CHEYENNE—The Legislature and some sheriffs are simultaneously pursuing programs to align Wyoming with incoming President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda, and make the state an unwelcoming place for people in the country without permission.

House lawmakers aligned with the Wyoming Freedom Caucus have brought bills to punish employers who hire undocumented immigrants and local government officials who fail to cooperate with federal authorities. They also seek to make it illegal for undocumented immigrants to drive in the state, even with a valid license from another state.

Meanwhile, a growing number of sheriffs are pursuing agreements with the federal government to position county jails more firmly in the service of federal immigration enforcement. 

Sheriffs in Laramie, Campbell and Carbon counties recently told WyoFile about discussions with U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials regarding agreements to assist with the deportation of noncitizens arrested for non-immigration offenses. Sweetwater County has had such an agreement in place since 2020. 

All of those counties line either Interstate 80 or Interstate 90. 

Taken together, lawmakers and the sheriffs could make Wyoming hostile territory for people who have entered the country illegally, even if they’re just passing through. If the driver’s license bill becomes law, for example, undocumented immigrants licensed to drive by other states who are traveling through Wyoming could run the risk of being jailed and slated for deportation. 

Gov. Mark Gordon has also touted immigration enforcement, noting in his State of the State address that he deployed a contingent of the Wyoming Highway Patrol to support Texas during its standoff with the federal government this past summer. 

Since then, he said, Texas’ governor sent a detachment of its law enforcement to Wyoming, to talk with local police agencies about “what we need to do in our heartland.” 

Counter lobby

Advocates for the state’s immigrant population say muddling local law enforcement and federal immigration enforcement will make communities less safe by fostering distrust between police and those they’re sworn to protect and serve. 

The enforcement drive will also hurt the state’s economy, advocates say, by driving off undocumented workers who came to the country to work. 

“This isn’t going after what they think it’s going after,” American Civil Liberties Union of Wyoming Advocacy Director Antonio Serrano said. 

“Wyoming is finally starting to grow. There’s a lot of construction, there’s a lot of stuff going up and immigrants are building that. They’re helping Wyoming grow. In the Wyoming I grew up in, we respected people who wanted to work and work hard.”

Undocumented immigrants and their advocates are principally up against the Freedom Caucus, an ascendant political bloc committed to supporting Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda across the board.

The measure to punish errant employers, a bill brought by freshman Rep. Gary Brown, R-Cheyenne, is sparking broader opposition. Lobbyists for the Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation and the Wyoming Hospitality and Travel Coalition told WyoFile their members were likely to oppose that measure. 

“We do not support the intentional hiring of illegal workers,” Chris Brown, executive director of the hospitality coalition, said. “We also don’t support new, heavy-handed regulations that could hurt Wyoming’s main street businesses.”

Wyoming farmers’ longtime lobbyist Brett Moline agreed. “For my agricultural guys it’s so hard to get somebody here legally,” he said. “[The federal government] has made it so difficult to get labor legally, that’s why people are coming illegally.” 

State lawmakers are wading into a federal issue, Moline cautioned. “I’m wondering if this is even appropriate for the state. This is something that needs to be settled at the federal level,” he said. 

Whether business interests will also throw their weight against measures like the driver’s license bill remains to be seen.

House Bill 116, “Driver’s licenses-unauthorized alien restrictions,” would invalidate the licenses issued to undocumented immigrants by as many as 19 states. State legislatures like California’s created such licenses to reduce the number of unlicensed and uninsured drivers on the road, as well as embrace undocumented immigrants they consider valuable to economies and communities. 

That view isn’t shared by many lawmakers in Cheyenne. “In Wyoming, we shouldn’t provide legal privileges to those here illegally,” Rep. Pepper Ottman, a Riverton Republican and the bill’s principal sponsor, wrote in an email to WyoFile. 

Law enforcement chiefs interviewed by WyoFile said they weren’t entirely certain if undocumented immigrants driving with such licenses would be detained. In many cases, they said, offenders would be issued a ticket then — if someone else could take the wheel — travel on. But if not, they may end up stranded or, if there are other criminal charges, even jailed. 

“If you don’t have a driver’s license you can’t drive,” said Col. Tim Cameron, who directs the Wyoming Highway Patrol. “They would need an alternative method of transportation or another driver.” 

Community resources

Community organizers around the state are beginning to network with each other to oppose the bills, and prepare immigrants for increased policing activity by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Serrano said. But the state’s network of immigrant advocates is spread out and somewhat disconnected.

“We’re trying to bring everybody together,” Serrano said. “People are scared and they want to know their rights. [Lawmakers and law enforcement] are sending a lot of signals to immigrant folks that ‘you’re not welcome in Wyoming.’”

The state also has a dearth of attorneys practicing immigration law, both to help people pursue legal status and to defend them in deportation proceedings. 

Rosslyn Read, legal director of the Wyoming Immigrant Advocacy Project, estimated there are six or seven attorneys including herself dedicated to immigration law in the state. Read’s approach is even rarer since she runs a nonprofit and charges clients based on their income. 

Demand for her legal services has skyrocketed, she said, as people scramble for asylum status or to rectify expired work visas. “Supply to demand is totally out of control,” she said of immigrants seeking legal help in a system she views as stacked against them. 

“The rhetoric of ‘just get in line’ is completely false,” she said. “The system is not really designed to encourage authorized immigration.” 

Caucus agenda

Freedom Caucus members see Ottman’s driver’s license bill as another layer of protection against illegal voting. The legislation is a part of the Freedom Caucus’ leading five priorities the bloc hopes to pass out of the House within the first 10 days. It’s also backed by Secretary of State Chuck Gray. 

In a legislative meeting Wednesday, Gray cited one case of someone voting in Wyoming while in the country illegally, in 2020. In 2023 the federal government discovered the fraud and the Campbell County clerk removed the person from the voting roll.

Rep. Joel Guggenmos, also aligned with the caucus, has brought House Bill 133, “Sanctuary cities, counties and prohibition,” which would charge government officials who don’t cooperate with federal immigration authorities with a felony. The charge carries up to five years in prison. 

The bill would ban the passage of any “sanctuary” laws in the state that prevent local law enforcement from sharing information with federal immigration authorities (there are none today), and cut funding to counties or cities that try such legislation. 

Recent conservative attention on Teton County Sheriff Matt Carr is driving the bill, Guggenmos told WyoFile. Carr drew the ire of Wyoming’s Republican Congresswoman Harriet Hageman and conservative state lawmakers when ICE reported Carr did not hold undocumented immigrants in jail until federal agents could collect them for deportation.

“Every elected official and law enforcement agent takes an oath to protect and defend the Constitution,” Guggenmos said. “That is the number one thing that they swear an oath to.” In doing so, Guggenmos said, those officials align themselves with the federal government, whose “number one task is to protect us from foreign invaders.” 

Carr has not held people on ICE detainers — a request from the agency that jails hold people until they can be picked up for deportation — because they are not signed by a judge, according to other news reports.

Carr did not respond to WyoFile requests for comment. But his defenders argue that what really runs afoul of the Constitution is holding people in jail after a judge releases them. 

Federal courts have found ICE detainers to be unconstitutional in some cases, particularly when a sheriff hasn’t entered a legal agreement with the federal government to participate in immigration enforcement.

Read, the Jackson attorney, said she believes Carr does cooperate with ICE, by alerting them to undocumented immigrants who go into the jail. What Hageman and the Freedom Caucus are asking of him goes beyond the law, she said. 

“He and I disagree about this,” Read said. “I wish [Carr] wouldn’t call ICE, but I am defending him because he is doing what is legally required.”

Growing cooperation

Other sheriffs are not hesitating to hold immigrants in their jails for ICE.

Conservatives accuse Carr of ignoring ICE’s requests over a nearly two-year period from February 2023 to mid-December 2024. During the same period, sheriffs in the state’s six most populous counties complied with every detainer they received, according to data provided by ICE. 

A mounting number of sheriffs are now seeking to solidify their relationships with ICE through contracts called 287g agreements. Those agreements allow deputies to serve ICE warrants on people in the jail, streamlining deportations and blunting questions about the legality of holding undocumented immigrants after their release date for the local crime. 

The agreements only cover people brought to jails on suspicion of committing a non-immigration offense. Deputies could not arrest someone solely for being an undocumented immigrant, sheriffs say, and are also not supposed to ask people about their immigration status while conducting police work. But civil liberty advocates say the system is ripe for racial profiling and abuse, if motivated deputies start looking for a way to detain people they think are in the country illegally. 

As a consequence, opponents of the agreements like Read and Serrano say public safety degrades in communities where local law enforcement works closer with the federal government. 

“It’s not just a constitutional or jurisdictional principle,” Read said. “When immigrants don’t trust the police, it hinders the police’s ability to do their jobs and arrest people who are dangerous. If you don’t have cooperative witnesses or [you have] people who are afraid to call and report a crime because it puts their immigration status in jeopardy, it makes everyone less safe.”

Campbell, Carbon and Laramie counties’ sheriffs all emphasized in interviews with WyoFile that their deputies would not be checking immigration status when going about their jobs pulling people over and investigating crimes. 

Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozak, who is pursuing the more aggressive of the two types of agreements the federal government extends to sheriffs, said he is aware that Cheyenne’s immigrant community might perceive heightened risks from his deputies. He insists that is not the case. 

“We want people to come to us to report crimes,” he said. “Our priority is to get criminals who commit crimes.” 

He will engage in continued community outreach to ensure immigrants in his jurisdiction know that “we are there to help you. If you call us we are going to help you,” he said.

But Kozak is also outspoken about his desire to aid ICE, and he’s generated headlines for his enthusiasm about engaging with federal immigration enforcement. He recently posted a splashy neon “vacancy” sign above his jail door, in the style of a roadside motel, to advertise that he has space to house more detainees, including federal ones. 

The pro-deportation sentiment from the Capitol and sheriffs’ departments will inevitably degrade a sense of trust in Wyoming’s communities, Serrano, the ACLU advocate, said. And if deportations do ramp up to extremes, as Trump is promising, it’s only a matter of time before people being detained and removed from the country start straining Wyoming communities, and families, he said. 

“People forget how mixed-status families are,” he said. “Maybe some of the kids are citizens, but one of them isn’t, or one parent isn’t. It’s going to cause a lot of problems.”

Randy Kane was sound asleep in the wee hours Nov. 23, 2023, when, without warning, absolute chaos broke loose.

“All of the sudden there were lots of lights going on outside, pounding on the door and people screaming at us to come out,” Kane told Cowboy State Daily. 

‘I Got The Full-Blown Mob Squad’

A team of federal agents, armed and in full gear, showed up at the door of the home he shares with Noreen Scroggins in Big Horn, a small community in Sheridan County, he said. 

The agents were there to serve a search warrant for Kane’s house, pickup and person. The warrant was based upon accusations that, as a convicted felon, he was in illegal possession of numerous firearms.

Kane and Scroggins said they were baffled because, as they understood it, Kane’s firearms rights had been restored by the state of Wyoming. 

And he had a certificate from Gov. Mark Gordon’s office to prove it. 

But the time for those arguments would come later, Kane said. In the moment, he felt he had no choice but to comply. 

“I got the full-blown mob squad. I think if I had resisted, they would have shot me,” he said.

“I had so many red dots on me, I felt like I was a porcupine,” Kane added, in reference to laser sights on the agents’ firearms. 

Scroggins said she was also terrified. 

“It was hell,” she told Cowboy State Daily.

“There were all these ATF agents with guns and body armor and drones,” she said. “They had already pulled Randy out of the house.”

They both ended up in handcuffs, spending much of that cold morning sitting in agents’ vehicles. 

Kane said he was forcibly pulled from the house, wearing only undershorts and a T-shirt.

Scroggins was also unprepared to be outside in the cold.

“I just had my nightshirt on,” she said.

She added that when she hesitated to go outside, an agent threatened to come drag her out of the house.

Confusion Between State, Federal Laws

The raid might have resulted from a gap between Wyoming statutes and federal laws regarding restoring the rights of non-violent felony offenders. 

A Wyoming statute restoring gun rights to nonviolent felons who had served their terms went into effect in 2023. 

However, it remained uncertain whether that applied to people with felony convictions in federal courts. 

That’s because the federal government still regards it as illegal for felons, even nonviolent ones, to possess firearms. 

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) on Feb. 14, 2024, issued a statement warning that the Wyoming rights restoration statute doesn’t cover federal convictions. 

“The (state) certificate purports to restore an individual’s firearm rights, which were lost because of a federal court conviction,” the agency’s alert said. “ATF is in the process of notifying those affected individuals, by letter, that the Restoration of Rights certificate issued by the State of Wyoming DOES NOT restore their rights to possess firearms and/or ammunition under federal law.”

Bill Aims To Fix The Problem

Mark Jones of Buffalo, the national director of Gun Owners of America (GOA), has long been critical of that gap between state and federal laws. 

Last year, he warned legislators of what he considered to be a flaw in the Wyoming statutes. 

Testifying before a legislative committee during the 2024 session, he used the story of what happened to Kane and Scroggins as an example of the peril the flawed statue could bring to Wyomingites. 

He didn’t reveal the couple’s names at that time. 

A bill expected to be introduced during the current legislative session could fix the problem, Jones said. 

Rep. Jeremy Haroldson, R-Wheatland, told Cowboy State Daily on Monday that he plans to introduce a bill to “clarify” the status of the restoration of gun rights for nonviolent felons. 

He added that the bill had not yet been formally introduced or assigned a number. 

Jones said that GOA attorneys had “helped craft that legislation.” 

Part of the bill’s intent is to prevent what happened to Kane and Scroggins from happening to anybody else, he said. 

Governor’s Certificate

Kane, 63, is a Sheridan County native and said his family has lived there for generations. 

He said he was convicted of a nonviolent felony drug offense in federal court more than 20 years ago. 

He chalked it up to poor decisions at the time, and said he served about 2 ½ years in a South Dakota prison as a result. 

“What I did was wrong, and I did whatever I had to do to pay the consequences,” he said. 

He came home with new resolve to get his life back on track and said he’s worked hard and kept out of trouble ever since. 

He loved serving with the Big Horn Volunteer Fire Department, though he recently retired from the department.

Kane also loves to hunt. And he was set to inherit a collection of firearms from his grandfather and father. 

When he was convicted, his mother put those guns in safe storage, Kane said. 

He said that when he found out about the Wyoming statute allowing the restoration of rights, he applied for it. He was approved and issued a certificate from the governor’s office. 

Scroggins, 73, has no criminal record, and had some firearms of her own in the house. 

She and Kane both said they were under the impression that although Kane might not be able to buy any new firearms for himself, he was legally clear to possess them. 

Delighted at the news, Kane said he retrieved his family heirloom gun collection from storage and was soon out hunting again.

“Everything was fine, life was good again,” he said. 

‘What Bombs? What Grenades?’

Scroggins had only just returned home from visiting family in another state when the raid occurred. 

As the morning unfolded, she said she was utterly confused about what was going on, and why. 

At one point, an agent asked her whether there were bombs and grenades on the property, she said. 

“I said, ‘What bombs? What grenades? What are you talking about?’”

Kane said he was asked the same question and was likewise confused by it. 

“I had guns that came from my grandad to my dad, to me. A lot of them had sentimental value. I didn’t have any bazookas, or bombs and grenades. They were just regular shotguns, hunting rifles and .22s,” he said.

They both said that they told agents about Kane’s certificate showing his restoration of rights, which was in the kitchen, but got no response. 

Gun Safe Ripped Open

Scroggins said most of her guns were in one safe, while Kane’s collection was in another gun safe that she had bought for him. 

Opening the safe containing Kane’s guns was “tricky,” she said. 

Agents took him into the basement, where that gun safe was, and told him to open it – but he was struggling to do so, she said. 

Scroggins said that when she offered to help open Kane’s gun safe, she was ignored. 

A crew from the fire department – firefighters that Kane served with – was called in and used the “jaws of life” to rip the gun safe open, Kane said. 

The jaws of life are a power tool used to rip apart mangled cars, to remove vehicle crash victims. 

Kane said he felt terrible to see his fellow firefighters ordered to do that. 

“They are a great bunch of people. I can’t believe they were put in that position,” he said. 

The Guns Are Still Gone

The agents cleared the scene at about noon. The left the house in disarray. And besides ruining the safe, they broke several items during their search, Scroggins said. 

Kane said the ATF seized 38 of his firearms, along with a few of Scroggins’ guns. 

Kane said he was never arrested or served with any charges. His lawyer recently told him that he’s out of any legal peril.

The couple said that they still haven’t gotten any of their seized guns back. 

ATF Denver Field Division spokeswoman Crystal McCoy told Cowboy State Daily in an email message that she isn’t “familiar with this case.”

She said she would look into it, although it might take some time.

Kane said they’ve tried to get back to a normal life, but the raid left them with lingering confusion and fear. 

He said he still has trouble sleeping sometimes. 

“It’s overwhelming, just being in my shoes and trying to tell the story,” he said.

One bright spot is having Jones and his gun rights advocacy group to back them up.  

“He (Jones) has been great. I’m glad that I got lined up with him,” Kane said.

Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.

CHEYENNE—Wyoming lawmakers will have a little less money to work with during the 2025 general session, according to a Consensus Revenue Estimating Group report presented to lawmakers Thursday. 

The state’s official income forecasters, known as CREG, make revenue projections every October to coincide with the governor’s budget preparations. Those estimates are then revised in January to provide the latest data to lawmakers — who hold the state’s purse strings.

The revisions included a $20.5 million reduction in funds flowing to the General Fund and the Budget Reserve Account — Wyoming’s two primary financial wells for state programs and services. 

The largest revision forecasters made to their estimates involved Wyoming’s oil prices. More specifically, CREG reduced the forecasted price-per-barrel by $5, which amounts to a $64 million reduction across all accounts, Co-Chair Don Richards told the Joint Appropriations Committee. 

“So it has some impact,” he said. 

On the other hand, forecasters increased their estimates for Wyoming’s oil production for calendar year 2026 by 1 million barrels. 

“Over the past years, we’ve exhibited strength in oil production. There is certainly enhanced opportunity to expand further,” Richards said. “There are more rigs operating today than just one year ago. So that is just an indication. Certainly, it softens the blow on the lower price.”

Still, forecasters continued to caution lawmakers of the shakiness of Wyoming’s economic picture. While Wyoming’s revenue streams are slowly diversifying, the state has increased its reliance on oil and gas production and its investment portfolio — all of which come with higher volatility than coal. 

Oil price volatility, for example, is expected to persist for several reasons, including “geopolitical events, global and domestic economic performance, export volumes, and production levels of multiple domestic and international producers,” according to the report.

“Weather patterns will remain the most influential factor for natural gas demand and prices, which in turn affects coal consumption,” the report states.

Another revision concerned updating the Permanent Wyoming Mineral Trust Fund’s final market value at the end of 2024, which resulted in a slight increase in discretionary funds. 

Forecasters also revised estimates for state royalties.

“The coal and oil production on state lands is coming in significantly lower than we forecast in October,” Richards said, adding that the revisions reduced estimates by $21 million for fiscal years 2025 and 2026. 

“There’s also some other revenue streams that are very important to the state of Wyoming and are struggling, I will say,” Richards said. “In particular, that is sales and use taxes.”

Asked by WyoFile after the meeting what the report indicates about Wyoming’s financial picture, Sen. Mike Gierau (D-Jackson) offered an analogy. 

“We don’t have one foot in the grave, the other on a banana peel, but we can see it from there,” Gierau said. 

Gierau, the most senior member of Appropriations, said he’s seen just how much oil prices fluctuate.

“Since I’ve been in [the Legislature], it’s been anywhere from $120 a barrel to minus 40. They couldn’t give oil away,” Gierau said. 

With coal in decline, Gierau said, “we’ve got to fund the whole show on a very volatile thing.”

The state is currently operating under the budget lawmakers crafted during the 2024 budget session. This year, it’s up to the Legislature to craft a supplemental budget.