A semicircle of federal agents and officers met Thursday in a fenced lot before either the sun or Casper’s signature wind had a chance to rise.
It was 10 minutes before 4 a.m.
One of the four U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers based in the central Wyoming city had been studying the routine of a Mexican illegal immigrant whom the agency says defied a judge’s removal order and reentered the country illegally, then had a run-in with the Wyoming Highway Patrol.
Royse Mora-Fernandez, 36, tends to leave his home in Bar Nunn by 5:15 a.m. Sometimes he’s gone by 5, the officers noted.
He stands 5-foot-9 and weighs 176 pounds, according to copies of a one-page sheet the supervisory detention and deportation officer for the Casper-based ICE office handed to a group of men standing in the lot full of unmarked vehicles.
That group contained Casper’s four ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officers, two U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agents – plus two supervisors: Robert Guadian, ICE Field Office director for Colorado and Wyoming; and his assistant field office director overseeing Wyoming and northern Colorado.
Four ICE enforcement officers are too few for this region, the Casper leader told Cowboy State Daily.
More personnel are on the way, Guadian added: but new recruits face a roughly 18-month training, background-check and preparation process. The agency is expanding its “footprint” throughout Wyoming in other ways, which include tentative plans to build a facility in Rock Springs. In that region, ICE already has multiple cooperative agreements in place with the county sheriff and will soon deploy sheriff’s deputies as ICE task force officers.
After a briefing in the parking lot, the men donned weapons and body armor.
Guadian strapped on a 9 mm handgun and a pair of handcuffs.
They separated into carpooling teams and rolled out, on what the Casper supervisor called the agency’s first-ever media ride-along in Wyoming.
The Lurk
Just outside Mora-Fernandez’s neighborhood in Bar Nunn, the trees rustled feebly. It was only 4:16 a.m., but the officers didn’t want to risk missing the early riser.
Ninety minutes passed.
During that time, Guadian said ICE prioritizes the arrest of people suspected of re-entering the country illegally, illegal immigrants with criminal histories and illegal immigrants with terroristic or gang affiliations.
Age, sex and nationality don’t factor into those priorities, said Guadian.
An ICE spokesman chimed in as well, “to push back on the media narrative” that ICE is on an indiscriminate rampage.
“We’re not doing sweeps or raids or just looking for people of a certain racial or ethnic background,” said the spokesman, who kept an eye on the street from his position in the driver’s seat. “These are targets. This is a targeted operation. We know exactly who we’re looking for.”
Sometimes, ICE encounters other illegal immigrants while arresting its targets, and it may arrest those people in the process, the spokesman said. And the officers cannot carry out an arrest near a sensitive location like a church, school, hospital or courthouse without permission from one of the two supervisors over this region, the spokesman added
Guadian said the agency prioritizes public safety with its targeting criteria — and its general practice of putting multiple officers on one job, even if it has to borrow from other agencies like HSI to tighten the security of an arrest.
They’ve even been authorized to borrow IRS agents, Guadian said.
As for Guadian, he was appointed to direct the Colorado and Wyoming region on President Donald Trump’s inauguration day, which shifted him from his recent five years in a more managerial role in the Washington, D.C., headquarters.
Characterizing himself as a cop at heart, Guadian said he likes his enforcement role much more, though he’s essentially always on call.
He’s been with ICE since its origin in 2003.
“I came up through the field, so this is what I enjoy,” said Guadian.
Could Be On A Plane
A lot of ICE’s current work is capturing people who evaded border patrol when they entered the country, said Guadian.
“A significant amount of people” evaded border patrol within the past four years, he said, indicating that surges in migrants stemmed from staffing shortages. Border security has improved in the past four months, he added. On the other hand, assaults on ICE officers have more-than quadrupled in the past four months as well, said the director.
As for Mora-Fernandez, ICE believes he reentered the country illegally in 2018 but skipped the ports of entry altogether, the spokesman said.
Guadian looked out toward the greying neighborhood.
“This is the most time-consuming part,” he said.
The officers hope to arrest the suspect as he makes the trek to his car, or in a vehicle stop if he makes it to his car. After detaining him, they said they notify and inform his family — if he has one in his home — of next steps for following his immigration proceedings. Then they leave the site as quickly as possible, said Guadian.
If federal authorities don’t prosecute Mora-Fernandez for illegal reentry, which is a felony, or any other crimes, he could be on a plane to Mexico within 72 hours since there’s already a standing judicial order for his removal in place, the director added.
Just before 6 a.m., ICE officers delivered a heads-up on the radio: sheriff’s deputies were in the neighborhood.
ICE had warned the Natrona County Sheriff’s Office and Casper police of their operation, the Casper office’s leader told Cowboy State Daily before the arrest.
As it turned out, the deputies were in the neighborhood for an unrelated issue.
The Bust
Nearly two hours after federal officers planted themselves in his neighborhood, Mora-Fernandez left his home in a hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans and a ballcap; got into a tan-colored Ford Ranger and drove away.
Officers pulled him over and arrested him without incident.
No one else was in the car, one officer noted in a conversation with Guadian.
“Cómo te llamas?” Guadian asked the detainee as he sat in the back of an ICE vehicle.
He answered quietly.
Guadian asked the man where he’s from.
Mexico, he answered.
ICE arrestees are almost never surprised by their own arrests, Guadian said later while riding to another targeted arrest site. They live under the radar, always half-expecting to be sent home, he said.
“He knew this day was coming. He knew at some point he was going to be arrested by ICE,” Guadian speculated. “They already have their thought processes down on who they’re going to call; what their game plan is going forward – but what you don’t see is people claiming… they’re in the country legally.”
Getting Antsy In Casper
Officers chattered in the radio about the second target. They didn’t find him at home. They thought they might encounter him at work.
But further investigation indicated the man might be out of town – and the officers moved on.
In one north-Casper stakeout well after sunrise, the locals got antsy.
Guadian had just been thinking aloud that the people in the neighborhood seemed uninterested in the two unmarked vehicles parallel-parked on their road.
Things are different in Colorado, said Guadian. Neighbors watch for inconsistencies.
As if on cue, a pair of men emerged from a local business and rebutted that observation.
“Who we watchin’ today?” asked one of the locals.
“Just hangin’ out,” countered the ICE spokesman.
“Yeah, watchin’ all of us?” asked the local man. “Cuz, kinda, you look cop-y sitting in here.”
The second man echoed that, but added, “don’t have too much fun.”
Last Target
For ICE’s last target, agents sat in front of a multi-apartment complex. They watched people emerge from every apartment, except the one they were surveilling.
Their target isn’t known to be an early riser. Or to go out much at all, officers noted.
After about two hours, Guadian’s assistant director of operations asked if they should change course.
Guadian deferred to the home team: “Up to you, we’ll follow your lead.”
The team was considering “knocking it,” or knocking on the door to coax the suspect out.
The problem with that approach, Guadian told Cowboy State Daily, is it “burns” the house. Meaning, if officers can’t make the arrest in that encounter, the whole neighborhood and probably the suspect know ICE is targeting that person.
There was another reason the operation leaders didn’t want to “knock it.” They found evidence during surveillance that the suspect has ties to the town of Jackson, Wyoming.
No Wyoming town is more sheltering of undocumented immigrants than Jackson. There, said Guadian, non-governmental organizations or immigration attorneys will find undocumented immigrants and coach them on ways to avoid ICE.
Colorado communities see the same practice, he added.
The investigation uncovered a third reason officers wanted to delay: a person close to the suspect was believed to have reentered the country illegally, and that person wasn’t home.
If the officers rescheduled, they may be able to catch them both, Guadian told the outlet.
That’s what they chose to do in the end.
The unmarked vehicles rode Casper’s hills back to the ICE office.
The Bright Lights
At Guadian’s direction, the spokesman slid the vehicle into a sally port, a garage or bay ideal for extricating inmates. Except for a row of dangling handcuffs and shackles, the walls were bare. A stack of metal lock boxes sat ready for officers to deposit their guns and knives before entering the secure, temporary detention facility.
Officers climbed a bare, pale-grey ramp and entered the first of a series of rooms: a small space officers use for inmate searches.
The next room contained a long counter, and two fingerprinting machines designed to capture all 10 prints.
The process of comparing ICE fingerprints with those taken by local jails upon criminal arrests has never proved faulty, in Guadian’s experience, he said, adding that that’s one of the ways ICE is alerted when a local law enforcement agency books an illegal immigrant into jail.
Facing the processing counter and across a narrow corridor were two confinement cells: one for women and one for men. The women’s cell was empty and darkened.
The men’s cell was brightly lit and contained only Mora-Fernandez, staring at the ground with his elbows propped on his knees and his jaw cradled in both hands.
In That Order
At the facility, officers discussed Wyoming’s situation in greater detail. They rotate between investigating cases, orchestrating jail pickups and transports and conducting street operations.
Of their arrests, 75% consist of officers going to a local jail and picking up someone who’s already in custody on local charges.
This they do multiple times a week at the Teton County Detention Center, which is four-and-a-half hours from the Casper office. They pick up between two and 10 detainees per week there, since the Teton County sheriff started honoring ICE detainers for the first time in a year starting in early March.
After Teton County, ICE’s busiest counties for jail pickup are Natrona and Campbell, which are “tied for second place,” said one officer.
The rest of ICE’s Wyoming arrests are street operations, the assistant field office director said.
Guadian gave a wry chuckle at the figure. In Colorado, roughly 95% of ICE’s arrests are outside the secure confines of jails, he said.
That’s because state laws restrict local cooperation with ICE. One prohibits jails from holding detainees for the federal agency for more than six hours.
Many sheriffs have indicated that they wish they could help ICE more than Colorado’s laws allow, Guadian said.
Blazing White Rocks
In walked an HSI special agent carrying a box full of methamphetamine.
Federal agents stationed at a national mail facility flagged the box as suspicious after someone shipped it out of Mexico, intended for a Natrona County address, said the agent.
It didn’t look right under an X-ray, he added.
Investigators searched the package, which contained two pounds of crystal methamphetamine rocks wrapped in many layers of plastic.
All those layers don’t trick drug-detection dogs, the agent observed off-handedly.
He laid the bags on the table of a small office, their rocks reflecting the overhead light’s glare.
That was about $23,000 to $24,000 worth – a “not insignificant” haul for Casper. The meth would have been worth more money on the Wind River Indian Reservation, the agent added.
By repacking the box – without the meth in it – and delivering it to its intended recipient along with some carefully-worded questions, investigators were able to make one arrest.
But the circumstances surrounding the shipment indicate more conspirators, and one or more with ties to Mexico, the agent said.
Photos and video by Mike McCrimmon for Cowboy State Daily.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
