This story was jointly reported and authored by WyoFile, Jackson Hole News&Guide and The Pinedale Roundup. The reporting was coordinated and compiled by WyoFile with editing from each publication.

Immigration agents stopped Juan Barranco Castro on Wednesday morning in the parking lot of Jackson’s Community Bible Church as he drove to work. 

People who know the 56-year-old say Barranco Castro wasn’t the agents’ intended target. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — better known as ICE — was seeking someone else who drove a similar-looking vehicle.

“He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” a friend said. “It happened by accident.”

Staging in Pinedale, ICE detained at least nine people, including Barranco Castro, as agents fanned out across Teton County and western Wyoming last week in a multi-day operation to arrest and transport people — first to the Sweetwater County Detention Center in Rock Springs and then into federal detention facilities, including those in Denver and El Paso, Texas. 

ICE did not respond to questions about Barranco Castro’s arrest and the overall number of arrests from last week’s operation was unconfirmed as of press deadline Tuesday. Steve Kotecki, public affairs officer for ICE in Denver, was unavailable for comment, and emails to a general ICE information line went unanswered. 

Barranco Castro has lived in Jackson for 26 years, according to three friends who spoke anonymously for fear of ICE retribution. 

Those friends said Barranco Castro regularly sends money home to his wife in Tlaxcala, Mexico, where she is reportedly ill and relies on his financial support. Available court documents did not indicate whether Barranco Castro was undocumented, held a valid work visa or had applied for asylum. He is not charged with any crimes in state or federal court records.

Tlaxcala — where Barranco Castro is originally from — became a sister city to the town of Jackson in 2024. Jackson officials formally recognized the link between the two cities to honor what they see as the significant contribution migrants from Tlaxcala have brought to Jackson. 

According to those close to him, Barranco Castro was allowed one phone call during the arrest, which he used to ask a friend to retrieve his car before he was transported to the Sweetwater County Detention Center.

Friends also expressed concern that he may have been taken without his diabetes medication.

“I am so worried about him,” a friend said.

In a video widely shared online, Barranco Castro is seen in the church parking lot as two ICE agents handcuff him and place him in leg irons and belly chains. 

A screenshot from a video of ICE agents arresting Juan Barranco Castro, a 56 year old with no known criminal record.

In a different video posted Saturday by the statewide news outlet Cowboy State Daily, ICE agents defend the use of such restraints by citing “an 800% increase in assaults against ICE officers.” Some police agency policies, however, limit use of leg irons and belly chains to instances when a suspect is behaving or expected to behave violently.

The percentage increase captures a jump from 10 reported assaults on ICE during a six-month period in 2024 to 79 assaults over the same period this year. The increase in reported assaults on ICE officers comes during a significant increase in the agency’s field activity, including controversial raids in left-leaning cities where ICE is unpopular. 

Since the late 1960s, immigrants from Mexico have been coming to the Tetons, drawn to the rugged, rural landscape that mirrors native homelands. These Teton immigrants found work, built homes and families, and helped shape Jackson into the community it is today.

Through the decades, however, they have weathered political headwinds — most recently from U.S. House Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman, who suggested in November that Teton County law enforcement was working against ICE’s efforts. The Wyoming Freedom Caucus, which controls the House of Representatives, made similar accusations.

“Now — and historically — ICE has targeted Jackson for enforcement,” Wyoming Immigrant Advocacy Project founder and immigration attorney Rosie Read said Monday. Jackson is “known to have a substantial immigration population, and we are sitting ducks. 

“We are supportive of our immigrant community and ICE is looking to send a message and rattle the cage,” Read added. 

High crimes or misdemeanors? 

During last week’s Jackson operation, ICE agents arrested some individuals with misdemeanor DUIs, but not other criminal charges, according to court records.

That crime falls below Homeland Security and Trump’s stated enforcement priorities of removing the “worst of the worst” — people with criminal histories that include aggravated assault, domestic violence, gang-related crime or sex assault. ICE officials have also said they’ll detain undocumented immigrants with lesser criminal histories if they’re encountered during their enforcement activities.

During last week’s operation, an ICE agent said they were looking for people with “serious criminal convictions,” according to the YouTube video documenting part of the operation posted last week by Cowboy State Daily. 

But, reporters for the Jackson Hole News&Guide and WyoFile found that ICE detained three people who had only traffic citations in Wyoming court records. 

Court documents, including a search in Jackson’s municipal court that handles speeding and parking tickets, show that Barranco Castro has no criminal history in the state of Wyoming. 

Reporters were also unable to find any record of past convictions or pending charges for another detainee, Alpine resident Janeth Jazmin Jaldin Loza, who agents arrested July 23. 

In that sense, the operation was in line with the broader themes of ICE’s operations in Wyoming, six months into President Donald Trump’s second administration. 

Since Trump returned to the White House on Jan. 20, the majority of people ICE has arrested in Wyoming have not had criminal convictions, a review of five months of the agency’s arrest data by WyoFile and The Colorado Sun found. 

That’s a shift from the same four months in 2024, when the majority of people ICE arrested in Wyoming did carry criminal convictions. In both years, DUIs were the most common convictions on ICE detainees’ records.

Agents operate on assumptions

In a briefing included in Cowboy State Daily’s video, ICE agents acknowledged that they were working off incomplete information.

The team was heard in the video preparing to approach a residence near Alpine when one agent said aloud: “Potentially, this may not be the right address.” Another added: “We may have a different address for our target. We’re going to do a ‘knock and talk’ to determine if our target lives here.”

ICE agents drove around western Wyoming in unmarked cars like this Dodge Durango. (Cali O’Hare/Pinedale Roundup)

Referring to a Romanian national, one ICE agent stated, “international travel from the U.S. to Romania, 2018, travel between Mexico City and Romania … I would assume he came here illegally.”

That man was 27-year-old Alberto Banicescu. He was taken into custody July 21 outside his Jackson apartment.

In the Cowboy State Daily video, ICE Field Office Director Robert Guadian is seen asking agents what Banicescu was doing in Jackson. 

“Drinking in Jackson and having a good time?” one agent replied.

Banicescu had a misdemeanor DUI citation from January and was on probation, according to Jackson Municipal Court records. In the video, he is seen being placed in belly chains and leg irons before transport to the Sweetwater County Detention Center.

ICE ops fuel fear

ICE does not maintain a permanent presence in Jackson and operations like last week’s take place with little or no public notice. “We come out to Jackson pretty [regularly] — a couple times a year,” Guadian said in the video.

The News&Guide has reported on ICE activity in the community, and multiple Jackson Hole residents have been placed on ICE holds at the Teton County Jail after being detained for other reasons, including traffic violations.

Residents often don’t know who is being targeted or why. A video sent to the News&Guide shows people from one worksite fleeing into nearby forests after they heard ICE was in the area. 

Still others avoided community events altogether, such as the Teton County Fair. An evening event last week that caters to Jackson Hole’s Hispanic community experienced sharply decreased attendance as word of ICE’s operation spread and people stayed home out of fear. 

“I think it was an event that we were all looking forward to in the community,” Rubi Castro, who attended the concert, told a News&Guide reporter in Spanish. “And the truth is that it’s very sad to see that people didn’t attend, because we’re all afraid.”

Access granted, denied

In May, hoping to better understand the situation, the News&Guide asked to follow along with ICE while its agents operated in Teton County. The agency did not grant the paper access.

A writer from the Cowboy State Daily has, however, participated in at least two ride-alongs with ICE in the last few months, including last week’s operation. Cowboy State Daily agreed to keep agents involved with the operation anonymous as a condition for documenting the operations, according to its story. The outlet blurred out ICE agents in the video. 

ICE has increasingly moved to make its officials anonymous – agents often wear masks or decline to identify themselves during street operations, and spokespeople in the Denver office have sought anonymity for making statements to media outlets. 

Comments made by ICE agents in the video indicate Cowboy State Daily had knowledge of the Jackson operation prior to that of Teton County Sheriff Matt Carr. 

Carr declined to comment for this story. 

ICE’s western Wyoming operation took place as the agency appears to be accelerating its presence in the Equality State. In recent weeks, ICE has increased its use of county jails to hold immigration detainees, shipping more than 40 people from a detention center in Aurora, Colorado, run by a for-profit prison company, to the Natrona County Detention Center. 

Those inmates remained in the jail 10 days later, according to the county’s inmate roster. The Natrona County Sheriff’s Office signed an agreement with ICE to hold people in its detention center as long as space is available, and there is no indication how long the current group might be held there, an agency spokesperson told a WyoFile reporter. 

On Monday, Gov. Mark Gordon, who has previously expressed a reluctance to engage local law enforcement officers in federal immigration enforcement, announced a new agreement between ICE and the Wyoming Highway Patrol. The agreement allows state troopers to receive training in investigating people’s lawful presence in the country, and use that training while patrolling Wyoming highways. 

Gordon, for now, is not concerned about increasing immigration enforcement affecting economic drivers like Wyoming’s tourism industry, or the fabric of its small communities, a spokesperson for the governor said. 

“Wyoming’s economy and our communities are always at the forefront of the governor’s mind,” spokesperson Michael Pearlman said. “But that also includes things like public safety and ensuring our business community is complying with immigration laws.”

A base in Pinedale

ICE agents who detained people in Teton and Lincoln counties last week based their operations out of a Hampton Inn in Pinedale. Fourteen agents were spotted by other hotel guests on July 20, six witnesses told The Pinedale Roundup. They requested anonymity to describe the federal agents’ activities because they did not want to draw ICE’s attention or jeopardize their own stays at the hotel.

That night, a Sunday, the agents gathered together outside the hotel, handing documents around and discussing the week’s plans, the other guests said. “They had a box,” one guest told the Roundup. “They took out paperwork and handed it out to every single one of them. It looked like they were looking for certain immigrants. They had flyers with people’s faces on them.”

ICE agents dining at a brew pub in Pinedale. (Joy Ufford)

Two ICE agents, approached by The Pinedale Roundup, declined to share their names when approached because they were worried about their safety and that of their families.

One agent said he was a Campbell County resident, and the other said he had traveled from Colorado to western Wyoming.

“People don’t like us,” said the agent. “We are trying to do the right thing, and some people don’t like that.”

When asked about the families separated from loved ones they detain for deportation, the agent said, “sometimes families get caught in the crosshairs.” 

Though the agents stayed in Pinedale, it’s unclear whether they arrested anyone in Sublette County. On July 22, Sublette County Sheriff’s Deputy Lt. Travis Bingham told the Roundup he wasn’t aware of ICE operations in the county. He said the federal agents usually inform his department when they’re working in the area. 

Meanwhile, ICE agents spent the week embedded in the town during their off time, where Roundup reporters observed them eating in local restaurants on different nights throughout the week. On Saturday, the day the agents appeared to have left town, a group of around 20 residents gathered on Pine Street to protest the Trump administration with signs that included the message “STOP KIDNAPPING OUR NEIGHBORS.” The protest group has gathered regularly near the county courthouse since Trump’s inauguration, in varying sizes.

But like the majority of Wyoming, Sublette County leans conservative, and many residents likely welcomed ICE’s stop in the town. 

“The media — not only locally but on the national level — wants to portray [immigrants] as victims,” Big Piney resident Gary Garlick told a Roundup reporter. “We elected Donald Trump for security. I happen to be one of those people who really supports the administration and what they’re doing.”