Mike Cernovich, the right-wing social media personality and political commentator, posted on X this week that Mormons had told him Salt Lake City has "degraded so badly" that when foreign Latter-day Saint members visit, "the elders and etc try to keep them away from non-Mormon run areas."
This raises some important logistical questions.
Salt Lake City proper is less than 50% LDS. Latter-day Saints make up about 49% of Salt Lake County's population, with only about 28% actively practicing. A 2022 study published in the Journal of Religion and Demography found that even Utah as a whole may no longer be majority Mormon, with only about 42% of Utahns self-identifying as members. The majority of Salt Lake City is non-Mormon. If Church leaders were steering foreign visitors away from non-Mormon parts of the city, they would have to avoid most of it.
And where exactly are these elders taking people? Foreign Latter-day Saint members visiting Salt Lake City are, overwhelmingly, visiting Church headquarters. Temple Square. The Conference Center. The Church Office Building. They are not being led on walking tours of Rose Park or Glendale. The scenario Cernovich describes, in which unnamed Church leaders apparently shuttle international visitors around the city while nervously avoiding entire neighborhoods, is not a thing that happens.
Of course, it's easy to make fun of an outsider's lack of understanding. That's not why the post is going viral. "Take your state back," Cernovich wrote. "No more of this fake nice stuff." That's what's driving the conversation. He's talking about illegal immigration and crime.
The numbers are worth examining.
Start with immigration. Utah has seen a significant increase in its illegal immigrant population over the past several years. The Pew Research Center estimated 140,000 illegal immigrants lived in the state in 2023, up from roughly 95,000 in 2016. The growth rate has been disproportionately high. An Associated Press analysis of U.S. Customs and Border Protection data found that Salt Lake County had the third-highest per-capita rate of immigrant arrivals among metro areas nationwide during the final 18 months of the Biden administration, at 1,685 per 100,000 residents. Utah ranked sixth nationally, outpacing traditional hot spots like Arizona, Nevada, and California.
Now turn to crime. Salt Lake City's crime rate remains high relative to the rest of Utah and compared to cities of similar size nationally. NeighborhoodScout's analysis of 2024 FBI data puts SLC's crime rate at 62 per thousand residents, placing it among the highest in the country across communities of all sizes. More than 99% of Utah communities have a lower crime rate. Your chance of becoming a victim of a property crime in the city is one in 19. Motor vehicle theft rates are among the worst in the nation.
That trajectory, however, is downward. SLCPD's end-of-year 2025 statistics showed overall crime decreased by 4.6%, with homicides down 27.3%, robberies down 21.7%, and property crimes down 5.5%. A broader longitudinal view from the Council on Criminal Justice is even more striking. Salt Lake City saw a 47% decrease in murder rates from 2019 to 2025, matching a broader national trend across 35 major U.S. cities. The city also led all tracked cities in the decline in car thefts, with a 42% drop over that period.
The correlation between illegal immigration and crime is complicated. The Sutherland Institute, a conservative Utah policy research organization, found that undocumented immigrants accounted for only about 5% of criminals in Utah jails, roughly proportional to their share of the population. A study commissioned by Salt Lake City Police found the Latino violent crime rate was proportional to the Latino population. The National Institute of Justice notes that recent research suggests immigrants, including those without legal status, are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. And a Stanford-led analysis of 140 years of Census data found that first-generation immigrants are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than the native-born population.
There are numbers here that will confirm whatever bias one may hold. But the real questions are simpler than the data: how do Utahns, those of us who actually live here, want to have this conversation? Do our leaders want to have it at all?
