Utah’s Senate leaders said they support President Donald Trump’s mass deportation mission after a Senate committee voted down a bill this week that aimed to do just that.
HB226, sponsored by Rep. Candice Pierucci, R-Riverton, would institute penalties for nonprofits that “knowingly” transport undocumented immigrants and would allow the state to hold people who have been convicted of certain violent misdemeanors or DUIs for 365 days instead of the current 364.
Pierucci has said that her explicit goal in running the legislation is to better coordinate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “It’s become very clear in these work group meetings, in discussions with ICE, their policy is that to deport someone on a class A misdemeanor, they need to have served 365 days,” she said in a House hearing, where she originally presented her bill earlier this month. “We are limiting that partnership with them with just having a 364, so it’s just extending it another 24 hours.”
Earlier this month, the bill cleared the House in 62-9 vote and was sent to the Senate, but its first hearing in a Senate committee ended Tuesday in a narrow 4-3 vote. Republican Sens. Mike McKell of Spanish Fork and Calvin Musselman of West Haven joined with two Democrats to vote down the bill.
Pierucci did not respond to a request for comment on the vote.
McKell, who serves as the Senate’s majority assistant whip, said Wednesday he had concerns about the bill, including that the legislation adopts as part of its drafting a piece of federal code, an issue raised as well by Sen. Brady Brammer, R-Pleasant Grove, during the hearing.
“He was a little uneasy,” said McKell, adding that, although he can’t speak for the rest of the Senate, “that concerns me as well.”
McKell also said that some of the issues Pierucci’s bill raises are better addressed in Musselman’s SB90. That measure would institute mandatory jail sentences for certain drug and theft crimes, and set the mandatory sentence for a class A misdemeanor at 360 days. Musselman’s bill passed the Senate 22-0 earlier this month.
Despite concerns among his leadership team about Pierucci’s legislation, Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, said the legislation, with changes, may still have a chance in his chamber. He said his GOP caucus also backs Pierucci’s goal to support ICE and Trump’s deportation mission.
“Yes, that’s what we’re trying to say here, that we support that,” Adams said Wednesday as McKell nodded along. “There were some things that we didn’t like in the bill. We’re going to fix those and bring the bill back.”
Sen. Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City and the Senate’s minority leader, was among those who voted against recommending the bill. She worries about how it would apply to legal permanent residents and those who have not been convicted of a crime.
“Refugees, legal permanent residents, and anyone with working visas … will be disproportionately actually impacted,” she said, “because there’s not even a conviction. It’s immediate. By being arrested, [it] triggers this process.”
With fewer than two weeks remaining in the 2025 legislative session, HB226 is among a number of bills lawmakers hope to nudge across the finish line before it’s too late.
“You’ll see some work being done on it,” Adams said. “We’re taking the rough edges off these bills. … This is part of the process, and we’ll see if we can get there on that bill.”
