LOGAN – Democratic candidate Peter Crosby of Providence didn’t mince words when he roundly condemned ongoing immigration policy and enforcement efforts by the Trump administration on Sept. 10.
“Any immigration policy or enforcement effort that results in the death of American civilians on the street of American cities,” he said flatly, “is a broken immigration policy.
During the Meet the Candidates forum sponsored by the League of Women Voter of Cache Valley, Crosby went on to condemn the current administration’s use of warrant-less searches to apprehend immigrants who have committed no crimes and its incarceration of thousands of people who had merely sought better lives here in the U.S.
While recognizing that a county has the right to secure its borders, the Democrat argued that hardworking immigrants nevertheless deserve a simple, straight-forward path to U.S. citizenship.
As an incumbent Republican, Crosby’s opponent in Utah’s 2nd Congressional District – U.S. Rep. Blake Moore – has to be far more polite about splitting hairs with the Trump administration over immigration enforcement.
Although Moore has tried in the past to provide nuanced answers to questions about immigration policy, his Democratic critics aren’t likely to forgive his party-line support for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) signed into law on July 4, 2025 and the Secure America Act that followed less than a year later.
Combined, those pieces of legislation provided more than $230 billion for immigration enforcement. That funding fueled the wave of immigrant arrests, new detention center practices and controversial use of force guidelines, including the Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge in Minnesota that resulted in multiple fatal shootings.
Moore is nevertheless on record as opposing some of the worst ICE abuses.
During a 2025 meet and greet in Park City, the congressman stated publicly that he hoped ICE would restrict its use of force and be more open in its duty of keeping the country safe. He added that closer congressional oversight of ICE is necessary and would go a long way toward gaining and keeping public support for law enforcement.
Moore also believes that ICE activities should be governed by congressional legislation rather than executive orders from the White House.
The enactment of new laws would provide more adequate guidelines for ICE and make federal immigration policy appear less arbitrary.
For example, Moore points to the Laken Riley Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump in January.
Motivated by the 2024 killing of Laken Riley in Georgia by a Venezuelan illegal, that measure requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain certain immigrants arrested for burglary, theft and other related crimes.
Although he acknowledges that national enforcement of immigration policy is inevitable, Crosby believes that the worst of ICE abuses cannot be allowed to continue.