A Utah DACA recipient has dreamed all his life of being a police officer but state law forbids it
A new diversity bill moving through the Utah Legislature would allow noncitizens to serve in the police force.
(Photo courtesy Enrique Sanchez) Enrique Sanchez, right, poses for a photo with Park City Police Officer Trent Jarman, left, and his nephew, Wesley Morales. Sanchez, who is undocumented, has long dreamed of becoming a police officer, but his citizenship status has served as a roadblock in his path, since Utah law does not allow noncitizens to serve on the force.
| Jan. 29, 2021, 9:26 p.m.
Deseret News
Utah bill seeks to diversify police forces by allowing legal immigrant residents to serve
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Junior Enrique Sanchez
SALT LAKE CITY Junior Enrique Sanchez was in grade school when he and one of his classmates were sent to the school’s office not because they were in trouble, but because they didn’t have the right shoes to run track.
As a son of two immigrant parents from Mexico, track shoes weren’t in his family’s budget.
Sanchez was 2 years old when his family moved to Utah, after his father spent five years working on California farms, commuting back and forth across the border. He moved his family to Park City, where he found a job in the restaurant industry and built a life there to raise his kids in one of Utah’s more privileged cities.
SALT LAKE CITY Utah Gov. Spencer Cox has selected a police chief to oversee criminal justice initiatives, a first in the nearly 40-year history of the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice.
The appointment of Tom Ross, the former Bountiful police chief of 14 years, comes amid calls for police reform in Utah part of a national reckoning on racial justice and shortcomings of recent criminal justice reform that have frustrated law enforcers.
Ross, a past president of the Utah Chiefs of Police Association, has played a role in shaping new state laws that help people in crisis get mental health treatment more quickly, plus other policies to address drug addiction and domestic violence in the Beehive State.