Wyoming
Wyoming will invalidate out-of-state driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants – WyoFile
Wyoming will invalidate the driver’s licenses that some states issue to undocumented immigrants under a new law that Gov. Mark Godon acknowledged has thrust the Equality State into uncharted waters.
Gordon on Friday allowed the legislation to become law without his signature. Like state senators, who passed the bill to express their antipathy toward illegal immigration despite noting that it might carry negative consequences for the state, Gordon figuratively held his nose while letting the measure cross his desk.
“Because of the value of asserting Wyoming’s position on illegal presence, I am allowing this bill to go into law without my signature,” Gordon wrote.
House Bill 116, “Driver’s Licenses – unauthorized alien restrictions,” will likely invalidate driver’s licenses from as many as 21 states — lawmakers had previously estimated there were 19 states, but a spokesperson for the governor’s office said state agencies were reviewing a list of 21 states maintained by the National Conference of State Legislatures. In those 21 states, lawmakers have chosen to provide driver’s licenses to people in the country illegally in an effort to promote public safety and decrease the number of uninsured drivers on the roads.
Florida appears to be the only other state to similarly attempt to regulate the driver’s licenses of other states. But that state’s legislation was more narrow in its application. Florida lawmakers banned only driver’s licenses that are issued “exclusively” to unauthorized immigrants. That restriction ultimately resulted in the state voiding driver’s licenses from only two states, Delaware and Connecticut.
Some undocumented immigrants living and working in Wyoming carry driver’s licenses issued by other states. If they’re stopped by law enforcement and their license is identified as invalidated under the new law, they’ll face a misdemeanor charge that carries a $750 fine or up to six months in prison — the same penalty that exists for driving on a suspended license.
There’s no data on how many undocumented immigrants in Wyoming use valid driver’s licenses from other states, and it’s unclear how invalidating them might impact the state’s workforce.
Law enforcement chiefs have previously told WyoFile that driving with an invalid license is likely not by itself an offense that would lead officers to detain someone and take them to jail — which could ultimately land undocumented immigrants in federal custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Detention is more likely if the officer suspects the driver of some greater illegal act, such as driving under the influence.
Wyoming Highway Patrol officers will have the discretion to issue a citation or a warning, Lt. Col. Karl Germain, who tracked the bill for the agency, told WyoFile on Monday. “We’re not going to impound their vehicle and we’re not going to detain them,” he said of drivers with invalidated licenses, unless they have outstanding warrants or there’s suspicion of a more severe crime.
But people would likely not be able to drive on if discovered to be illegally in the country, Germain said — whether that unlawful presence is due to sneaking over the border or overstaying a work visa. Such drivers would have to find an alternative driver to operate their vehicle.
Except for Delaware and Connecticut, it appears most states that issue the licenses in question give them both to people who have legal status in the country — such as a student visa — and those who don’t. Markings on the license indicate it’s not valid for federal purposes like voting, but don’t say what type of documentation or lack thereof the carrier has to be in the country. Once Wyoming’s bill takes effect in July, law enforcement will likely have to check the immigration status of people pulled over with those licenses.
As such, Gordon, in his letter, said it was an open question whether the bill could place a level of immigration enforcement on the backs of Wyoming law enforcement. “It is not immediately clear whether [the bill] places 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,” he wrote.
“While law enforcement have access to ICE,” he continued, “the time for ICE to respond to our law enforcement may be minutes, hours, or even days. My hope is that Wyoming law enforcement resources are used to assist in illegal presence operations but not take lead in determining one’s status through credentials both issued and dictated by other states’ laws.”
Like some lawmakers, Gordon also worried about Wyoming’s status in interstate compacts that regulate driver’s licenses and the sharing of driving record data. The Non-Resident Violators Compact that Wyoming has belonged to since 1987 could conflict with the new law, Gordon wrote. The compact allows Wyoming law enforcement to issue citations to drivers from other states and then permit the driver to continue on their travels, knowing the driver’s home state will enforce Wyoming’s citation so that the driver pays any fines or returns for court.
“Being able to work together with our fellow states is imperative for the safety of all those on the road,” Gordon wrote. “This law could impact Wyoming’s ability to work with other states in this fashion.”
Col. Tim Cameron, the Wyoming Highway Patrol’s director, told WyoFile the compacts were important to his agency’s ability to enforce public safety on the roadways. “I certainly hope this doesn’t compromise that,” Cameron said.
Some senators also feared the new law will lead to more uninsured drivers on the state’s roads, since companies who insure someone with one of the impacted licenses may try to claim they weren’t liable for an accident in Wyoming.
But, as Gordon noted in his letter, the Legislature has been determined to participate in President Donald Trump’s effort to increase deportations. “Wyoming is united in our determination to secure our borders and protect both the United States and Wyoming from the nefarious actions of people who are in our country illegally,” he wrote at the start of his letter.
The bill drew opposition from Wyoming residents who are themselves undocumented or who belong to families with mixed status — where some people have a legal status and others do not. Those immigrants, and advocates who speak for them, have argued that lawmakers are unaware of both the extent of undocumented labor in the state’s workforce and the challenges of achieving legal residency status.
“Lawmakers shouldn’t be passing laws when they don’t know what they do,” Antonio Serrano, advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Wyoming, previously told WyoFile.
“These are people who have been parts of the community, this has just been their normal life and all of a sudden it’s just taken away from them,” Serrano said of people working in the state who may use the impacted driver’s licenses from other states. “Going to work just got a lot harder,” he said.
Carl McDaniel, 65, from Washington state suffered broken bones after he was charged by a 2,000lb (900kg) bull during a visit to Yellowstone with his grandson on Friday. The encounter was recorded by Mike MacLeod, a professional photographer, who said the animal was ‘agitated, pissed off and charging anything and everything’
Wyoming
Wyoming authorities call on Rocky Mountain Power to explain role in massive November power outage
by Dustin Bleizeffer, WyoFile
The massive, multiple-utility power outage last fall that left some 250,000 customers across parts of Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana without electricity was the result of miscommunication and inadequate procedures during planned maintenance that required de-energizing a power line in southcentral Wyoming, according to a report.
The Nov. 13 incident left thousands of homes and businesses without power for 9.5 hours — longer, in some cases — and knocked out a coal-powered generator outside Glenrock. The unit at the Dave Johnston Power Plant remains offline, leaving Rocky Mountain Power to backfill some 300 megawatts of electricity — enough to power about 225,000 homes.
Without expressly assigning blame to any one party, the report — conducted by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation — indicates a series of communication breakdowns between PacifiCorp (parent company of Rocky Mountain Power), the Western Area Power Administration and, to some degree, electrical grid coordinating teams.
While it’s unclear whether authorities such as the North American Electric Reliability Corporation might pinpoint fault and assess penalties, the Wyoming Public Service Commission has called on Rocky Mountain Power to appear at a hearing scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Wednesday. The commission wants to hear from the utility about “the specifics and details of the event and report,” a public notice announced, and it “may consider and take any action that is in the public interest.”
The hearing at the Public Service Commission’s office located at 2515 Warren Avenue, Suite 300, in Cheyenne, will also be livestreamed at this link.
What happened
According to the 49-page report published in June, PacifiCorp and the Western Area Power Administration were coordinating maintenance on their respective systems that, together, required temporarily de-energizing PacifiCorp’s Aeolus–Clover 500 kilovolt line, which runs east-west and is anchored, in part, by a substation near Medicine Bow.
The effort also required curtailing some local wind energy from feeding the grid, according to the report. But on the day of the planned maintenance, Nov. 13, there was confusion about whether the Western Area Power Administration would scrap its work, so wind energy wasn’t curtailed as originally planned.
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Wind turbines near Cheyenne poke into a colorful sunrise in January 2025. (Tennessee Watson/WyoFile)
The report indicates that modeling tools might have failed to accurately measure local grid conditions, so when the power line was de-energized, “power flow rapidly redistributed throughout the northeast portion” of the local grid. “Within six seconds,” according to the report, “an electrical island formed and collapsed, causing widespread effects across that portion of the interconnection.
“The disturbance,” the report continues, “culminated in the loss of more than 4,800 [megawatts] of generation from coal, natural gas, photovoltaic and wind resources.”
The cascading power failure began at about 12:45 p.m. on a Thursday, dragging down portions of service territories operated by Rocky Mountain Power, Black Hills Energy, Montana-Dakota Utilities and some rural electric co-ops.
The report points to failures in communication, process deficiencies and inadequate modeling tools. Wind energy was not “identified as a contributing factor,” according to the report. It credits both battery storage and wind energy throughout the impacted area for supporting “a faster frequency recovery across the interconnection” and for providing “readily available capacity during system restoration.”
This article was originally published by WyoFile and is republished here with permission. WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
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