SALT LAKE CITY — The City of Denver is bussing immigrants to Utah and now Gov. Spencer Cox’s office says it’s doing everything it can to stop the practice.

Senior Advisor and Director of Communications for the governor’s office, Jennifer Napier-Pearce, said in a statement sent to KSL NewsRadio that the City of Denver did not consult with them about sending immigrants to Utah.

“Just over two weeks ago we learned of an immigrant family at the Salt Lake City airport who had been sent by Denver officials with no resources and no place to go,” Napier-Pearce said in the statement.

It goes on to say that since learning of Denver’s policy, “We’ve worked with Salt Lake County and Salt Lake City to push back on the Department of Homeland Security, the city of Denver, the state of Colorado and the Biden administration demanding they immediately stop this practice.”

Has Denver been bussing immigrants to Utah?

Jon Ewing with the Denver Department of Human Services confirmed to KSL NewsRadio that they have paid for tickets to send 59 people to Salt Lake City in the past month and paid for 2,000 tickets for people in the past year and a half.

Ewing said in a statement that Denver has been incredibly transparent with all their newcomer operations, including onward travel efforts.

“The vast majority of newcomers arriving in Denver do so on buses chartered from Texas and had no intention of ever coming to Denver,” Ewing said. “That’s why part of our operations include purchasing tickets for newcomers to get to their desired location, where they may have support networks or job opportunities. In all cases, the destination is solely chosen by the newcomer.”

Ewing went on to say that they “Remain in close communication with officials to provide notification if larger groups are traveling or in the exceedingly rare occasion that a flight is booked.”

Cox speaks out

But that differs from what Cox said earlier today on X.

“Recently learned that the Democrat mayor of Denver has been sending illegal immigrants to Utah without proper notification or approval,” Cox’s post read.

We recently learned that the Democrat mayor of Denver has been sending illegal immigrants to Utah without proper notification or approval. This is completely unacceptable and follows on the failed catch-and-release policy of the Biden administration. Every state has received… https://t.co/pL4pShMTn2

— Utah Gov. Spencer J. Cox (@GovCox) June 14, 2024

Cox went on to say that “all 50 states, including Utah, are now border states due to the failed immigration policies of President Biden and Congress. Once again we call on the Biden administration and Congress to solve this crisis.”

Cox said the state’s resources are completely depleted.

A lack of immigration resources

Depleted resources are something immigration attorney Carlos Trujillo said he’s seen firsthand.

“I have been in a couple of the shelters. I have worked with the governor’s office for new immigrants, new Americans, and you can see how these people are sadly here in this country with nothing,” Trujillo said.

Trujillo agrees that the resources have been used up.

“The situation really is dire. And a lot these people also have children,” Trujillo said. “And that has been the concern of the many organizations that have been trying to help, is that we don’t want to see children on the street.”

Trujillo was hopeful that there were solutions to this problem. One thing he said needs specific attention is the current process for asylum seekers.

“It’s a very different wave of immigrants than before,” Trujillo said. “A very high percentage, I would say about 70%, if not higher, of these people arriving at the border, they are turning themselves in. They’re not coming in the shadows or anything like that.”

Another local response

The President of the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators, State Rep. Angela Romero also weighed in today.

She said her office has been in close communication with the Denver mayor’s office. She said that when asylum seekers come into the country, they are asked where they want to go. 

Romero asked that people not place blame on Colorado leadership and avoid dehumanizing families that have come into our communities. 

The new Utah Hockey Club has the potential to build an impressive legacy, one surrounded by winning and maintaining a loyal fan base.

It’s easier said than done, but Utah can look to the Colorado Avalanche as an example for success in the NHL.

The Quebec Nordiques had an impressive following and a rich history. However, they didn’t win the Cup, something the Colorado Avalanche did their first year after relocating from Quebec to Denver in the 1995-96 season.

Adding insult to injury for Quebec fans, Colorado won the Cup in their first year in Denver.

Utah has the opportunity to achieve similar success. After only making one divisional championship appearance in their entire time in Arizona, Utah’s new hockey team has consistently struggled and almost embodied a losing team with a struggling fanbase.

Losing certainly doesn’t fill arenas, and once losing becomes the expected form of play, fanbases rapidly depart any interest in such a team.

Utah is a fresh start centered on a community that has proven itself to root for professional sports. Utah Jazz fans are some of the most loyal and dedicated in the league. This remains the case even though they have yet to win their prized first championship, losing back-to-back appearances against Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.

The Avalanche created a fan base based on star players (Joe Sakic and Patrick Roy) and, most importantly, an expectation centered on winning.

Like the fairly new Vegas Golden Knights, the Avalanche took the league by storm, putting a competitive roster on the ice and setting a new standard.

Today, both the Avalanche and Golden Knights continue to be examples of how to build NHL rosters around the league.

New ownership, a new fanbase, and a new home will assist Utah in forming a different legacy. While Utah may not experience the same quick success as Colorado, it has the potential to change its franchise narrative and improve its play.

Winning solves everything. With new draft picks and a change of scenery, the existing roster finally gets a fresh start, long overdue.

The Salt Lake City area has all the elements to provide for an excellent show; from the mountains, snow, and proven NBA fanbase, it’s up to the hockey team to start and create their legacy.

The Central Division is both talent-filled and competitive, making it a prime example with some of the league’s most talented teams.

Utah can be one of the best stories in NHL history, they just need to win.

Doug Staker’s moveable art project — a walk-through “sacred space” he calls “Sanctuary” — is designed to celebrate belonging. Staker said he was motivated to create the project by personal stories from family and friends.

“I have a brother who’s gay, and we were a very Mormon family,” Staker said. “We just found this kind of conflict arising between family, and it was difficult assessing what that meant.”

Staker, who grew up in Utah, is an architect who runs his own firm, Squaremoon Studio, in Salt Lake City and an artist. “I’ve always been interested in art and, really, that’s what got me into architecture,” he said. “I just wanted to do art.”

“Sanctuary” is an architectural art project that, according to the Squaremoon website, “was born from the painful experiences of friends and family dealing with the disconnects of the LGBTQ+ experience in religion and those who love and support them.” On the website, Staker lists some of the stories that inspired him, like that of his brother Harry.

The project — which was on display at Salt Lake City’s Washington Square Park during this month’s Utah Pride Festival — is constructed from cardboard, which is cut into square frames. The frames are put together into arches through which people can walk around. The frames hold colored panels, which give the structure a rainbow glow. The arches are connected to create one big structure.

The design, Staker said, is sophisticated — a blend of traditional and progressive art forms, driven by current technology. For example, he used the form of an arch, which nods back to Roman churches, but with cardboard panels in place of stones.

Staker said the inspiration for “Sanctuary” comes from Tempietto, a 16th century commemorative tomb in Rome designed by the Renaissance-era Italian architect Donato Bramante.

“The architect was trying to create this sort of ideal of a perfect form or something,” Staker said, adding that he took that idea as guidance while making a space where deeper artistic questions could be answered.

Different arches, or areas, of the project are called “chapels” and have themes — such as joy, hope and sorrow — that determine their color schemes.

When the project was on display at the Utah Pride Festival earlier this month, passersby were invited to write messages in blue marker on the cardboard.

Some of the messages, related to the “chapel” themes, read, “You are loved,” “Be authentic. You are wonderful just the way you are” and “Joy is being seen as I am.”

The interactive aspect of “Sanctuary,” Staker said, was a part of the concept from the beginning.

“To me, that’s part of what creates a sacred space: people contributing. There’s an aspect to spirituality that’s more like a function and performance,” he said. “I always try to interact with these people that attend the festival.”

The project also has a “reclaiming” aspect to it — the reclaiming of sacred spaces and of waste materials, Staker said. The colored panels are repurposed from waste materials Staker got from 3Form, a Salt Lake City company that makes translucent materials for indoor and outdoor spaces.

“In a sense, it’s trash art, where we’re trying to build something beautiful out of cast-away materials,” he said.

Because of these aspects, the project has been constructed a few different times, in 2018, 2022 and 2024 — each version is slightly different from the previous one.

“Each time, we just find people to share something from personal experience,” he said. “Then their experience of the space is to walk around and see what other people share. That does a lot of kind of creating a sacred experience in unexpected places, like a sidewalk at the festival.”

One reason Staker said he has continued to improve on the design year after year is because he has a child who came out as part of the LGBTQ community. That “increased my motivation to continue it,” he said.

“I just felt like we needed to create a safe space, for people and my own kids, and this was a great direct symbol or metaphor of what we’re trying to do,” Staker said, adding that his children have helped a lot with building the project’s sculpture and bringing in other volunteers.

Staker said his favorite parts of the project are the way people rally around it, and how it’s become a “meaningful community experience.” Showing the project at such places as the Utah Pride Festival, he said, “really gets to the heart of why Pride exists.”

After displaying “Sanctuary” at the Utah Pride Festival, Staker plans on taking it on the road. He will be taking it to New York for the city’s Pride Week at the end of June, as part of a documentary that is being filmed. He might take it to Southern California, and he said some Utah groups have expressed interest in displaying it.

This weekend, Staker said he was scheduled to take “Sanctuary” to a Pride festival in Rexburg, Idaho, the small town known as the home of Brigham Young University-Idaho. “The reason we go to Rexburg is it’s a small Pride festival in a community [where] the reason for Pride is especially strong,” Staker said.

Taking “Sanctuary” on the road is always a question mark, Staker said, because it’s made of cardboard — and there are concerns about rain and ordinary wear-and-tear.

“It’s actually pretty resilient. As long as it keeps holding up, we’ll keep finding things to do with it,” Staker said. “We’re creating a safe space for all of us.”