Here at the Herald, it’s our job to report on the happenings in our community — the good, the bad and the ugly. One of those happenings in recent months has involved the proposed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center just outside Evanston city limits. We don’t believe it is our job to make a decision about this proposal for the community. It is, however, our job to report the news from all angles so the community can make an informed decision. 

This is a happening with a potentially huge impact on Evanston and on Uinta County as a whole. Whether you are for or against the proposal, there can be no doubt there are numerous considerations and questions that should be asked prior to moving ahead, and residents who have a huge stake in this have a duty and a right to ask questions and have their concerns addressed. 

Unfortunately, citizens have not been given such opportunities. 

Valid concerns have been printed in this newspaper over the past several months, and they are not being addressed by our elected officials.

They certainly haven’t been addressed publicly, as Evanston Mayor Kent Williams indicated during the one and only town hall meeting on May 24, 2017, when he said there will be future meetings about the project where citizens could be involved. Not a single meeting allowing input has taken place or been scheduled. Last summer, then-county clerk Lana Wilcox said the county commissioners hoped to visit a similar facility managed by MTC so they could see for themselves how things work. None of the commissioners — Eric South, Craig Welling and Wendell Fraughton — has visited another facility.

Uinta County Clerk Amanda Hutchinson said this week that, while commissioners haven’t yet followed through on those plans, she believes they do still plan to visit a facility, though nothing has been scheduled.

In November, MTC spokesman Mike Murphy said ICE could approve the project as early as January; in other words, any day now. What are the commissioners waiting for? We believe it goes without saying that it would be in the best interests of the community to make that visit before approving any project and that such a visit should have been done by now. 

There seems to be an assumption by local officials that community members overwhelmingly support this proposal.

In fact, Fraughton told the Casper Star-Tribune in January, “The negative comments have been at a minimum.”

We at the Herald have found just the opposite. 

We’ve received several letters to the editor from people throughout the county and state who oppose the project. Some haven’t been printed because of limited space and our preference to run local letters first. However, since MTC first proposed this facility, we’ve received only one letter — way back in June 2017 — that showed a little support for the project, and even that letter was mostly neutral. 

MTC does have a controversial past, that’s well documented. It’s possible MTC has learned from past mistakes. What’s troubling, though, is Fraughton’s response when asked about documented cases of mismanagement and abuse of detainees. 

“Anywhere, there’s going to be some mismanagement,” Fraughton told the Casper Star-Tribune.

That is not something we should have to accept.

In 2011, the PBS investigative show “Frontline” uncovered several offenses at MTC-managed Willacy County Detention Center in Texas, including multiple allegations of sexual, physical and racial abuse of detainees. That is not simply mismanagement that happens anywhere, and it’s something local leaders should address in a public forum.

The mayor and commissioners did address safety somewhat in a press release that followed a small group of Evanston protesters and other groups protesting throughout the state and in Utah a few weeks ago. 

They said they would “do all within our power to ensure MTC and its employees are held to the highest standards and expectations for the proper treatment of its detainees.”

But what does that really mean? The simple fact is that we don’t know how much power any of our elected officials would have because we have no details. 

With so much at stake, we believe the residents of Uinta County deserve multiple opportunities to have their concerns addressed and questions answered before approving a project that could impact the community for years to come. We believe local officials should be making every effort to learn as much as they possibly can about MTC’s history and not shrug problems off as unavoidable. We believe any project should be thoroughly and rigorously vetted by local officials and members of the community. 

And we believe it would be irresponsible of us as journalists and information providers to gloss over these issues.