The city of Millcreek has found itself yet again pushing back against federal immigration authorities, Mayor Jeff Silvestrini said Friday afternoon.
Nearly three months after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopped a U.S. citizen in the city and, as Silvestrini later alleged in an email to ICE, made false statements to local police during the confrontation, the Department of Homeland Security has now instructed a Millcreek family of four to leave the country, Silvestrini said.
The family, who moved to Millcreek from Venezuela last August, received an email last week that told them to leave the country within seven days. The family came to the U.S. legally on humanitarian parole, Silvestrini said, which U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services grants for a temporary period.
“They’re entitled to be here in our country, and they’re also lawfully entitled to work in our country pending a hearing to determine their refugee status,” Silvestrini, who is a licensed lawyer, said of the family during a news conference Friday. “That’s the way this process works under the law.”
Attorneys Richard Lambert, who served as the criminal division chief for the U.S. attorney’s office in Utah for about seven years, and Jim McConkie, of the firm Parker & McConkie, are representing the Venezuelan family.
There is no indication that the family has any kind of criminal record or gang affiliation, McConkie said Friday, which he said would have been assessed by government officials when they crossed the border. A Millcreek woman originally from Haiti also received a notification requiring her to leave the country, McConkie added.
In a voice cracked by emotion and the final reminders of anesthesia, Silvestrini, who underwent abdominal surgery Thursday, said Friday that he’s not trying to make Millcreek the “nail that gets hit by the hammer.”
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Millcreek Mayor Jeff Silvestrini speaks to media at Millcreek City Hall, Friday, April 18, 2025, after he said at least one immigrant family in Millcreek received an email from the Department of Homeland Security demanding they leave the country within seven days.
“Neither my city nor me are trying to step out of line here and do something that is unlawful, or to interfere with the rightful duty of the federal government to enforce immigration laws,” Silvestrini said. “However, they need to be enforced in the right way — and that is not what I’m seeing happening, in both in the former situation that I wrote to ICE, and today as well.”
The mayor said he has reached out to Utah’s congressional delegation for help, while McConkie and Lambert said they plan to meet with the Department of Homeland security and the Utah U.S. attorney’s office next week.
“Here we are on on Good Friday, where many faiths think about Jesus and his family,” Lambert said Friday. “Well, they were asylum seekers going to Egypt to avoid staying where they were in Bethlehem — where they knew if they stayed, it would be subject to potentially death. And so they fled.”
“Fortunately, they were welcomed to a foreign land where they could stay until it was safe to go home,” he continued. “And that’s exactly what our clients are seeking from the United States of America.”
McConkie said he thinks the notice the family received was a “scare tactic.” The legal team is exploring a class action lawsuit and has already been in contact with individuals in Massachusetts, who received similar notifications and have filed their own class action suit.
For now, the attorneys said, the Utah family is staying put.
“We consider that to be an absolutely illegal order,” McConkie said. “They don’t need to leave. They’re lawfully here, unless the United States can prove otherwise.”
Hugh and Marcy Matheson, a couple who are neighbors to the family, said they heard about the family’s notice to leave through their church, which the family also attends.
The couple also knows the Haitian woman who received a notice, and said they are frustrated and confused by the enforcement.
“We’ll go sleep in the doorstep if we need to, to keep ICE from coming,” Hugh Matheson said. “They’re going to have to arrest me before they can arrest them, if it comes to that, because this is just needless, it’s pointless, it’s stupid — but it’s not just stupid, it’s fearful. It’s fearsome to these people, because this is their lives and their liberty.”
Silvestrini said as mayor of Millcreek, he will stand up for his residents.
“I’m a proud American, and I have respect for the Constitution and Bill of Rights,” Silvestrini said Friday. “And I see that threatened when people are being told to leave our country, and their status is being revoked without any kind of due process. … That’s not American.”
Silvestrini’s wife, Leslie, has separately set up a GoFundMe campaign to help immigrant families with legal expenses. The mayor said the campaign was not set up on behalf of the city.
The mayor added that anyone who has received notifications from federal authorities to leave the country can contact the nonprofit Refugee Justice League, which promotes and defends the constitutional rights of refugees, at 385-390-3001.