"We prosecute the most dangerous group of people and try to get the biggest bang for our buck," said Dustin Pead, head of immigration prosecution for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Salt Lake City.

Members of the anti-immigration movement call immigrants a population of "illegal aliens." Federal agents assigned to track them down call them "undocumented immigrants." Mostly, they are people trying to make a better life for themselves in Utah:

• They are moms and dads like Angel and Maria, who both work full time on a Brigham City dairy farm. Their faraway hopes for legal status lie on the narrow shoulders of 4-year-old Angelito, born here and a U.S. citizen. When the youngster turns 18, he can sponsor his parents to apply for citizenship.

• They are laborers like Esteban Cosillos, who passed through Utah's southeastern corner on Labor Day with eight men packed into the back of a Ford Explorer. They were on their way to Denver to find construction jobs, Cosillos told the state trooper who pulled him over and then let him go.

• They are young people like 5-year-old Yolanda from Michoacan, Mexico. Her parents paid a "coyote," a human smuggler who brings people into the United States illegally, $5,000 to drive them across the border two years ago. Her father has a job at an Ogden manufacturing plant but has no health insurance. Yolanda received her kindergarten immunizations at a free clinic.

• They are Mexican nationals like "Sarah," who works as a maid in a northern Utah motel. She came here illegally with her husband 10 years ago and has three children. She's been saving her money and hopes to move back to Mexico City within the year.

• In some cases, they are criminals like Jesus Hernandez, who killed his boss, who Hernandez says was cheating him out of his modest wages.

Joe Romel, agent in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Salt Lake City, calls the scope of illegal immigration "overwhelming."

"It's a difficult task, but wherever you see a thriving economy and wherever there are low-paying jobs, the undocumented illegal people will take them. The documented, legal residents don't want these jobs," he said.

This assertion lies at the crux of a heated debate about illegal immigration.

When pioneers settled Utah, nearly all immigrants were Anglo-Europeans. By the year 2000, 90 percent of all immigrants coming into the Beehive State were Latinos. Because of this dramatic shift, Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of International Migration now classifies Utah as one of the new "gateway" states for those leaving other countries for a life in the United States.

Most undocumented residents are from Mexico, some come from South America, Canada and Asian countries. All seek the opportunities afforded by Utah's economy and culture.