Author: Jesse

David Kranes, a prolific Utah playwright and author who explored the drama of Western landscapes and Nevada casinos, has died.

Kranes died Tuesday in a Salt Lake City care facility, according to friends, after a long illness. He was 88.

He “was an artistic force,” Cynthia Fleming, executive artistic director of Salt Lake Acting Company, said in a statement Wednesday. “He possessed the rare gift of transforming lived experience into language. Whether you encountered his words on stage, on the page or in the classroom, his command of language was unmistakable and unforgettable.”

According to his longtime friend Gaylan Nielson, the theater director Jon Jory — founder of the Actors Theatre of Louisville, and Kranes’ classmate at Yale’s drama school — once called Kranes “without a doubt, the best American playwright you haven’t read yet.”

Nielsen noted in a remembrance that Kranes wrote some 50 plays over his career — but he didn’t want to be pigeonholed as a playwright. He also wrote eight novels, three collections of short stories, and the occasional opinion piece for The Salt Lake Tribune. (In a 2017 commentary, Kranes compared President Donald Trump, unfavorably, to the showman P.T. Barnum.)

“In Europe, writers are writers,” Kranes told The Tribune in 2011. “Camus and Sartre wrote philosophy, novels, plays, journals, essays. They were thinkers who crafted their thoughts and feelings into words, and placed those words in what felt to them to be the most appropriate containers. … I’m not sure why most American writers work as specialists, but they do.”

Kranes also was a professor of English at the University of Utah for 34 years, retiring and reaching emeritus status in 2001. And for 14 years, in the 1980s and ‘90s, he worked with Robert Redford as the founding artistic director of the Sundance Institute’s Playwrights Lab.

In 2014, Fleming asked Kranes to create a similar playwrights’ lab at Salt Lake Acting Company, developing other writers’ talents, and “how thrilling it was for this theater when he said yes.”

Kranes and SLAC had a relationship that lasted more than 30 years. SLAC staged eight of Kranes’ plays — a run that started in 1983 with “The Salmon Run” and concluded in 2014 with “A Loss of Appetite.” “This was a place where his own brave artistic development was nurtured and where his work was allowed to flourish,” Fleming said.

Kranes often wrote about the American West, both on the page and for the stage. Two of his short story collections, “The Legend’s Daughter” and “Low Time in the Desert: Nevada Stories,” were filled with his observations on the West.

“His writing is deeply rooted in Western landscapes,” his friend Nielson wrote in a remembrance. “He has a love for Utah and the rugged beauty of the mountains, an obsession with Idaho, and a fixation with Nevada. These environments are characters in his work that allow him to investigate the cultures and people who thrive in them.”

The West, Kranes told the University of Utah’s alumni magazine in 2013, “is inconstant, shifting, changing, new — both discoverable and rediscoverable.”

Another recurring theme in Kranes’ work was the conflict between fathers and sons. The topic drove his 2001 novel “The National Tree,” set around a Sitka spruce chosen to be the Christmas tree outside the White House. That story was the only one of Kranes’ works ever to be adapted for film, a 2009 Hallmark movie starring Andrew McCarthy.

Another fascination of Kranes’, casinos and gambling, was sparked by a chance encounter at the old State Line Casino in West Wendover, Nevada. He told the alumni magazine he was standing behind a man on a winning streak at a blackjack table. The gambler passed Kranes a silver dollar and said, “Here. Good luck, kid.”

“In a casino, the idea of ‘are you a winner or are you a loser?’ gets compressed into a three-minute or five-minute span of time,” Kranes said.

In 1991, Kranes wrote an essay about the spaces in casinos, which earned him a long-running side gig as a casino consultant, a job that took him to gambling places across the United States and to Europe.

Kranes’ last published novel, 2017’s “Abracadabra,” was a mystery set in Las Vegas. Its protagonist, Elko Wells, was a private investigator who heard voices and perceived patterns due to the concussions he suffered in his days as a football player. Elko’s assistants were a network of observant cocktail waitresses, known collectively as the Bloody Marys.

Las Vegas, Kranes told The Tribune in 2017, “just seems a place of the imagination.” Casinos are “confusing connections of boxes and spaces,” all the better to unhinge visitors and separate them from their money.

That compressed feeling was reflected in how Kranes viewed his plays. “I’ve always been hypersensitive to space, especially affective space — the way any given configuration of space makes you feel,” Kranes told the alumni magazine.

In 2011, Kranes criticized playwrights, and the theater companies who produced their works, for making their spaces too small. Drama set in tiny apartments “doesn’t have vertical reach,” he told The Tribune then. “Theater began with people talking to the heavens and spirits of the underworld,” he said, as he welcomed plays, like Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” that opened up the theater space.

David Kranes was born in 1937, in Belmont, Massachusetts, the son of a prominent doctor and a former nurse, and grew up in the Boston area. He once intended to enroll in medical school, to follow his father’s career, but in his senior year at Bowdoin College, he decided he couldn’t go through with it. He shifted to law school at Columbia University, but didn’t like the cutthroat competition of the other students.

“I was trying to read a novel a day and write a sonnet a day, because I’d never get to do that once I graduated and started to practice [law],” Kranes told the alumni magazine. ”All that conspired into a breakdown. And after my head cleared from the breakdown, I saw that I’d best try to do what I loved, which was to write.”

He earned a master’s degree in English from New York University, then enrolled in the drama school at Yale — where his classmates included Jory, the theater director; playwright John Guare and actor Stacy Keach. In 1967, he came to the University of Utah to teach both English and theater.

At the U., Kranes said he learned he loved teaching as much as writing. “It’s very hard to commit to making stuff out of words without feeling a little odd, strange, or outside the mainstream,” Kranes told the alumni magazine, adding that, as a teacher, “you help the younger writers see it’s not necessarily solitary.”

Plans for memorial services had not been announced as of Wednesday. A list of survivors was not immediately available.

As the Providence Police Department continues its investigation of Saturday afternoon’s Brown University mass shooting that left two dead and nine injured, the Ivy League school’s head of campus safety has maintained a low profile.

Rodney Chatman serves as Brown’s vice president for public safety and emergency management, a position that makes him the school’s executive director of public safety and chief of university police.

His LinkedIn page says he began his career as a police officer in 2005 at the University of Cincinnati, and became a captain in that department in 2012.

In 2016, he departed for the University of Dayton, where he became the executive director of campus safety and police chief. In 2020, he moved west and became the police chief at the University of Utah. His yearlong tenure at that school was marred by controversy after he was accused of wearing a badge and carrying a gun before officially becoming a police officer in the state, which is a crime. Those allegations were unfounded, but he spent half of his year on leave.

Left: A police vehicle is parked at an intersection near crime scene tape at Brown University, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025, in Providence, R.I., following a Saturday shooting at the university. Right: Brown University Police Chief Rodney Chatman on an unknown date.  (Greg Norman Diamond/Fox News Digital; Brown University)

BROWN UNIVERSITY WAS ‘SOFT TARGET’ FOR SHOOTER WHO REMAINS AT LARGE, CRIMINAL PROFILER SAYS

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Chatman said he faced pushback for policing reforms he tried to implement at the school. He departed for Brown in 2021.

In October, two local police unions, the Brown University Security Patrolperson’s Association and the University Police Sergeants Union, issued votes of “no confidence” in Chatman, the former expressing “deep concern among the membership regarding the direction and leadership of the Department of Public Safety,” according to the Brown Daily Herald. 

After a gunman, who has yet to be identified and remains at large, burst into a classroom on the first floor of the urban school’s Barus & Holley building on Saturday afternoon, causing death and destruction, campus security has become a focal point. The school has faced criticism regarding the killer’s access to the building and a lack of security cameras that could have helped in identifying the shooter.

Chatman has only briefly addressed the shooting in the days since it occurred, saying that three outdoor sirens on the campus did not activate during the shooting because of how quickly the event took place, according to the Rhode Island Current. 

Fox News Digital has found that diversity, equity and inclusion has been a major focus for Brown’s campus safety department and Chatman himself.

Emergency personnel gather on Waterman Street at Brown University in Providence, R.I., on Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025, during the investigation of a shooting. (Mark Stockwell/AP Photo)

“As we continue to assess and strengthen campus safety practices amid the critical national debate around policing and justice, we are set to welcome a truly accomplished leader who is ideally positioned to guide this work at Brown,” Brown University President Christina Paxson said in a message announcing Chatman’s hiring. “Chief Chatman will bring not only an outstanding track record in law enforcement, but also the values, skills and experiences that will enable him to effectively engage our full community in advancing safety on campus in every aspect.”

On International Women’s Day in March, Chatman, along with the entire Brown Department of Public Safety (DPS), celebrated the department’s female officers.

“Today, on International Women’s Day, we proudly celebrate the incredible women of Brown DPS who serve and protect our community with dedication and strength,” DPS said in a LinkedIn post. “A few of our officers share what makes them most proud about working in law enforcement and their advice for young women considering this career. Thank you to all of the women on our team who make our department EPIC!”

A video was attached to the post with testimonials from female officers.

“Look at our amazing team!!!! Go BRUNO!” Chatman said while sharing the post.

In a prior post on LinkedIn, Chatman asked other campus police departments to refrain from posting pictures of themselves with weapons or performing tactical maneuvers, suggesting that it could make their communities anxious.

Law enforcement officials carrying weapons gather near Brown University in Providence, R.I., on Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025, during the investigation of a shooting. (Steven Senne/AP Photo)

BROWN UNIVERSITY SHOOTING VICTIM IDENTIFIED AS ELLA COOK: ‘AN INCREDIBLE LIGHT’

“To my police leaders: please consider removing pictures prominently displayed on your websites and promotional material of your officers engaged in tactical maneuvers and displaying weapons. We all know you have them,” he said. “Consider displaying your compassion, and engagement with the community that alleviates the anxiety of our presence.”

Brown DPS hosts listening sessions, where students can bring their concerns to authorities, according to a webpage on the school’s site.

“Within the listening session format, students are encouraged to attend to share thoughts and recommendations into matters that have the potential to impact police-community relations and campus safety programming on Brown’s campus,” the page said, adding that there are “many issues that are deeply concerning to us all.

BROWN UNIVERSITY SHOOTING: TIMELINE OF TERROR THAT LEFT 2 DEAD, 9 INJURED

“Students will also have the opportunity to learn about the department’s Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan (DIAP) and to provide feedback,” the page says.

In 2016, the campus security department launched its Diversity & Inclusion Action Plan (DIAP), focused on diversity within the campus safety department. Those efforts continue today.

A split image showing multiple still frames from the surveillance video taken near Brown University of a person of interest before and after a school shooting Saturday. (FBI Boston)

“Public Safety is committed to achieving a diverse workplace that supports the diverse community within Brown University,” a Brown webpage says. “We understand that having a diverse group of personnel will have the capacity to foster trust with the community we serve as well as to inform and enrich our organizational climate.”

BROWN UNIVERSITY STUDENT DESCRIBES HARROWING HOURS-LONG LOCKDOWN AFTER DEADLY CAMPUS SHOOTING

In 2017, DPS brought in a transgender academic, who goes only by Dr. Scout, to lead a three-day diversity workshop on “cultural competency and community engagement (LGBTQ, transgender, diverse populations), health disparities, data collection, language tips, stigma and how it affects lives, trends, and strategies to enhance service within these communities.”

In fact, DPS has a diversity statement featured prominently on one of its Brown webpages.

“We make every effort to anticipate, plan for, and respond to the needs of our diverse and ever-changing community. We seek the input and talents of all members of the University and our efforts to safeguard the campus,” it says.

“Public Safety works diligently to build and sustain trust and positive relationships with the diverse community we serve at Brown,” says another DPS page. “As communities all across the country continue to deal with racial unrest and police reform, we support the University’s urge to confront racial injustice. We also recognize that there is always room for improvement within our organization. We will continue to work towards our commitment in establishing and building positive and respectful community relations, especially with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC).”

A bouquet of flowers rests on snow, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025, on the campus of Brown University not far from where a shooting took place, in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Fox News contributor Nicole Parker blasted Brown for its focus on DEI.

“For around 10 years when the DEI program was initiated at Brown, it seems that diversity was a higher priority than campus safety and now the university and its students are left picking up the pieces of their lethal failure,” she said. “Woke does not work when it comes to campus safety! And sadly, two innocent students have lost their lives.”

Ella Cook of Alabama and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, an Uzbek national who had been living in Virginia, were killed in Saturday’s attack.

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Brown officials pointed Fox News Digital to a Monday statement about the tragedy, which includes a list of enhanced security measures, in response to an inquiry about DEI and campus safety.

Chatman did not return a request for comment.

DETROIT — Just as the Detroit Red Wings looked like they were getting into a groove, they hit a stumbling block Wednesday in a 4-1 loss to the Utah Mammoth.

It’s only one game for a team that still sits atop the Atlantic Division, and none of the Red Wings players or coaches were going to panic in the aftermath. But a night after head coach Todd McLellan cautioned, “You can’t give it back,” after a strong run of recent play, a three-goal loss on home ice wasn’t the follow-up anyone was looking for.

Here’s what went wrong and some other thoughts from Wednesday night.

1. There was no doubt what McLellan thought the biggest issue was against the Mammoth.

“For me, the difference was obvious,” he said. “It was play around our net.”

And that was a theme on all four goals Detroit allowed. On the first, Simon Edvinsson drifted just off of Clayton Keller in the slot, giving him enough room to put home a big rebound off Cam Talbot. On the second, Ben Chiarot didn’t tie up Jack McBain on the back post. The third was a bit different, as no one really lost their man, but when Moritz Seider went to clear a trickling puck headed for a goal line, he ended up bouncing it off Talbot’s pad and right to Dylan Guenther for an easy goal. And on the fourth, Nate Danielson was a step or two off his check in the slot for a one-timer.

“It’s like sitting at your desk at school,” McLellan said. “You’re sitting there, but big deal. Are you doing any work? We’re in position. Do the work. Do the job. Get it done.”

McLellan also noted that Edvinsson and Danielson threw their heads back after the first and fourth goals, indicating they knew immediately what had gone wrong.

2. Though those goals against were ultimately the difference in the final score, Detroit also created far too little danger of its own against the Mammoth, especially at five-on-five.

Detroit’s top players, in particular, had uncharacteristic nights, with their first line (Larkin, Lucas Raymond and Emmitt Finnie) and the top defense pair (Seider and Edvinsson) all ending the night at minus-2, and with five-on-five expected goals shares below 25 percent, according to Natural Stat Trick.

Finnie got the Red Wings’ lone goal on a third-period power-play blast that briefly gave Detroit life, but there just weren’t enough serious chances in the second or third periods to really threaten Utah.

Although Detroit’s power play eventually scored in the third, a pair of second-period opportunities on the man advantage went by uneventfully when the score was still 1-0. The Red Wings didn’t record a shot on goal in the first of those two chances, and the top unit managed just one shot on goal in the second as well.

“We had looks, we had zone time, we just didn’t get it done,” Larkin said. “Didn’t get pucks through. Credit to them, they had a tight diamond, and I’m sure Todd will tell you both on their penalty kill and five-on-five, they probably won the net play tonight, and that was probably the story of the game.”

Certainly, the lack of any five-on-five offense is a more damning proposition than a 1-for-4 night on the power play. But situationally, in a one-goal game, those were big missed chances to swing momentum. Utah scored just 22 seconds after killing off the second penalty to make it 2-0, and that ultimately proved to be the game-winning goal.

Still, with just one even-strength goal in the last two games, the Red Wings are going to need more there, and that includes their top players, who have really carried them offensively to this point.

3. Wednesday’s loss dropped the Red Wings to 1-5 in the second half of back-to-backs this season.

It’s a small sample, but that stands out, even with the inherent challenge of playing on consecutive nights. It didn’t seem to slow Utah too much Wednesday, for example.

Larkin acknowledged the Red Wings will have to be better in those situations, particularly with more on the horizon. Detroit will play three more sets of back-to-backs in the next two weeks, with a home-and-home against the Washington Capitals this weekend, tilts against the Carolina Hurricanes and Toronto Maple Leafs the following weekend, and then the Winnipeg Jets and Pittsburgh Penguins at New Year’s.

I asked McLellan if there was anything he could put his finger on with the back-to-backs, and he pointed out that Detroit hadn’t scored first in any of those losses. That is true, and it’s probably a symptom and a cause.

Not scoring early has been a theme all season, though. Detroit has just 19 first-period goals in 35 games, which ranks 30th in the league, while giving up 28. The goals against number isn’t so bad — it’s still roughly league average — but it still translates to coming out of the first in a hole too often.

Cam Talbot hasn’t quite hit the same highs as earlier this season in recent games. (Rick Osentoski / Imagn Images)

4. Just as John Gibson seems to have found a bit of a rhythm for the Red Wings, Cam Talbot — who was Detroit’s rock in net early this season — has slipped into a bit of a funk. Not many of Wednesday’s goals were on him, but the rebound he gave up on the first goal (stemming from a low-percentage shot from along the boards) and then the trickling puck that led the third are atypical of where he was to start the season.

McLellan said he thinks the Red Wings have played better in front of Gibson of late, a reversal from early in the season, but that he’d “have a conversation (with Talbot) real quick, just let him know that we believe in him, because we do.”

5. After Tuesday night’s game, I noted Detroit had a tougher portion of the schedule coming up, with the back-to-back games against Washington and hosting a good Dallas Stars team to lead into Christmas.

Co-worker Dom Luszczyszyn pointed out to me that it’s actually more dramatic in the big picture. His model projects the Red Wings with the league’s toughest remaining schedule coming into Wednesday, and Detroit’s remaining opponents also have the second-highest collective win percentage.

That’s just one more reason that banking every point possible matters right now, especially from Eastern Conference foes they’ll be competing with for a playoff spot.

Street arrests conducted by federal immigration authorities spiked in Utah during the month of September to five times the level of President Donald Trump’s first six months in office — and 50 times the average under President Joe Biden.

Newly released U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, running through mid-October, confirms a reported shift in tactics that have escalated in the 11 months since the Trump administration asked ICE field offices to each conduct 75 arrests per day of immigrants suspected to be in the country illegally.

Utah immigration attorneys said they have identified another change in removal operations in recent weeks that includes a pattern of ICE officials — and increasingly Customs and Border Patrol agents — pulling over suspected illegal immigrants on their morning commute, or pulling them into an unmarked van in the middle of the night.

Former New York City ICE field office director Scott Mechkowski said these strategies are not unusual for Border Patrol, and that ICE has always pursued “noncustodial” arrests. These street arrests, including of individuals with no criminal record, are necessary, he said, following the largest surge in illegal immigration in U.S. history.

“It was never illegal, or never frowned upon, if we picked somebody up regardless if they were a criminal or not,” said Mechkowski, who worked in immigration law enforcement for 24 years before his retirement in 2025. “This is a national security priority. We don’t know who these people are.”

ICE arrests by the numbers

Monthly ICE arrests have risen steadily in Utah and surrounding states since Trump returned to the White House, according to a Deseret News analysis of government data provided by ICE in response to a FOIA request for the Deportation Data Project.

In Utah, total ICE arrests increased from an average of 115 per month before Trump entered office, to more than 290 during his first six months. Arrests rose again to around 380 per month from July to mid-October, driven by an increase in street arrests and arrests of those with no criminal record but who have violated federal immigration law by overstaying a visa or otherwise being in the country illegally.

September saw a dramatic jump in noncustodial arrests — which are those that occur outside of the criminal justice pipeline which ICE traditionally relied on for the vast majority of enforcement actions. In custodial cases, ICE picks up detainees from local jails where they have been kept for breaking the law.

Street arrests, which can take place almost anywhere, have increased in Utah from less than three per month under Biden, to around two dozen per month during Trump’s first six months, before jumping to 118 in the month of September, contributing to an average of 72 per month between July and mid-October.

The monthly average of arrests of those with no pending charges or convictions likewise increased in Utah — from an average of seven per month under Biden, to more than 40 per month between January and June, and surpassing 70 per month from July to October.

Once arrested, individuals are typically taken to county jails in Tooele County, Salt Lake County or Uinta County, Wyoming, until space opens up at the official ICE detention center in Pahrump, Nevada, according to Christopher Vizcardo, an immigration attorney at Trujillo Acosta Law in South Jordan.

Arrested individuals are nearly always given the right to see a judge in order to request asylum, agree to voluntary departure or sign a deportation order, Vizcardo said. But in cases when individuals are unable to secure legal representation, they often choose deportation over remaining detained during a process that can take anywhere from one month to one year.

“Not everything is doom and gloom,” Vizcardo told the Deseret News. “That piece of the system is still working. There are still cases being reviewed by immigration judges. That’s not a line the administration has dared to cross, but they have made it harder.”

Vizcardo echoed complaints made by Murray-based immigration attorney Nicholle Pitt White, that since Trump entered office, ICE operations have become less transparent, the ICE Online Detainee Locator System has become less accurate and arrests appear to have become more indiscriminate.

A similar trend has played out in Arizona, where total average arrests have tripled from 300 a month under Biden, to more than 950 during the late summer and early fall. During that time, average monthly noncustodial arrests increased tenfold from around 30 to 325, and arrests without a criminal record increased from around 55 to over 280 per month.

Nevada has seen total average monthly arrests quadruple from 65 to more than 270, with noncustodial arrests and arrests of those without criminal records multiplying by at least that much. Idaho has not seen the same level of ICE enforcement action, with total average monthly arrests increasing from around 30 to 80.

Change in tactics?

While ICE arrests appeared to slow down in Utah during the November federal government shutdown, they have multiplied in recent weeks, according to Tiffany Young, a local activist who has built an online community of around 20,000 residents who report and verify ICE activity in the state.

There has been a notable increase in enforcement efforts that take the form of early morning traffic stops targeting work trucks along roads like Bangerter Highway in west Salt Lake County, Young said. Several photos and videos obtained by the Deseret News appear to show such interactions with immigration authorities.

A new emphasis on traffic stops has coincided with a change of leadership over the ICE Salt Lake City Field Office located in West Valley City, with the new director coming from Customs and Border Patrol, according to Young and Pitt White. Deseret News confirmed this change with local law enforcement, and the name of the new director, Brian Henke.

Before the past few months, White, who specializes in immigrant removal defense at Contigo.Law, said her clients never reported being stopped and arrested while in their vehicles. Now it has become commonplace, often leaving family members at home with no idea of what has happened, White said.

“I’ve seen them break windows in Utah and pull people out of their cars, even while children are inside — kind of the worst bits of humanity is what we’re seeing,” White told the Deseret News. “Any empathy or sympathy that did exist in this system is basically gone now.”

White said these instances were relayed to her directly by individuals seeking legal consultation, and in one case included personal dashcam footage of the interaction, which the Deseret News could not independently verify.

In another video taken in Taylorsville on July 9, which the Deseret News independently verified through video metadata information, a man in a Border Patrol vest can be seen questioning Hispanic workers in a truck, which the immigration authorities said they had followed from a nearby 7-11.

Border Patrol are known for using this approach as part of their “area control” enforcement, typically done within 100 miles of the southern border, according to former ICE field office director Mechkowski.

Salt Lake is more than 800 miles from the border but it appears that the Trump administration is using Border Patrol as a “force multiplier” for ICE, Mechkowski said.

“I don’t see any cons in using any law enforcement agency,” Mechkowski said. “I say it’s all hands on deck, and I don’t see anything negative about it. … I don’t think they’re arresting people fast enough.”

From January to June, the ICE Salt Lake City area of responsibility, which covers Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Montana, conducted an average of 21 arrests per day — less than one-third of the quota established by the administration early on. This average increased to 25 from July to October.

During his time leading ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations in New York City during the first Trump administration, Mechkowski said arrests typically targeted convicted criminals with easily accessible case files. But ICE also regularly conducted raids looking for those with deportation orders and no criminal record.

Mechkowski believes the public is being “lied to” by the mainstream media when they are told ICE has changed its tactics. It hasn’t, according to Mechkowski — it has only expanded its focus to target more heavily those who are in the country illegally without criminal charges: “everybody is fair game.”

What’s behind public perception?

But the tactics that are increasingly impacting the clients of Vizcardo appear far outside the realm of typical immigration law enforcement efforts, he said.

Just in the past month, Vizcardo said the number of people seeking help for themselves or a loved one who was arrested by immigration authorities has more than doubled, with many reporting that arrests took place while they were going about their normal days.

In one such instance, a client, who is currently detained in the Nevada detention center, was heading home from work, and was surrounded by unmarked SUVs while leaving a fast food restaurant in Kearns during the early morning hours of Dec. 6, Vizcardo said.

The client was then allegedly put inside a van which drove around for the rest of the night picking up other suspected illegal immigrants.

“And in that time they would stop the vehicle for 20 minutes, half an hour, and then drive somewhere real fast, and then another person would be chucked in the back of the van,” Vizcardo told the Deseret News. “By the time they headed to the office, some four hours later, the van was full of people that had been detained during that night.”

Vizcardo said he has “no idea whatsoever” why ICE chose to target his client. He said he does not know whether ICE works from a list of suspected illegal immigrants that it uses to identify individuals to arrest, or whether the arrests are based on other factors.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment on these changing tactics.

The types of immigration enforcement actions appear to be continually changing. Mirroring trends from around the country, last week multiple immigrants were arrested on their way to appointments at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Salt Lake City, according to Young, Pitt White and multiple media reports.

Manhattan Institute fellow Rafael Mangual expects one reason why federal agencies have focused more on noncustodial arrests is because it has become harder to work with some so-called “sanctuary city” municipalities to transition detained immigrants into ICE custody.

Pulling in Border Patrol to help expand deportation efforts beyond convicted criminals also aligns with what Trump has long campaigned on, which Mangual said is at least partially in response to the largest immigration wave in U.S. history, with at least 10 million immigrants entering the country from 2021 to 2024, according to census data.

“To the extent it’s a problem, it’s one that was invited by the Biden administration’s malfeasance on the border,” Mangual told the Deseret News. “That creates a mess, and cleaning up that mess is not always going to be efficient. It won’t always look great on camera.”

But Mangual suspects the uproar over Trump’s immigration policies has more to do with ideological opposition to the president than with ICE tactics. Many of Trump’s detractors would be displeased with any level of enforcement of immigration law, Mangual said.

Critics of the administration have also gone out of their way to interfere with ICE activities, whether that be following agents around with cameras, or blocking the streets, Mangual said.

At the end of November, the Department of Homeland Security, reported a more than 1,000% increase in assaults against ICE officers compared to 2024.

In Salt Lake City and West Valley City, anti-ICE organizations have reportedly placed around 400 signs at businesses that read “Immigrants are welcome here,” “No I.C.E. allowed,” “I.C.E. cannot enter private areas of this business without a judicial warrant signed by a judge” and “I.C.E. out of Utah.”

“I don’t think that that reaction is a byproduct of the style of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts,” Mangual said. “I think it’s just a backlash to the fact that any immigration enforcement is being done at all.”

The Utah Jazz have to keep their pick this season. It’s a non-negotiable. Ending this season without a top-8 pick with a 10-15 roster that, even with some impressive wins, is not a credible contender for the championship.

That said, they have a chance to get there if they keep this pick and keep this roster together. But it’s going to take the Jazz taking control of their team’s future. And that likely means some drastic moves that ensure the team doesn’t win games they likely would have had they just played to win.

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And that will be the most applauded move by the entire fan base.

Last night’s game showed us that the Jazz understand the importance of the pick. Not playing Svi Mykhailiuk, Kevin Love, and Jusuf Nurkic. The difference between what the Mavericks did last night and the Jazz? They rested their second most important player. For Utah to get to where they need to go, they have to do the same thing.

Yes, it’s unsavory. Yes, the system sucks, and we all wish it weren’t this way. But in basketball as in life, you can only control what you can control. For the Jazz, they can control who they play and how long they play. And the rewards will be massive. Utah has a core of young players who are developing into something special. The Jazz need one more top pick in the lottery to build around, and they can credibly argue they are building towards something. Just like the Dallas Mavericks did with Anthony Davis not playing against the Jazz, Utah needs to rest their second-best player, Lauri Markkanen, when they play against below .500 teams for the rest of the season.

This will allow Keyonte George to continue playing and enable Ace Bailey to receive prime development at the small forward spot. There is no downside to this plan, and it will assure the Jazz keep their top-8 pick this year, a pick that has the potential to change the franchise forever.