While the Teton County Sheriff’s Office’s failure to communicate with federal immigration officials allowed more than 100 illegal immigrants to slip away between early 2023 and late 2024, other major Wyoming counties avoided similar results by keeping in coordination with federal officials, according to Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) data released Tuesday.
Between February 2023 and November 2024, the Teton County Sheriff’s Office allowed 103 illegal immigrants to avoid being detained by Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE), the agency told Cowboy State Daily last month. ICE had requested each of those inmates to be held for up to 48 hours so its agents could pick them up for immigration inquiry or prosecution, but Teton County Sheriff’s officials did not comply with the requests, the agency said.
In all, ICE said it made 118 hold requests to Teton County during the time period, the majority of which the sheriff’s office did not honor.
In an even longer timeframe stretching into mid-December, ICE issued 174 detainers on illegal immigrants in Wyoming’s six most-populous counties.
Those sheriff’s offices complied with all of the requests, the data indicate.
Those six counties’ jails each handle fewer illegal immigrants than Teton County’s does. Of them, ICE had issued 45 detainer requests to the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office, 19 to Natrona County, 52 to Campbell County, 42 to Sweetwater County, seven to Fremont County and nine to Albany County, says the statement.
The Sweetwater County numbers are an asymmetrical comparison: that jail has in place a contract by which it doubles as an ICE holding facility.
ICE did not provide data for Lincoln County, which has a similar population to Teton at just over 20,000 people.
Not Understanding Why
Teton County Sheriff Matt Carr, a Democrat, reiterated his earlier position in a Tuesday interview with Cowboy State Daily: He’s happy to hold inmates for up to 48 hours after they’re supposed to be released, but only if ICE can get its detainer request signed by a judge, magistrate or clerk of court.
Carr said in the past that if the American Civil Liberties Union were to sue a Wyoming county to challenge the practice of detaining an illegal immigrant past his release date without a court order, the group would be “looking at us pretty hard.”
John Fabbricatore, who served prior as ICE’s senior executive director for Colorado and Wyoming, agreed that it makes more sense for ACLU to launch such a lawsuit in Wyoming’s most Democratic-leaning county.
But he also countered, saying the administrative detainer requests that ICE sends sheriff’s offices don’t require a judge’s signature, by law.
“It’s a civil detainer,” said Fabbricatore. “He’s asking for a warrant, and I’m not understanding why.”
When ICE wants to take legal action against an illegal immigrant, the agency can do so via a civil process or a criminal process.
The criminal process is a heavier lift: ICE has to coordinate with federal prosecutors, and the process gives an immigrant a criminal record. In the civil process, ICE can consider the severity of the person’s alleged crime and other factors before deciding whether to have him charged or deported, Fabbricatore said.
By demanding court orders to detain people, Teton County could be encouraging a more severe – rather than more lenient – way of addressing immigration violations, the former regional director confirmed.
Now, Talk
Fabbricatore said he empathizes with Carr’s concern over holding people past their release date, even with the detainer.
“The hold is the issue, and it’s always been the issue for me,” he said, adding that’s why it’s important for “these sheriff’s departments and police departments (to) notify ICE a few days before (a potential release), then there’s no legal issue.”
Here is where ICE’s narrative and Carr’s split.
ICE said last month that the sheriff’s office doesn’t notify ICE’s operations team before releasing noncitizens; Carr said it does.
Carr elaborated Tuesday, saying the sheriff’s office lets ICE know every time an illegal immigrant is booked into the jail.
“We let them know when they’re getting out or when we anticipate them getting out, but we can’t always predict that,” he said.
Carr said the sheriff’s office email system shows roughly 3,300 emails between it and ICE from early 2023 until now.
Fabbricatore said that’s a mixed bag: there’s never been a requirement for sheriffs to notify ICE when an inmate has a bond hearing approaching; but the agency expects notification when the person is being released at the end of his jail term.
As for the 3,300 emails, many of those could be part of logging illegal immigration hits through a 24-hour law enforcement support center in Vermont, rather than communicating with Wyoming’s own ICE agents in Casper, Fabbricatore said.
“I don’t know who he’s actually talking to,” he added.
Aggravated Assault
Carr said his jail has been holding an illegal immigrant on suspicion of aggravated assault for weeks – “and we’ve heard nothing from ICE from that. We’ve contacted them multiple times.”
In a follow-up phone call with Cowboy State Daily, an ICE spokesman said “anyone who (the operations team in) Denver would be interested in has an active detainer for them” in Teton County.
Meanwhile In Congress
This controversy erupted in late November when Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman, Wyoming’s only member of the U.S. House of Representatives, announced in her weekly newsletter that the Teton County Sheriff’s Office was scuttling ICE’s efforts to process illegal immigrants.
Carr bristled at that, describing his discomfort with the administrative requests to confine people for two days without a warrant.
On Tuesday, Carr said he still hasn’t had a conversation with Hageman.
“I’ve not heard a word from her office,” he said. “I’ve reached out… the week of Thanksgiving.”
Hageman did not respond to Carr’s claim directly, but she sent Cowboy State Daily a Tuesday email calling Teton County “the outlier in Wyoming.”
“Since I was sworn in, I have been fighting to close the open border and end sanctuary cities,” she wrote.
The U.S. House passed H.R. 2 last May, which she called “the strongest border security bill in U.S. history.” Hageman voted in favor of it, and it’s now pending in the U.S. Senate.
“I am optimistic that under President Trump’s administration, we will see this become law,” said Hageman.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
