Wyoming Highway Patrol chief describes limited rollout of ICE agreement. Advocate warns it could undermine public safety.

Under a new agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Wyoming Highway Patrol will tighten the net for undocumented immigrants in five counties as troopers receive training that will allow them to make arrests on ICE’s behalf. 

The statewide law enforcement agency intends to place a limited number of troopers into ICE’s program at first, agency administrator Col. Tim Cameron told WyoFile. One to two troopers from each of five counties — Laramie, Carbon, Sweetwater, Natrona and Campbell — would participate in ICE’s 40-hour online training on conducting immigration enforcement while patrolling Wyoming highways, Cameron said. 

“This is not every trooper, it is not carte blanche, you are not an immigration officer,” Cameron said. “It gives you very specific and limited authority to perform very specific functions under ICE’s direction.”

Still, the agreement further raises the risk for undocumented immigrants in Wyoming that a routine interaction with a local law enforcement officer could end with them jailed and facing deportation. 

Sheriffs in the five counties — all astride major highways — have signed their own agreements with ICE that allow them to hold undocumented immigrants in their jails until federal agents can come get them. In Laramie, Sweetwater and Natrona counties, sheriffs have also signed “task force” level agreements like the one newly inked by Cameron’s agency. Under those agreements, trained local officers can investigate people’s immigration status and detain them, though Cameron said such arrests would still require direction from ICE.

Troopers and officers from other agencies, trained under the agreement, can’t detain someone just because they suspect they’re in the country illegally, Cameron said. “Any stop is based on an observation of a [possible] violation of Wyoming law,” he said. His troopers are already advised against exercising racial bias under existing departmental policy, he said, and that policy would be reflagged for those officers receiving the ICE training.

“The contribution to public safety is significant and it leverages ICE’s limited resources here in Wyoming,” Cameron said. 

Cameron intends to see how a limited deployment of troopers goes before expanding participation. Any deployment under the ICE agreement has to be balanced against the resources and time it detracts from Wyoming Highway Patrol’s priority, which is enforcing state law, Cameron said.

Cameron’s assurances that troopers wouldn’t engage in racial profiling have not assuaged the concerns of Wyoming American Civil Liberties Union Director Antonio Serrano. Rhetoric from Wyoming politicians and the mounting number of law enforcement agencies joining forces with ICE are driving increasing fear among undocumented people or people in families with mixed legal status in the Equality State, Serrano told WyoFile. Having Gov. Mark Gordon — who announced WHP’s new agreement with ICE — tout the statewide agency’s participation in immigration enforcement only makes that fear worse, he said.

“This is just going to increase profiling, and it’s just going to decrease trust,” Serrano said of the new agreement. Serrano and other advocates say 287(g) agreements — shorthand for the memorandums local agencies sign to cooperate with ICE — make immigrants less likely to call law enforcement to report crimes or testify as witnesses. 

Serrano also criticized officials behind the new agreement, and the sheriffs who have previously signed contracts with ICE, for doing so without offering the public a chance to weigh in. 

“People are enacting these huge policies that have a huge impact without any constituent input,” he said. 

Gordon announced the agreement with ICE on Monday. There hadn’t been any public indication he was pursuing such an arrangement, though he followed neighboring Idaho, whose governor took a similar action in June. 

“Our nation’s security depends upon effective immigration enforcement,” Gordon said in a statement, “and I am proud that our Wyoming Highway Patrol continues to support this effort and is now formalizing their commitment to this work through our agreement with ICE.”

In a press release, the governor described the new agreement as a continuation of his 2023 and 2024 deployments of state troopers to the United States-Mexico border in Texas. Gordon sent officers to assist that state during high-profile showdowns with President Joe Biden’s administration over border security. In February, troopers who had deployed to Texas spoke to Wyoming legislators about their experience down south. In that hearing, they painted a picture of a border rife with criminality that, if Wyoming isn’t prepared, could strain its law enforcement resources.

Gordon a month later expressed some reluctance to thrust local law enforcement into the detainment and deportation business, when he allowed a bill invalidating driver’s licenses other states issue to undocumented immigrants become law without his signature. 

“My hope is that Wyoming law enforcement resources are used to assist in illegal presence operations but not take the lead in determining one’s status through credentials both issued and dictated by other states’ laws,” the governor wrote in a letter explaining his decision not to sign the bill into law. By not signing, the governor can express disapproval without actually impacting statute or risking a veto override.

Gordon also wrote that he worried the driver’s license bill, which became law, with some hiccups, on July 1, would place “Wyoming law enforcement in an exposed role that is much more suited for the resources, training and system of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

This week, Gordon spokesperson Michael Pearlman told WyoFile the ICE agreement doesn’t indicate a change of position by the governor. “It underscores his position,” Pearlman said. “His hope is [the Wyoming Highway Patrol] is used to assist in illegal presence operations, and that’s what we’re doing with this agreement. We’re still assisting. We’re not in the lead here.”

Though Wyoming is far from the southern border, Pearlman said in signing the new agreement, Gordon saw border issues, from drug trafficking to human trafficking, as one that increasingly extends into the Rocky Mountain West. “Every state is a border state,” Pearlman said, repeating an oft-spoken axiom of immigration hawks and conservative politicians. 

Gordon has not yet seen immigration enforcement reach a level that he would see as concerning for Wyoming communities, Pearlman said. The governor issued his announcement about WHP the week after an ICE operation in western Wyoming caused people to avoid their workplaces and depressed attendance at a county fair event for Jackson’s sizable Latino community. 

Caring for Wyoming’s economy and communities includes “public safety and ensuring our business community is complying with immigration laws,” Pearlman said. “If workers are in this country, the governor believes they need to be legally documented.” 

But immigrant communities are often made up of people of mixed status, Serrano said, and Wyoming’s leaders are increasingly sending a message that those families aren’t welcome here. It’s having ramifications for the state’s residents at large, he said.

“Wyoming is just becoming more and more anti-immigrant and that idea is just being reinforced by these policies,” Serrano said. “When a significant chunk of the community is afraid to call law enforcement because they feel targeted by them, it’s not good for anybody in the community.”