Citizens too

The arrests are not limited to people without status. They reach citizens, green-card holders, people with pending applications, and people with no record at all. The common thread is not who the person is. It is that the arrest comes first and the hearing, if there is one, comes later and somewhere else.

U.S. citizens

• ProPublica counted 506 U.S. citizens detained by immigration agents from January 2025 through September 2026, counting only warrantless arrests away from airports and the border, and only people it could identify by name. The government does not keep this count. 36 were held at least a day without reaching a lawyer or family. About a dozen were deported, mostly children. At least 70 children and teens were detained; about 20 were handcuffed or zip-tied. More than 100 were held after agents questioned their citizenship, nearly all of them people of color (ProPublica, Oct. 6, 2026).
• Salt Lake City, July 7, 2026: agents followed a man home to Rose Park and went into the house. A teenager who is a U.S. citizen was restrained and later released; the family's video shows the agents' vests marked 'Police' and 'Police Federal Agent.' ICE did not say whether it had a warrant to enter (KUER, July 10, 2026; en español). This is the Utah entry in ProPublica's count.

People with status, or with applications pending

• A Millcreek green-card holder was held nearly 50 days; his lawyer called him 'someone who did everything right' (KSL, July 3, 2025).
• Kevin Barros was arrested at a Utah immigration court after being approved for a juvenile visa, held 11 days across six states, and released by court order (Tribune, March 5, 2026).
• A 22-year-old from Park City, brought to the country at age one with a DACA application pending and no record beyond a traffic citation, was stopped on the way to his first day at a new job and moved to a jail in Wyoming (Tribune, May 5, 2026).

How it happens

1. The stop. A traffic stop by a deputized local officer under a 287(g) task-force agreement (Sanpete County, Sept. 30, 2026), a courthouse hallway where bailiffs put on the cuffs for ICE (Utah News Dispatch, Feb. 13, 2026), a home entered without a warrant shown, or a county jail that holds a person for 48 hours after their case ends.
2. The transfer. Almost 95 percent of people arrested in Utah are moved out of state, through 4.6 facilities on average; one man was moved 19 times (Tribune, Sept. 28, 2026). Families call the locator and wait.
3. The hearing, or not. Whether the person can ask a judge for bond depends on where they are held. The 10th Circuit (Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma) says most people arrested in the interior are bond-eligible (Santillan Quiroz v. Mullin, June 30, 2026). The 5th and 8th Circuits say no. The Supreme Court granted review on Oct. 1, 2026. A person moved from Utah to Nebraska or Texas loses the hearing the 10th Circuit would have given them.
4. The conditions. 23 people died in ICE custody from October 2025 to early March 2026, more than in all of the prior fiscal year (NPR).