SALT LAKE CITY — An immigrant enforcement action caught on video this week outside a Salt Lake City Home Depot highlights what one immigration attorney views as the problematic “cross-deputization” of officials from varying federal agencies to assist in detaining immigrants.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is formally tasked with enforcing U.S. immigration law and pursuing immigrants in the country illegally, a priority of President Donald Trump’s administration. Now, though, South Salt Lake immigration attorney Adam Crayk says FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Homeland Security Investigations and Customs and Border Protection officials have increasingly gotten the call to handle enforcement actions given Trump’s focus on detaining and deporting immigrants in the country illegally.
That’s a problem, he said, because other agencies don’t have the specialized training that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials do in handling detention of immigrants…