During a week-long period last month, the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office had the greatest number of immigration arrests in the country of any local or state law enforcement agency certified to enforce immigration.
Between April 17-23, the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office made 53 immigration arrests through its Task Force Model agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to the federal agency.
During that week, the Florida Highway Patrol and Oklahoma Department of Public Safety trailed the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office with 31 and 27 arrests, respectively, an ICE spokesperson confirmed in an email. The spokesperson didn’t clarify whether Laramie County’s immigration arrest numbers often rank high nationwide.
Forty-six of the arrests that week coincided with a publicized traffic operation that Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozak dubbed “Truck Around Find Out, Operation Spring Break” in an April 25 Facebook post.
“Many of these folks are operating without commercial driver’s licenses, unsafe trucks, bald tires, their trucking companies have been revoked or suspended and shouldn’t be operating at all,” Kozak, sitting in his patrol vehicle and wearing a cowboy hat, said in the Facebook video.
ICE processed 40 of those arrests at a federal facility, so they didn’t go through the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office booking procedures, according to the office’s undersheriff, Chance Walkama. Deputies brought the other six to the Laramie County Detention Center. Three had local charges and previous misdemeanors, Walkama said in an email.
“So I think the message is clear,” Kozak said in his Facebook video. “Welcome to Wyoming. We want you to come. We want you to have fun, experience the cowboy culture that we have here. But if you’re going to come here to break the law, or you’re breaking the laws of our country, then turn around and go right back where you came from.”
Laramie County deputies have conducted three focused traffic enforcement operations since the sheriff’s office inked a 287(g) Task Force Model agreement with ICE and launched a new traffic enforcement unit in June.
The task force agreement allows Laramie County deputies to conduct some immigration enforcement under ICE supervision. In October, Kozak announced that 25 deputies, as well as himself, had completed ICE training to conduct limited immigration enforcement. Now, 30 Laramie County deputies have finished ICE training, Walkama said.
The April traffic operation was the most recent of these efforts, each of which has resulted in a significant number of immigration arrests. Deputies conducted similar operations in November and February, which resulted in 40 and 32 immigration arrests, respectively. As of Friday, the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office has made 300 total immigration arrests since October 2025 through its task force agreement.
Following Trump’s push for mass deportations, several Wyoming law enforcement agencies have signed 287(g) agreements with ICE to conduct limited immigration enforcement. While some law enforcement leaders assert that participating with ICE through 287(g) keeps communities safer, immigration advocates warn that the partnerships risk eroding community trust. The agreements have sparked protests in Rock Springs and Cheyenne.
Don’t any of the commenters have concerns about this statement: “Uinta County Sheriff Andy Kopp, center in tan uniform, presents his plan to hold immigrants detained by the federal government as a way to generate revenue that will boost his agency’s budget and cover salary increases”? I sure do. Sheriffs like Kopp and Laramie County’s Brian Kozak are not shy about arresting brown and black people they see as dollar signs. But this kind of monetary incentive leads to a culture of “arrest now/check
legal status later”. It’s no wonder law enforcement officers once seen as community protection are now viewed with suspicion, fear and distrust.
Why do people always jump to and assume these arrests are always “brown and black” people? If you spent any time looking at who is arrested in Laramie County you would quickly realize it is all types of people arrested for various immigration matters including Eastern Europeans. Do you know how dangerous it is with untrained truckers hurtling down the interstate 80 at 75mph in 80,000 lbs of steel, all over the road, because they were able to get a license out of the cracker jack box in California or a similar state? Not every issue is racial, unless you make it one. Frankly, thank you to Sheriff Kozak for putting some focus on this issue and giving us some level of safety on the interstate. I travel it daily and I am always amazed there are not more accidents involving poorly trained drivers.
Thank you Laramie County LEO’s.
If they were really serious, the employers should be charged and fined for hiring an illegal worker.
E-verify would go a long way to addressing that issue; but politicians on both sides of the aisle keep stalling to make it the law of the land.
Absolutely. And the truck should be siezed and sold at public auction.
53 immigration arrests, tops the nation.
WOW, yeah this is really “hitlerian”.
Probably Trumps biggest lie to his base was mass deportations.
Obama deported MILLIONS more and was the original cage builder.
The biggest impediment to Trump’s mass deportations have been blue states and cities, Democratic Party politicians, activist judges, Leftist organizations funding and promoting protests/riots, Leftist media, so-called non-profits relying on government grants and donations, and unscrupulous businesses that employ illegal aliens.
But…..But… Obama still did a better job, and he’s a Democrat.
Make up you mind Gordon, so Obama was a worse “fascist”/tyrant because he kicked out far more than trump?
Look below
I figured you would have trouble with my comment. Think hard about it.
yeah…thats it…. you nailed it….
The historical context regarding these facilities involves distinct differences across administrations:The Obama Administration (2014): In response to a massive influx of unaccompanied children, the administration constructed temporary holding enclosures using chain-link fencing at border facilities, such as the warehouse in Nogales, Arizona. These partitions were used to segregate demographics (e.g., unaccompanied minors, adult men, adult women) until they could be transferred to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) shelters. The Obama administration did not, however, implement a systematic policy of separating children from their parents.The Trump Administration (2018): The enclosures gained heightened public attention and widespread controversy during the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration enforcement policy. Unlike the Obama-era use of temporary holding facilities for unaccompanied children, the Trump administration actively separated thousands of children from their parents as a matter of routine enforcement, holding families and children in these same chain-link pens.