Wyoming residents from mixed-immigration-status families fear a Torrington Republican’s deportation and detainment bill will bring racial profiling and arrests to immigrant communities.
Language in Sen. Cheri Steinmetz’s bill that ties local law enforcement to federal authorities and makes it illegal to transfer or shelter undocumented immigrants would cause irreparable harm to residents in the country both legally or illegally, Latino residents of Cheyenne told the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday.
Senate File 124, “Illegal immigration-identify, report, detain and deport” would punish anyone who “attempt(s) to transport or move in the state” someone they know is in the country illegally with five years in prison or a $5,000 fine.
Cheyenne teacher Alexis Soto told senators that if Steinmetz’s bill passes, she could go to jail for taking schoolchildren she knows are undocumented on school trips. Like several people who spoke against the sweeping bill, Soto is a native-born U.S. citizen whose parents entered the country illegally, she said. Driving her undocumented family members somewhere could also land her in prison under the bill.
“Can we even go to church?” Soto asked senators, battling tears. “I just hope that you can see my side of things as a community member born and raised in Cheyenne, Wyoming.”
The committee voted 5-0 to advance the bill to the Senate floor.
It will face three votes there. Senators appeared on the verge of killing the legislation at the meeting, with two committee members saying the draft was too riddled with legal and practical problems to advance.
They settled, instead, for sweeping amendments that blunted some effects that particularly worried them — like a prohibition on providing public services to undocumented immigrants that Sen. Barry Crago, R-Buffalo, feared could block people from medical care.
Senators removed the prohibitions on public benefits for undocumented immigrants from the legislation entirely. They also struck, at Steinmetz’s urging, a provision requiring Wyoming law enforcement to interrogate every person they pull over about their immigration status. That section, and a requirement that sheriffs enter into agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — allowing them to hold people in their jails for prolonged periods until federal agents can pick them up for deportation proceedings — worried Wyoming law enforcement chiefs.
Many sheriffs are already pursuing such agreements, but they do not want to be statutorily mandated to do so, in part because the federal government may not want to sign contracts with each of Wyoming’s 23 counties. Smaller sheriff’s departments also may be less interested in pursuing those arrangements, as they create workload and, opponents warn, can dramatically increase budgets.
Steinmetz said she had crafted her amendment, which was not made public before the committee hearing, together with law enforcement representatives. But even with the change, her bill met, at best, a tepid reception from the Wyoming Association of Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police.
“I would hesitate to say we support it,” the group’s executive director, former Sheridan County Sheriff Allen Thompson, told the committee when asked if his group now backed the bill. “But this is heavily amended to where we can do everything that is asked with this bill.”
Worrying to members of the public, who packed a basement meeting room at the Wyoming Capitol to oppose the measure, was language in Steinmetz’s amendment that allows Wyoming peace officers to ask someone about their citizenship status if they have a “reasonable, articulable suspicion of a person’s illegal immigration status.”
Thompson said the new language echoed court rulings giving law enforcement legal support to “extend a stop” if they suspect criminal activity but don’t have probable cause of a crime.
Public commenters didn’t buy it.
“We’re giving sheriffs the opportunity to profile our families, our children,” said Maria Alvarado, who also said she was born to undocumented immigrants who came to Wyoming in the 1970s and now has two children of her own. “The idea that just because they’re a little bit browner they are subject to this harassment essentially is unnerving,” Alvarado said.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Wyoming has already challenged the bill’s constitutionality.
“This bill has nothing to do with making Wyoming a better place to live,” advocacy director Antonio Serrano said in a statement. “It has nothing to do with keeping Wyomingites safe. In fact, it actively harms Wyomingites and criminalizes people who interact with immigrants.”
The bill’s only support Tuesday came from lawmakers, with Sen. Lynn Hutchings, R-Cheyenne, speaking in favor of it. “When you’re not doing anything wrong in my eyes you should have no fear of the law,” Hutchings said. But other speakers pushed back on that assertion, saying senators did not understand the challenges of attaining legal residency status in the country.
Soto, the Cheyenne teacher, said one of her loved ones waited six years for a work visa, risking deportation the whole time. If the new bill had been in force, he would have also endangered the freedom of the friends and family who helped him get by during those six years, she said.
Sen. John Kolb, R-Rock Springs, a committee member and one of Steimetz’s co-sponsors, said his wife was a naturalized citizen and he agreed the process “was hell.” But Kolb sought to wave off people’s fears of racial profiling.
“That’s inappropriate,” he said. “I don’t buy any of this profiling business. This is about people doing something that they shouldn’t be doing. People get pulled over and they get found out that they shouldn’t be here.”
The crowd greeted his assertion with loud groans and skeptical jeers.
The bill must now pass three votes on the Senate floor, where it can be further amended before it can be considered in the House.
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