Two of Wyoming’s top three industries — agriculture and hospitality — have long had national reputations for relying on undocumented workers.
Across the United States, half of 2 million agriculture laborers are estimated to be undocumented. For hospitality, the national figure is 7.1%.
Just how many undocumented workers are in Wyoming’s agriculture and tourism/hospitality industries isn’t something the state has been tracking.
Wenlin Liu, who is Wyoming’s chief economist and administrator for the Economic Analysis Division, estimates the number could be as high as 4,800, if national proportions are similar in Wyoming.
Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozak, who sees things through a somewhat different lens, told Cowboy State Daily he knows there are some undocumented workers out there, though it’s not been a particular focus of immigration enforcement in the past — as long as those people were keeping their noses clean.
“I used to be a police chief in Avon, which is where Beaver Creek Ski Resort is in Colorado, and most of that workforce is undocumented,” he said. “So, there’s no doubt about it.
“There has to be some system in place to allow people who are going to work in those fields to be, I guess, quickly documented, which I know the system is not fixed in that regard. But you have to have these people working in those places or those businesses are going to close.”
Trump Considers Orders For Ag, Hospitality
The sentiment is one that President Donald Trump appears to have heard loud and clear, with comments last week acknowledging a huge pain point for both hospitality and agriculture amid a crackdown that has dropped monthly border crossings from 100,000 down to 10,000. It’s also kicked out at least 200,000 people the administration said were in the United States illegally.
Trump’s comments appeared to come after Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins advocated for a carve-out for agriculture, saying the crackdown could begin to affect the nation’s food supply.
“Our great farmers and people in the hotel and leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, longtime workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump posted Thursday morning to his social media platform, Truth Social. “In many cases, the criminals allowed into our country by the VERY stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our farmers but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”
In a subsequent press conference, Trump also said that in some cases, the migrant workers in question have been on a given operation for 20 or 25 years, where they’ve “worked great” and the owner of the farm “loves them and everything else, and then you’re supposed to throw them out.”
Trump suggested he would have an order coming out on that “pretty soon” and said, “I think we can’t do that to our farms and leisure hotels. We’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”
However, later that day, Trumps comments seemed to swing back to a harder line stance, with the President also posting that undocumented migrant workers had “stolen” American jobs, making it unclear what, if any, changes will be forthcoming.
Congressional Delegation Supports Crackdown
Wyoming’s congressional delegation appears to be taking an unbudging stance on the issue.
“President Trump has made it clear that his administration is focused first and foremost on deporting criminal illegal aliens from the worst hotbeds of illegal immigration — radical Democrat sanctuary cities that choose to shield lawbreakers instead of standing up for law-abiding Americans,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyoming, told Cowboy State Daily in an email.
“Let there be no misunderstanding: If you are in this country illegally, your presence is not overlooked or excused,” she said. “The days of open defiance of our immigration laws are over. If you are here illegally, you will eventually be deported.”
Sen. John Barrasso, meanwhile, touted work by Congress to continue creating jobs and increase opportunities for Americans across the nation.
“I support American businesses utilizing H2A and H2B visas to employ guest workers when Americans are not available to fill jobs,” he told Cowboy State Daily in an email.
Not Waiting For Executive Order
While an executive order might be in the works to soften the Trump administration’s crackdown on tourism and hospitality and agriculture, which are Wyoming’s Nos. 2 and 3 industry sectors respectively, leaders of those sectors aren’t waiting around for it.
Wyoming Hospitality and Travel Coalition Executive Director Chris Brown said he’s already working with the industry to help educate businesses on what they can do themselves to ensure every worker they hire is legally in the United States.
“As Wyoming’s second largest industry, hospitality and tourism has more than 34,000 full- and part-time employees working throughout the state,” he said. “The Wyoming Hospitality and Travel Coalition has always supported secure borders and the ability to hire legal foreign workers.
“We recently partnered with the Holland and Hart Law Firm to host a webinar focused on immigration compliance and how businesses can proactively prepare for any compliance checks they may encounter.”
Brown said regardless of whether an executive order creates a carve-out for the hospitality and agriculture sector, he wants Wyoming business owners to know that they have options to legally hire migrant workers.
“We encourage all businesses to know that their hiring documentation is organized and correctly filled out,” he said.
Undocumented Footprint More A California Problem
Wyoming Stock Growers Association Executive Vice President Jim Magagna told Cowboy State Daily he doesn’t believe the undocumented worker footprint in Wyoming is very large.
“I”m not saying there aren’t any, but I’m not aware of it too much,” he said. “I think it’s more impactful on areas that grow (crops). The Midwest and California grow a lot of vegetable crops. That’s where they’re so dependent on those types of people.”
Ranching enterprises do have access to H2A visas to bring migrant workers over legally, Magagna added, and many over the years have done so. Particularly ranchers in the sheep industry.
“The sheep industries have always been, for many years, dependent on the H2A program, and they bring in most of their herders from Peru nowadays,” he said. “But those are all legal people.”
Magagna believes the problem is probably larger in other states such as California, or in industries like meatpacking.
“My sense is that meat processing facilities have become very dependent on foreign labor, and probably dependent on illegal foreign labor,” he said. “To the extent that if they were to lose all their people, it would greatly diminish processing, that could certainly have an impact, and that would fall back on cattle producers.”
Magagna added that America’s existing migrant worker programs are complex, and that sometimes legality becomes a matter of interpretation of that complicated process.
“Sometimes people think they are legal, and then it turns out due to some timing factor or paperwork snafu, they’re not,” he said.
Other times, Magagna added, people present documents to employers that appear legal, but the name on the documents isn’t their real name.
Impact to those in the country illegally doesn’t particularly concern Magagna, though, he added.
“What concerns me is the impact on the industries that have become dependent on them,” he said.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
