Tim Vandenack covers immigration, multicultural issues and Northern Utah for KSL. He worked several years for the Standard-Examiner in Ogden and has lived and reported in Mexico, Chile and along the U.S.-Mexico border.
OGDEN — For nearly 26 years, federal immigration officials have quietly worked out of a nondescript office in an industrial area of west Ogden, periodically processing immigrants through the facility.According to digging by a loose coalition of people in the Ogden area formed to monitor Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity, around 150 immigrants were processed through the office between 2000, when it opened, and the end of 2024, nearly 25 years.
Since then, the numbers have spiked, totaling 457 over just the 10-month period from Jan. 1, 2025, through Oct. 31 that year, said Josh Kreeck, who helped crunch the numbers for the coalition.That coincides with the launch of the crackdown on illegal immigration by President Donald Trump, and it's got him and others involved in the effort, members of a pair of groups called Ogden ICE Watch and Ogden United, worried. They oppose the aggressive approach immigration officials are taking and charge that immigrants without serious criminal backgrounds or no criminal backgrounds are being rounded up. Accordingly, they want the public to know ICE's presence in the Ogden area is perhaps larger than may meet the eye. A Department of Homeland Security vehicle exits the premises as people protest at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Ogden on Friday. Kreeck has put his focus on the Ogden office, tapping data from the Deportation Data Project, which gathers and distributes U.S. government immigration data. But he thinks there may be similar ICE offices operating elsewhere in Utah."Our purpose is to try and make people aware that people are being processed in an industrial area, and if that isn't bad enough, they're being processed in the middle of the night," said David Belnap, protesting with about 15 others outside the site at 2487 S. 1620 West on Friday. "So people are being brought in here. There's no lights. They have no idea where they're going. They're already terrified."Belnap, among others, has regularly stood vigil outside the site since learning of it last January to keep tabs on activity at the location. He took pictures on one occasion of apparent immigrants, in shackles, being walked into the office. The photos, with the men's heads blurred, were on display at the demonstration. People protest to call attention to what they say are ICE's violations of the city conditional use permit to operate at an office in Ogden on Friday. City
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