A massive anti-immigration bill reached the Wyoming Senate floor Wednesday, with huge chunks of its original language removed and a new $1 million appropriation attached.
Senate File 124 still would ban sanctuary-city like county policies if passed, and now contains the new appropriation language for unforeseen costs of having state officials enforce federal immigration policies.
It would make a person caught transporting, harboring or sheltering illegal immigrants face a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and $5,000 in fines.
As originally written, the bill also would have blocked illegal immigrants from getting public benefits except in certain emergencies. The first draft proposed to require police to ask the immigration status of everyone with whom they have contact, and it would have required county sheriffs to establish contracts with federal immigration authorities. But the Senate Judiciary Committee cut those provisions from the bill in an amendment it proposed Tuesday.
Across more than 3,000 sheriffs’ offices in the United States, only 77 have immigration enforcement contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Even Wyoming sheriffs who work well with ICE resoundingly opposed SF 124 when it was introduced, noting that federal contracts can pose hardships on small-town sheriffs, and requiring counties to sign them could give federal agencies an upper hand in negotiations.
Lawmakers on the House side killed a similar bill last month, House Bill 276, following law enforcement opposition.
The new, highly-modified version of the bill now churning in the state Senate is more reflective of that opposition.
But the Wyoming Association of Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police (WASCOP) still finds it unnecessary. They can, however, do what it asks if the new language holds, WASCOP’s executive director told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday.
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday advanced the bill to the Senate floor on a unanimous, 5-0 vote. Some members voiced reservations about that before the committee removed more than half of the bill’s language.
Religious Freedom And Driver’s Licenses
The Wyoming Department of Transportation called the bill’s provision requiring the department to establish citizenship or legal status verification before issuing driver’s licenses redundant: state law already links the department to a federal law requiring it.
The Senate may make that portion less redundant, if it adopts an amendment Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Jared Olsen, R-Cheyenne, proposed Tuesday.
Mike Leman, spokesperson for the Catholic Diocese of Cheyenne questioned whether the bill violates the religious freedom, of church members who give charitable help to undocumented immigrants.
“There are Catholics, there are other Christian ministries throughout the state that minister to these vulnerable populations, not because we think they’re Christian, but because we are,” said Leman.
That’s Still In There
Latino residents criticized the bill Tuesday during a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting in the Capitol, saying it invites racial profiling and draconian government overreach.
Alexis Soto, a teacher in Cheyenne, told the committee she was born in the Wyoming city but many of her family members are undocumented. Tearfully, she asked the committee whether she’ll face criminal penalties and fines for not reporting the students she serves, or her own family members as undocumented.
“Can we even go to church? On the way to church are we going get pulled over and one of us is going to get taken to jail, and I’m going to be in trouble and face a fine of $5,000?” she asked.
Though heavily amended, the bill as it sits now still would criminalize the harboring or transporting of illegal aliens. Anyone caught doing that could be convicted of a felony and sentenced to up to five years in prison and a fine of $5,000, if the bill becomes law.
The bill’s co-sponsors Sen. Lynn Hutchings, R-Cheyenne, and Sen. John Kolb, R-Rock Springs, both spoke in favor of it. Kolb, whose wife is a naturalized citizen, said it’s not appropriate to say the bill invites racial profiling.
“This is about people doing something they shouldn’t be doing,” said Kolb. “They get pulled over, and they get found out, that they shouldn’t be here.”
What Got Gouged
The committee cut out huge swaths of the bill, mostly to make it more palatable to law enforcement agents.
Its original version would have required peace officers to ask everyone with whom they have contact on the job about his or her immigration status. The new version says no Wyoming law enforcement agencies shall ban their officers from asking about people’s immigration status upon a “reasonable, articulable suspicion” that the person isn’t in the U.S. legally.
That language traces back to court rulings on such inquiries, Thompson told the committee.
The bill still would require county sheriffs to tell the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or ICE when an illegal alien books into their jail.
Its original language ordered sheriffs to hold such people until federal agents picked them up – but left open what would happen if ICE never collected those detainees.
The amended version says the sheriff can only keep holding someone “in accordance with law” or a federal contract.
And the new version no longer requires sheriffs to make contracts with ICE but says they “may.”
It still would require the Wyoming attorney general to sign a contract with federal agencies to enforce immigration.
‘And Neither Could You, Mr. Chairman’
The committee purged from the bill several pages preventing public entities from giving benefits to illegal immigrants.
At the suggestion of Sen. Barry Crago, R-Buffalo, the committee also eliminated a portion banning people from working with or contracting with illegal aliens.
The Wyoming Hospital Association had opposed that section, saying it will contract with tech and other firms and can’t be expected to vet those firms’ hundreds or thousands of employees to avoid breaking the law.
Crago, a civil attorney for Johnson County, voiced concern that other attorneys appointed to represent people in court wouldn’t be allowed to represent illegal immigrants, even if appointed.
“As a lawyer, if I get called in and asked to represent an unauthorized alien in court, I can’t contract with them,” said Crago. “Even though they’re guaranteed that right under the Constitution, I can’t defend them. And neither can any of my colleagues; neither can you, Mr. Chairman.”
Crago was addressing Olsen, who is also an attorney.
That concern may be even more pressing in Crago’s corner of the state, where some judges have warned that if a public defender shortage doesn’t ease, they will start appointing attorneys outside the public defender’s office to serve indigent people.
The New Price Tag
New in the amended version is a proposed $1 million appropriation to the attorney general’s office to reimburse expenses incurred under its requirements, outside any expenses the federal government reimburses.
The money is also supposed to go toward county law enforcement antiterrorism training.
If the expenses counties incur enforcing the bill’s provisions exceed that $1 million, the legislature will reimburse them according to county population.
Crago cast that as illogical, since some communities – which he did not name but which would include Teton County – have a disproportionate number of undocumented residents.
The bill’s sponsor Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, R-Lingle, indicated the insertion was intended to allocate based on the proportion of undocumented people in the jails, not the county proportion. She said the committee could change that language as needed.
Unused funds from the $1 million appropriation would revert back into the state’s coffers.
Clarification - This story has been updated to better reflect WASCOP's stance, as neutral but "hesitant."
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
