt Lake City is the largest city with 217,000 people. Then West Valley City is next, West Jordan, Provo, St. George, Orem, Leigh, Sandy, Ogden. So Jordan, Lehi, Mill Creek, Harriman, Eagle Mountain, Taylorsville, Saratoga Springs, and Logan is number 17 on the list.

Logan is the biggest city that was scheduled for a public meeting. No major population center has a public hearing.  So the sponsors of the repeal effort are  obviously “NOT proud” of this cheating, are hiding from voters, because they don’t care about us voters.

       Where are the public meetings being held instead of the biggest cities??? Let me read the list to you. These are all tiny communities. Hurricane, Logan, Huntsville, Duchesne, Delta, Price, Spanish fork, Brigham City, Kaysville, Alpine, Vernal, Castle Dale, and Parowan.  

Don't sign anything. 

Decline to sign, please

2. The Utah Priorities Project does a survey of what the people of Utah think, and increasing numbers of Utah's feel that “our politicians ignore the will of us people”.  The most recent survey found that this legislative behavior was our second most urgent issue- behind affordable housing. The poll found that 71% of Utah voters felt that our politicians ignored the will of us voters. Ignoring voters is precisely what we're talking about here today.  how is continuing to gerrymander house districts helping to heal this very broken trust between us voters and the lawmakers? You are listening to special interests instead of listening to us voters. 

        3 I'd also like to understand why 80% of Utah legislatures are Republican when information from the Utah News dispatch shows that only 53% of active Utah voters are registered Republicans, the next largest group is unaffiliated, then Democrats, and there's a smattering of other groups. How can it be that only 53% of active voters are Republicans, and yet 80% of the Utah legislature legislature is Republican?  It's pretty clear there must be cheating and gerrymandering in state districts as well. We voters object to that too.

     Back to point 1.    it's clear that you are not proud of this initiative because you are not taking this on the road to major cities. None of the major cities, like Salt Lake City, Orem, Provo, St. George, Bountiful, Sandy Orem are allowed to have public hearings. Thank you. Supporting documents are below.

The Herald Journal wrote about the public hearing but was not fair.  The article gave equal time to the 3-4 proponents of the repeal effort when in fact 72 PEOPLE came with minimal advanced notice to oppose further cheating and gerrymandering by the highly gerrymandered Utah legislature.  

The OVERWHELMING PUBLIC SENTIMENT WAS FOR the law in proposition 4 that requires FREE AND FaiR ELECTIONS. Citizens were upset that lawmakers do not listen TO US VOTERS. 

Some speakers pointed out that the financial analysis could not possible be correct, was an insult, and assumed that saving money is more important than democracy.

Some speakers said that they collected signature for the initiative in 2018 and that they are upset that the lawmakers are still illegally ignoring the will of the people, 7 years later.

Sponsors did not appear to be listening to the voters.

Several speakers were so upset that the republican legislature is trying to over-rule the voters and overrule the courts that they spoke more than once.

Logan umbrella frog is one of our mascots.