Within the past 21 months, the Teton County Sheriff’s Office has allowed 103 illegal immigrants to slip away from Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE), the agency told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday.
Immigration Customs and Enforcement on Tuesday countered earlier statements by Democratic Teton County Sheriff Matt Carr, regarding a dispute about whether Carr’s office has scuttled ICE’s operations in recent months.
U.S. House Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyoming, made the dispute public by announcing in her Sunday newsletter that the Teton County sheriff’s office has not been honoring ICE’s requests for holds.
ICE and the Teton County Sheriff’s Office haven’t worked smoothly together since Feb. 22, 2023, the ICE statement indicates.
That was the date of an official talk between ICE and Carr.
“During that correspondence, Sheriff Carr informed ICE that the Sheriff’s Office would only detain noncitizens based on a court request accompanied by a judge’s signature,” says the statement, adding that Carr also said the sheriff’s office was pulling out of its intergovernmental service contract with ICE’s operations team.
That agreement allowed ICE to pay to house illegal immigrants in the Teton County Jail for up to 72 hours instead of the standard 48.
Having such an agreement in place could alleviate a sheriff’s concerns about getting sued for holding people too long, said Fabbricatore. That agreement would let the sheriff transfer detainees straight from county custody to ICE custody without having them leave his facility.
As for Hageman, who is Wyoming’s lone U.S. House representative, she said ICE’s statements support the statements she made in exposing the controversy in her Sunday newsletter.
“Teton County does not honor lawfully issued ICE detainers. Teton County has released criminal illegal aliens despite the fact that ICE has requested them to be held pursuant to U.S. immigration law,” wrote Hageman. “It is my understanding that every other county in Wyoming honors ICE detainer requests; the very ones that Teton County refuses to acknowledge."
In a separate Tuesday interview on Jake Nichols’ Cowboy State Daily morning radio show, Hageman said Carr seemed to deflect when first quoted on the subject Monday.
“Why is it that it’s Teton County that is having this issue?” asked Hageman.
She said some of the illegal immigrants were arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated or sex crimes.
“The people in Teton County and the surrounding area should be terribly concerned that (authorities are) releasing illegal aliens into the community, that have criminal records or that have been arrested for things that would actually qualify for them to at least go through the process for deportation,” Hageman said.
