Green River Star

07/29/2025

The haze is bad, but it can make some beautiful sunsets

07/29/2025

Sweetwater County School District Number 2 announced that they have named Joe Vasco as the new Head Boys’ Soccer Coach for Green River High School - Wyoming. Joe replaces Josh Webb who stepped down after three seasons leading the Wolves.

“Joe Vasco brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to our Green River High School Boys Soccer program and we very excited to have him lead our team” …Tony Beardsley, SWCSD2 Athletics Director

Joe Vasco’s Coaching and Educational Experiences:
*Green River High School Girls’ Soccer Assistant Coach (2023 to 2025)
*Wyoming Boys ODP Head Soccer Coach (2021 to 2025)
*Wyoming Girls ODP Head Soccer Coach (2025)
*Wyoming 307 Select Boys Head Soccer Coach (2018 to 2025)
*Wyoming Girls ODP Assistant Soccer Coach (2022 to 2024)
*Wyoming Girls 307 Select Girls Assistant Soccer Coach (2022 to 2025)
*Coach Vasco is a USSF National Level “B” Soccer License Holder
*Joe earned his Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Wyoming and his Master’s of Business Degree from the New York Institute of Technology

07/28/2025

Got a student who's interested in theater, entertainment, and marketing? Applications for the Broadway Theater's Fall/Winter Internship are open now!

The Broadway Theater and the Urban Renewal Agency are now accepting applications for its Fall/Winter 2025 Internship and Scholarship Program, designed for students passionate about performing arts, event management, theater operations, marketing, and related fields. This opportunity is available to Sweetwater County high school seniors and students enrolled at Western Wyoming Community College for the upcoming fall semester.

The selected interns will gain hands-on experience at both the Broadway Theater and Bunning Hall, engaging in a wide range of theater & event operations including marketing, maintenance, schedule coordination, event planning, set-up, lighting, sound, and performer contracts. Throughout the program, the intern will be guided by specific goals set during the application process and will receive continuous evaluation and coaching to enhance their skills.
This program is funded by the Sweetwater Board of Cooperative Education Services (SBOCES).

One of SBOCES' primary objectives is to enhance career and technical education in Sweetwater County. This internship aims to bridge classroom knowledge with real-world application, giving the successful candidate the experience of acting as a theater coordinator and assisting with every facet of theater operations. By the end of the program, the intern will have developed valuable career and technical skills and gained a deeper understanding of potential career paths in the field.

Interested students can download the application from the Broadway Theater’s website at BroadwayRS.com or request one by calling 307-352-1434. The application deadline is August 11, 2025.

07/28/2025

NEWS BRIEFS for Monday, July 28, 2025
From Wyoming News Exchange newspapers

Fremont County sees 4th homicide

Riverton (WNE) — A fourth homicide in Fremont County this year has been confirmed, after Fremont County Coroner Erin Ivie released her verdict in the death of 18-year-old Brandon Bell on July 3.
Bell died as a result of homicide caused by multiple gunshot wounds, the coroner ruled.
Few details are available in the case.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs has not provided information about the case.
According to the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office call log, the sheriff’s office assisted the Wind River Police/BIA on a call at 11:33 p.m. on July 3 at a location on Little Wind River Bottom Road.
The coroner’s office was called to the scene of a “weapon offense” that night at 10:11 p.m. on the 400 block of Little Wind River Bottom Road.
Just before the shooting death, Ivie prepared her mid-year coroner’s office summary, a listing of statistics and death investigations her office has handled this year as of July 1.
At that time, Fremont County had tallied three homicides and one death considered “undetermined.” Two cases were pending toxicology/ autopsy, the report adds.
Details can be hard to come by in homicide deaths, in particular, those that occur on the Wind River Reservation. Ivie’s office handles those cases, but they are investigated by federal agencies.

This story was published on July 26, 2025.

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Casper caregiver accused of tying patient’s head to a bed

Casper (WNE) — A Casper-based care provider has been charged with abuse of a vulnerable adult and false imprisonment after other employees alleged she tied a patient’s head to her bed to get the patient to stop moving.
At the time of the alleged offense, Julie Cross, 50, was working at NOWCAP Services in north Casper.
Authorities issued a warrant for Cross on Wednesday, according to court documents.
Casper Police spokeswoman Rebekah Ladd said Cross was arrested on a warrant Friday morning.
Cross was charged in relation to a July 14 incident, an affidavit filed with the charges indicated. An attendant told authorities she arrived at work that morning and while on her rounds found a female patient with her pants down and her pants around her knees. While pulling them up, the staff member noticed the patient’s head was tied to her bedframe by a blue scarf, according to the filing, which was signed by Casper Police Officer Sarah Price.
Price wrote a second staff member corroborated that the patient’s head had been tied to the bed with multiple knots, adding it took the duo roughly five minutes to free the patient.
They also noted that as of that Monday, the patient appeared to have not been bathed over the weekend, citing matted, smelly hair.
In a phone call with Price, Cross told the officer she tied a scarf around the patient’s hair because it was interfering with caring for the patient and ascribed the patient’s inability to move her head to the scarf becoming tangled.
“She believes that [the patient] was tossing her head side-to-side and the scarf got wrapped around again,” according to the affidavit.
One of the reporting attendants also showed Price photos of the scarf tied to the patient and the bed. NOWCAP’s director declined to comment on Cross’s employment status with the facility on Thursday afternoon.

This story was published on July 26, 2025.

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Signal Flat Fire in Grand Teton National Park fully contained

JACKSON (WNE) — A small wildfire that broke out near Signal Mountain in Grand Teton National Park has been fully contained.
The Signal Flat Fire was first reported on Saturday afternoon and was just under eight acres before it was contained by fire crews on Sunday.
The fire was determined to be caused by lightning. Signal Mountain Road remains closed until further notice.
A crew of 35 firefighters — including a 20-person U.S. Forest Service crew from Helena, Montana — worked to contain the fire using two fire engines and two helicopters. Choppers dropped water from Jackson Lake on the fire on Saturday.
The crews cooled remaining hot spots and secured fire lines on Sunday.
Fire danger remains high in Teton Park and the surrounding area. Visitors are asked to be extra vigilant with campfires, including drowning fires until they are cold to the touch, park spokesperson Emily Davis said.

This story was published on July 28, 2025.

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Residents find multiple deceased birds in yards in Rock Springs

ROCK SPRINGS (WNE) — A growing concern about deceased pigeons and doves throughout the community has residents asking questions lately on social media.
Rock Springs resident Cindy Camacho reached out to the Rocket Miner to find out what is happening to the birds.
Locals shared what they have seen in their yards after a resident alerted other social media users about the discovery of dead birds in her grandmother’s yard near Century Park.
Residents have chimed in saying they’ve seen several deceased birds on Sierra Drive, Oak Way, Ponderosa Way and the president-named streets.
A resident reported seeing a dove that was “super bloated” and “barely moved” behind the Maverick convenience store on Elk Street. Another stated that her 80-year-old grandmother found 26 dead birds in her yard since mid-June.
Some are wondering if the birds are impacted by the weather or poisoned and others have questioned if the Avian Flu or trichomoniasis is the cause.
According to Regina Dickson, information and education specialist for Wyoming Game and Fish, two doves have been brought into the agency’s office from Rock Springs. They will be tested for Avian Influenza.
“We should have those test results by the end of the week,” Dickson said, noting the office hasn’t received any reports of birds dying in Green River as of Tuesday, July 22. “If it is Avian Influenza, it is communicable to humans and pets, but it’s unlikely to be influenza. It usually does not impact the smaller songbirds on this level, but we’re going to work on ruling that out first.”
Dickson explained that the doves will be tested for other known “killers” of birds like trichomoniasis, which was found in Casper last year.

This story was published on July 26, 2025.

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07/28/2025

Air quality in Sweetwater County is considered moderately bad today due to the haze. Maps from fire.airnow.gov and inciweb.wildfire.gov show air quality levels as well as the fires around us and where the smoke is coming from.

07/28/2025

Congratulations to the winners of the Duckorating for Bills 2025!

07/28/2025

Today in Wyoming history:

In 2018, tornadoes touched down south of Douglas and near Glendo Reservoir.

Tomorrow in Wyoming history:

In 1878, Thomas Edison and Henry Draper viewed a total eclipse of the sun from Rawlins.

(Thanks to the Wyoming State Historical Society.)

07/28/2025

FROM WYOFILE:

Southernmost of its kind

Commonly found farther north in boreal forests, great gray owl breeding distribution dips down into the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem — all the way down to the Winds’ southern tip.

By Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com

Like many Wyoming residents on the 4th of July, Frank Stetler fled the parades, explosions and mayhem a couple years ago, opting instead for the quiet of the mountains.
The Lander resident, who works as a Wyoming Game and Fish Department nongame biologist, sought refuge in the southern Wind River Range.
Headed down a trail, he noticed a snapped-off lodgepole pine snag with an “odd shape” on top.
“Then, all of a sudden, I was like, ‘Oh, the odd shape on top of this lodgepole is looking back at me,’” Stetler recalled.
It was an unmistakable gaze for a serious birder like Stetler, a past chair of the Wyoming Birds Records Committee. He knew immediately: Great gray owl. Not only that, but based on calls he heard and the proximity of another great gray he spotted shortly thereafter, it was a nesting female.
Holding up his phone camera to a binocular lens, Stetler snapped a photo of the find.
It was exciting. The distribution of breeding great grays, a large owl with an especially pronounced facial disc, wasn’t known to extend so far south into the Rocky Mountains. Other than the genetically distinct great gray subspecies, Strix nebulosa Yosemitensis, which lives in California’s Sierra Nevada Range, this was the southernmost of its kind.
Stetler and others kept an eye on the closely guarded nest site, but owlets never materialized that summer of 2023.
The Winds owl’s nest site was a challenging location, at more than 2,500 feet higher than the more typical great gray nest sites found in Jackson Hole. The high altitude pushed the nesting timing back by a whole month. And it was located in a place where it could be easily disturbed by people recreating or looking deliberately for the great gray — a prized find.
“If birders travel to Wyoming, for any birding, [great grays] are usually at the very top of the list,” Stetler said.

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

PHOTO CUTLINE: A great gray owl, a rare species in the southern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, perches on a post in Lander City Park in early 2025. (Frank Stetler/Wyoming Game and Fish Department)

07/28/2025

FROM WYOFILE:

Wind, Snake, Bear rivers hit record low flows as Wyoming’s summer drought gains steam

Snowpack isn’t what it used to be. Severe drought has set in for portions of western Wyoming river basins, even after decent snow years, due to factors exacerbated by climate change.

By Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com

During last winter’s peak, the snowpack blanketing southern Yellowstone National Park — mountains and snowfields that feed the high reaches of the Snake River — was sitting pretty good.
“We were right near average,” said Jeremy Dalling, a civil engineer who leads water operations in the Upper Snake system for the Bureau of Reclamation.
Once April hit, however, so did a prolonged period of dryness now extending into July, with just 60% of normal precipitation. A lack of precipitation, low base flows in rivers and exceptionally poor soil moisture also made for rough conditions going into the winter of 2024-’25.
Squeezed by aridity on both ends, the Snake basin’s roughly 100% of average snowpack both melted off early and went into the ground instead of rivers and creeks.
“It’s a compounding effect, actually over several years, that can lead up to this,” Dalling said, referring to record-low levels in the Snake River above Jackson Lake, even in the wake of a decent snow year.
As of Wednesday, the U.S. Geological Survey’s river gauge above Jackson Lake was detecting less water than it ever had before during the last week of July. Just 147 cubic feet per second — a relative trickle — were passing by the Flagg Ranch gauge. In 41 years of recordkeeping, that’s the lowest by a large margin. The previous minimum flow for July 23 was 263 CFS. This time of year, the typical flow coursing through the Flagg Ranch Canyon is 516 CFS, meaning the dismal dribble presently detected is only 28% of average.
“We’re experiencing August [river] levels in July, more or less,” Dalling said. “It’s a system-wide drought condition.”
The decent snowpack resulting in dismal or worse summer river flows is a dynamic that also carried over to the southern Rocky Mountains this year, said Jeff Lukas, a climate and water researcher who spent 20 years as a scientist with the University of Colorado-Boulder.
“Things just happened to look really good on April 1 this year and increasingly sh*tty after that,” Lukas said.
Reds, browns and yellows denoting record-low to below-average river flows also dominate Colorado’s USGS streamflow map.
Not all western Wyoming river reaches are running quite so thin in 2025. Counting all Teton Range tributaries, even Jackson Lake’s overall inflow isn’t the lowest on record, Dalling said. And lower down in the Snake, above where it hits Palisades Reservoir, the river flow on Wednesday was 3,870 CFS — a volume that sits in just the 5th percentile of flows for late July.

New record lows

But there are other western Wyoming river reaches running at new record lows, the USGS’ statewide monitoring shows. The Wind River near Kinnear on Wednesday was carrying 295 CFS, less volume than any other July 23 in 40 years of recordkeeping.
And the Bear River above Woodruff Narrows Reservoir is holding a pittance of water. Just 2 CFS were flowing Wednesday, a meager 7% of the median 31 CFS that have been detected over 63 years of data.
Like in the Upper Snake, those basins have been plagued by poor soil moisture. The thirsty soil is soaking up any precipitation at a rate that negates last winter’s decent snowpack and rainfall that’s come down.
“Soil moisture west of the divide — except for a couple holes — has been really pretty poor here for quite a while,” Wyoming State Climate Office Director Tony Bergatino told WyoFile.
It’s not all bad. Northeast Wyoming and the Bighorn Basin are faring well, modeling shows. But one of the maps that Bergatino monitors shows that modeled soil moisture in some regions of Wyoming is also bumping up against record low levels for late July.
“As you get down into the Green River Basin, and much of the state across the south, the [model] is showing basically zero to second percentile [soil moisture],” Bergatino said.
A different soil moisture map that models conditions with more precision is also registering near-record low readings, and it shows that the most dismal conditions are at the highest elevations.
Meanwhile, severe drought has set into portions of the Snake, Wind, Green and Bear river basins, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

A downstream disconnect

Lukas, the Colorado climate and water researcher, pointed out that the relationship between snowpack and river flows isn’t as solid as many think.
“If you have an 80% of normal snowpack … even if you have normal precipitation the rest of the runoff season, you’ll get a 60 to 70% of normal runoff,” he said. “Over the last 20 years, a 100% snowpack more often ends up at 90% [runoff].”
As the climate has warmed a few degrees over the last several decades, the divide has grown — and it’s expected to keep growing, Lukas said.
“Each degree of warming is going to give us less runoff for an equivalent amount of snowpack,” Lukas said.
“Climate change is part of the story,” he added. “There’s just a bunch of feedback mechanisms: The drying soil, the fact that vegetation can now germinate and grow earlier, the snow is melting out earlier, temperatures are warmer.”
For Dalling, at the Bureau of Reclamation, there are major implications from the dwindling river flows, which are widespread in the basin he manages.
“It’s impacting reservoir levels all across the Upper Snake reservoir system,” he said. “Jackson Lake is faring better than others, being as full as it is, but we’re monitoring it day to day for the remainder of the season.”
An almost complete draw-down year, like in 2021, isn’t looking necessary. But Jackson Lake, impounded by a 39-foot-high dam, figures to come down by quite a few feet.
“On the maximum end [of the projections] we’ll be 76% full in October,” Dalling said. “On the lower end, probably 65% full.”
The Snake’s spectacular cutthroat trout fishing is another factor that stands to suffer from the poor river flows, which have been joined by higher water temperatures.
In mid-June, Yellowstone National Park instituted some time-of-day fishing restrictions, prohibiting angling after 2 p.m. in the Madison, Firehole and Gibbon river watersheds. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department has not had to implement similar restrictions, but on Tuesday, the state agency sent out a public notice encouraging best practices for fishing in the heat. That guidance includes ceasing catch-and-release fishing anytime stream or river temperatures exceed 70 degrees — a threshold that can make the fight a lethal affair.
“Stream temperatures have been getting close to critical points on a number of tributaries of the Snake,” said Darren Rhea, Game and Fish’s Jackson Region fisheries supervisor.
That’s true on the Snake River itself, also.
Above Jackson Lake, where flows are the lowest on record, the thermometer on the Flagg Ranch gauge climbed up beyond 70 degrees on a handful of days so far in July.

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

PHOTO CUTLINES:
The upper Snake River in southern Yellowstone National Park in July 2020. Five summers later, the river's headwaters are running lower than during any other time on record. (JB Cholnoky)

The Snake River headwaters enjoyed a near-normal snowpack in winter 2024-’25, but early runoff, exceptionally dry soils and a lack of precipitation have led to the lowest flows on record. (USGS)

07/28/2025

FROM WYOFILE:

New Wyoming law asks law enforcement to act like ICE, generating concern over constitutional violations

The state no longer recognizes licenses from other states issued to undocumented immigrants. Attorneys, Mexican diplomats worried about the new law as deportations increase. One county worries enforcement will bring lawsuits.

By Andrew Graham, WyoFile.com

The Laramie County Sheriff’s Office, one of the state’s larger police agencies, is advising deputies to limit enforcement of Wyoming’s new law invalidating driver’s licenses some states issue to undocumented immigrants.
County attorneys who reviewed the new law warned the department it would be difficult for deputies to enforce without violating people’s constitutional rights, according to a departmental guidance document provided to WyoFile.
“The last thing anyone wants is expensive, time-consuming, and potentially embarrassing litigation over these new laws,” the guidance reads.
In essence, the concern in Laramie County boils down to one raised often by opponents of the law during legislative debate this past winter. Deputies and police officers, who are not federal immigration enforcement officers, are not well equipped to determine whether a person they pull over on suspicion of a traffic offense, or other local infraction, is in the country legally or not. That could make traffic stops unconstitutionally long, the guidance warns.
County attorneys suggested the department only cite or arrest undocumented immigrants using driver’s licenses from two states, Connecticut and Delaware. Those two states issue licenses that clearly state the person is in the country illegally.
That finding is in line with the limitations hit by another state, Florida, when lawmakers there sought to keep undocumented immigrants from driving in 2023. Florida ultimately only restricted such licenses from Connecticut and Delaware.
As many as 19 states issue licenses to undocumented people that indicate the carrier is not a citizen. But drivers carrying the same license could just as well be in the country legally on a wide variety of valid visas. Officials from other agencies, including the Wyoming Highway Patrol, told WyoFile their officers will ask drivers for proof of lawful presence in the country if they pull over a driver using a license that indicates they’re not a citizen.
But deputies aren’t familiar with such documents and might not know if they’re valid, Laramie County Chief Deputy Aaron Veldheer told WyoFile. Deputies can call the feds to verify someone’s status, or try to enlist a handful of deputies in the department trained by ICE in immigration enforcement, Veldheer said. But if there’s no quick answer or evidence of some other crime, they can’t detain a driver indefinitely.
Meanwhile, immigration attorneys and advocates, and even the Mexican Consulate in Denver, highlighted the law’s implementation with social media posts advising drivers they have the right to stay silent if local law enforcement asks about their immigration status. Laramie County’s analysis appears to agree with that, reminding deputies that “a marked license holder is not required to answer any questions, with or without Miranda warnings.”
Laramie County’s fear of litigation is valid, according to attorneys. Rosie Read, a Jackson attorney and director of the Wyoming Immigrant Advocacy Project, said she believed the new law to be the “most restrictive anti-immigrant law in the country.” She hoped and expected it to be challenged on its constitutionality, she said.
It’s unclear if anyone has been arrested or cited for driving with one of the now-banned licenses, which other state legislatures have created to ensure that drivers pass a test and have insurance even if they’re in the country illegally.
Wyoming Highway Patrol officers have not yet cited or arrested anyone for violating the new law, Col. Tim Cameron, the agency’s chief, told WyoFile.
Outside of this new law, Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozack has been one of the state’s more vocal advocates for working with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He has placed his jail and some of his deputies at the federal government’s disposal through agreements with ICE as that agency ramps up detentions and deportations around the country, including in Wyoming.
Laramie County law enforcement wasn’t alone in expressing some concern about the new law, with questions about its implementation popping up around the state. In Teton County, Sheriff Matt Carr told the Jackson Hole News&Guide earlier this month that his agency was waiting on guidance from the Wyoming Department of Transportation. But a WYDOT spokesperson told WyoFile the agency isn’t preparing any guidance.
On Tuesday, Carr told WyoFile he had now directed his deputies to model their enforcement on WHP’s guidance to troopers.
WHP’s guidance reminds officers that drivers can’t be pulled over because of suspicion about their immigration status alone, Cameron told WyoFile.
“The stops are not based on driver’s license status but based on the observations of a [traffic or criminal] violation by that trooper,” Cameron said.
When WHP officers are handed a driver’s license with markings indicating the person is not a U.S. citizen, they are instructed to request documentation demonstrating a lawful presence in the country, Cameron said. That’s something the Laramie County deputies have been advised against doing, according to that department’s policy.
Doing so “would require the [deputy] to have some knowledge of immigration documents, their significance, and the validity of these documents,” the policy reads.
Gov. Mark Gordon allowed the driver’s license bill — a top priority of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus — to become law without his signature, expressing reservations but choosing not to veto it. He may well have been overridden had he tried a veto.
“My hope is that Wyoming law enforcement resources are used to assist in illegal presence operations but not take the lead in determining one’s status through credentials both issued and dictated by other states’ laws,” Gordon wrote in a letter explaining his decision at the time.
The law includes either a fine or a jail sentence as punishment for driving with one of these licenses. It will fall on individual departments, and their officers on the street, to decide whether someone found driving with such a license is cited or detained, Allen Thompson, executive director of the Wyoming Association of Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police, told WyoFile.
There is no consensus among his organization’s members on whether to conduct an arrest or write a ticket, he said. But, Thompson noted, if someone does not have a licensed driver to take the wheel, officers will likely be reluctant to let them drive away after a traffic stop.
Undocumented immigrants living in Wyoming carry driver’s licenses from other states that offer them to people without lawful presence in the country, previous WyoFile reporting has found. Now, depending on the county, when those Wyomingites take to the road, they’ll be running the risk of being fined, at best, and in a worst-case scenario, jailed and turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In Teton County, drivers stopped with a license issued to undocumented immigrants may be booked into jail, Carr said. And after criticism from U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman and state-level Republicans, Carr has announced that his jail will comply with ICE requests to hold people picked up on suspicion of local crimes for 48 hours upon the federal agency’s request.
Teton County, however, is not among the five sheriff’s departments that signed agreements to facilitate the transfer of immigrants here illegally into the federal detention and deportation system. During President Donald Trump’s second term, that system has expanded its reach in an unprecedented fashion and is likely to grow further after a massive funding infusion from Republicans in Congress.
Under pressure to boost deportation numbers, ICE is increasingly targeting undocumented immigrants without criminal convictions for deportation. A recent analysis of ICE arrest data by WyoFile and the Colorado Sun found the majority of people detained by the federal agency in Wyoming do not have criminal convictions, though they may have pending charges.
Read has lately seen people arrested on suspicion of fairly minor local infractions quickly picked up by ICE from jail, she said.
Her advice to undocumented immigrants throughout the state is to make sure they give law enforcement no opportunity to effect a traffic stop, given the uncertainty of the result. “Drive minimally, and if you must drive, be very careful, repair cracks in your windshield, make sure your tail lights are working, do everything you can to make sure you’re not going to be pulled over,” she told WyoFile this week.
Notably, the five sheriff’s departments that have signed agreements with ICE are located along major highways. Interstate 80’s Sweetwater, Carbon and Laramie counties have all inked contracts with the federal agency that allow immigration enforcement by deputies to varying degrees. They are joined by Campbell County, which lies along Interstate 90, and Natrona County, astride the north-south Interstate 25.
Laramie, Sweetwater and Natrona counties have all signed the broadest level of agreement ICE offers to local law enforcement. Referred to as the “task force” model, it allows deputies in those counties to question “any alien or person believed to be an alien” about their right to be in the country, according to a copy of the agreement.
While most of the ICE agreements apply to deputies working inside jails, the task force model allows participating officers to question people about their immigration status during routine police work on the streets of their communities.
In Laramie County, the deputies who are participating in the task force will likely be able to enforce the driver’s license law, Veldheer said.

Fear and anxiety

Even as state lawmakers join the Trump administration in seeking to make life more difficult for immigrants illegally working in Wyoming, Read said there’s no evidence it’s driving people to return voluntarily to home countries they left for better opportunities.
“The primary effect I’m seeing is fear and anxiety,” she said, “everybody in the non-white, non-English speaking community is so on edge, so afraid.”
Neighboring Colorado is among the states that issue driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants. The Mexican Consulate in Denver, in a social media post, warned its citizens who live in Wyoming or travel through the state to consider alternative routes or modes of transportation other than driving themselves, if they carry such a license.
The consulate also reminded drivers that if they’re stopped, they have the right to contact a lawyer and the right to remain silent about their immigration status. Read is offering people the same advice, she said, but she cannot guarantee a stop won’t still result in an arrest if someone is driving on one of the now invalid licenses.

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.