June 23, 2026

Salah Sarsour Has Been Released from ICE Detention

On June 18, Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee was freed from ICE detention by a federal judge’s order. Sarsour had been held in a Kentucky detention facility since March 30 after a sudden arrest by ICE agents. ICE claimed Sarsour — a Jordanian national who’s been a lawful permanent resident for over three decades — had been convicted in an Israeli court of throwing a Molotov cocktail at the homes of Israeli armed forces and illegally attempting to possess weapons and ammunition, and was “a terrorist” who should be deported.

Sarsour’s arrest had prompted an enormous outpouring of support from the Milwaukee area community. Sarsour came to the U.S. in 1993, has been married 34 years, and has six children (all U.S. citizens) and nine grandchildren. He’d led the Islamic Society’s board for five years with, supporters said, and had no U.S. criminal record. Political, religious and community leaders all called for his release, and denounced the apparent attempt by the federal government to retaliate against Sarsour for his activism on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

U.S. District Judge James Patrick Hanlon ordered Sarsour released after finding he’d raised a “substantial” First Amendment retaliation claim — concluding evidence supported the inference that his Palestinian-rights advocacy was “at least a motivating factor” in the government’s decision to detain him. The judge noted federal authorities had known about the Israeli convictions for decades and had repeatedly reviewed them while letting Sarsour keep his lawful permanent resident status, and the judge questioned why they suddenly mattered now. The ruling doesn’t resolve the underlying immigration case or whether Sarsour is ultimately removable — it only addresses pretrial detention while his constitutional claims proceed. He was released on his own recognizance, with a condition that he remain in Wisconsin.

Sarsour is back home in Milwaukee. He spoke to a gathering of supporters after his release on June 18 saying he was “back to serve the community.” A press conference gave Sarsour and his supporters more opportunity to acknowledge the upwelling of solidarity around this case and to call for an end to the persecution of Sarsour for his advocacy.

Sarsour’s case brings to Wisconsin this Trump administration tactic to use immigration proceedings to threaten and retaliate against pro-Palestinian speech. Other high profile cases include that of activist Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder and graduate student at Columbia University. A Trump administration immigration court judge ordered Khalil to be deported after the government arrested him and asserted his pro-Palestinian activism was a foreign policy threat to the United States. Although a federal district court judge ordered Khalil released from detention while his removal case is litigated through the courts, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has reversed, raising the threat of re-detention. For now, the appeals court has stayed the impact of that decision while Khalil seeks to appeal to the US Supreme Court.

Today June 23, the ACLU posted an article describing what it calls serious misconduct by the federal government through actions which “warped and weaponized the immigration court system to try to quickly expel Mr. Khalil from the country.” In short, the ACLU charges that the administration made sure that an expedited order removing Khalil from the country would be produced by the immigration courts.

A similar situation faces another Columbia student involved in pro-Palestinian advocacy, Mohsen Mahdawi, who was arrested last year following his participation in pro-Palestinian protests. Immigration judge Nina Froes had dismissed the Trump administration’s efforts to deport the Columbia University student, which resulted in her being fired by the Trump administration earlier this year. The US Board of Immigration Appeals then reinstated deportation proceedings against Mahdawi, siding with the Administration’s argument that pro-Palestinian activism was a foreign policy threat which could justify removal. Mahdawi is now taking his case to the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, while he also has a habeas case pending before the Second Circuit challenging his detention.

The Trump administration also fired immigration judge Roopal Patel who had blocked deportation proceedings for Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish Tufts University doctoral student detained by ICE in Massachusetts after she signed a pro-Palestinian article in a student newspaper. While the Trump administration attempted to overturn that decision, Öztürk self-deported to her native Turkey.

Unfortunately for Salah Sarsour, the actions of the federal government in these other cases show that he has many battles ahead, against an administration determined to punish those who would advocate for human rights in the West Bank and Gaza.

ICE detains another Wisconsin mother

We learned today of another Wisconsin mother detained by ICE without justification. According to a report in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Diana Socha Torres, a 42 year-old woman from Columbia, and her 8 year-old son were taken from their home in the Dells to the Milwaukee ICE office from which they were being sent to detention in Texas. Socha Torres is an asylum seeker fleeing violence in her own country:

She is representative of many others who have in-progress immigration cases, are not public safety threats and are being arrested by ICE anyway, said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of immigrant advocacy group Voces de la Frontera.

“It’s just such a gross misuse of our public dollars to separate this family,” Neumann-Ortiz said. “How is it possible that we can use our public dollars to traumatize and incarcerate a mother and a child that represents no threat whatsoever to our community?”

Despite a Trump administration claim that it is deporting the “worst of the worst”, Socha Torres joins a group of mothers living peacefully in Wisconsin with their children, whom ICE has sought to detain and expel from the country.

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Other news

• Work visa issues leave Door County businesses short staffed for summer season (WPR)

• Bid for Dugan acquittal and retrial denied by federal judge (Wisconsin Examiner)

• I also recommend for all this recent episode of Adelante on Milwaukee PBS which goes into depth on the May Day mobilization for immigrant rights in the state, and especially the synergies between labor and immigrant rights groups.

Featured Resource

In Spring 2026, some immigration courts began holding status hearings where dozens of unrepresented individuals are scheduled to appear at the same time. These individuals may be given a deadline to fill out a form sometimes titled “Respondent’s Pleading Declaration.” Completing this form may result in an immigration judge finding that the person signing can be deported from the United States unless they apply for and are granted relief from removal.

This resource from the National Immigrant Justice Center provides information about your rights if you receive a “pleading declaration.”

June 16, 2026

Many Wisconsin Sheriffs will sell data to ICE this month

The State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) is a federal grant program that partially reimburses state and local governments for the costs of incarcerating certain non-citizens who have been convicted of crimes. To receive this money, county jails submit data on individuals they have incarcerated who are, or are believed to be, undocumented. This information is then shared with ICE, further strengthening its data-driven deportation machine.

From federal Fiscal Year 2021 through Fiscal Year 2024, 29 Wisconsin counties and the Wisconsin Department of Corrections received substantial SCAAP funding. The total amount of SCAAP funds received by these Wisconsin entities from October 2020 through September 2024 (encompassing FY 2021-2024 data) reached approximately $7,258,616. There is a table on page 3 of the ACLU of Wisconsin’s July 2025 Jail to Deportation Pipeline report which details the amounts received county-by-county.

This continued influx of federal funds is a financial enticement for local law enforcement to collaborate in immigration enforcement. The sharing of records of incarcerated individuals with ICE through the SCAAP application process creates a direct link in the jail-to-deportation pipeline, allowing ICE to identify and track individuals for potential removal proceedings.

Participation in the program by local sheriffs is entirely voluntary. Sheriffs from Milwaukee County, for instance, have not participated. After being one of the largest recipients of SCAAP funding in the past, the Dane County Sheriff decided in January 2025 to no longer participate in the program after a sustained campaign by concerned community members. Other sheriffs should follow their lead.

This month sheriffs across the state are preparing information to get a new round of SCAAP funding. The US DOJ has published the grant application materials here with a deadline to submit information about undocumented persons who had a stay in local jails of June 30.

Thus there is a short window over the next two weeks for citizens across the State of Wisconsin to contact their local Sheriffs to ask them to refrain from participating in the SCAAP program this year. Those dollars dangled in front of them should be refused rather than turn over data to fuel the deportation machine.

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Other news

• Supporters rally outside Indiana detention center as Milwaukee’s Salah Sarsour remains held by ICE (Milwaukee Independent)

• Archdiocese of Milwaukee offers prayer service for migrants and refugees (CBS58)

• Work visa delays are crippling Door County businesses well into summer (UpNorth News)

• He took his wife, a Trump fan, to the president’s hotel in Doral. Instead he was detained by ICE (NBC News)

• The 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup: Know Your Rights, Know Your Risks (ACLU)

Featured Resource

The National Immigration Project has created a resource to help people understand the new immigration court practice of “Mega-Master Hearings,” where dozens of individual cases appear on a court’s docket at the same time, and immigrants facing removal proceedings are being summoned to show up a rescheduled dates on very short notice. The resource titled Mega Master Hearings: Fast Cases and Bad Outcomes is an important introduction about the pitfalls and traps created by this new process.

June 9, 2026

Seventh Circuit bars Wisconsin county jails from requiring immigrant detainees to work or face punishment.

A June 5 decision from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled that jails cannot force civil immigration detainees to work or face loss of privileges or solitary confinement. A federal district judge in Milwaukee had ruled otherwise.

The case, Ruderman v. Kenosha County, involved a federal statute 18 U.S.C. § 1589 which prohibits forced labor. The plaintiffs were civil immigration detainees held in the Kenosha County Jail under a contract between that jail and ICE. They alleged that they had been required to perform unpaid custodial work, such as sweeping floors and cleaning phones, tables, or showers. If they refused, they could be disciplined by loss of commissary privileges, loss of phone privileges, or solitary confinement for as long as ten days. Federal district judge Brett Ludwig for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, a Trump appointee, dismissed their claim, finding that §1589 was limited to human trafficking, and could not apply to work requirements within local jails.

The Seventh Circuit disagreed last week, ruling that “nothing in either the text or context of §1589 permits a local jail to compel civil detainees—persons not subject to punishment—to work on pain of solitary confinement or loss of phone contact with the outside world.” The appeals court aligned itself with similar rulings from the Fifth Circuit and Eleventh Circuit which earlier held that the private prison company Core Civic was required to comply with section 1589 and could not compel involuntary work by civil immigration detainees.

The Kenosha County Jail no longer holds immigrants from ICE after terminating its detention contract in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. The new ruling from the Seventh Circuit will govern, however, the five Wisconsin county jails which have such contracts, as well as ICE detention facilities in Indiana.

While immigration detainees cannot be required to work, if they elect to work while in detention, their jailers have tried to pay them as little as $1 for an 8 hour day, as described in a May 13, 2026 report from Public Citizen titled Private Profiteers: How ICE Detention Center Contractors Exploit Immigrant Detainees with $1 Per Day Pay. That ridiculously low wage is endorsed by ICE in its 2025 National Detention Standards as part of the “Voluntary Work Program.” As the Public Citizen report points out, several court cases are currently challenging this abusive labor practice in violation of minimum wage and other laws. In February the US Supreme Court allowed a class action lawsuit by immigration detainees for unpaid wages to proceed against private prison company GEO Group, rejecting a government contractor immunity defense by the firm.

Underlying the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Ruderman last week is an important principle — persons being held in detention are not there for punishment. The sole basis for their detention is a supposed need to keep them locked up to ensure compliance with immigration court appearances and subsequent removals from the country. Yet under the Trump administration it is difficult to call the conditions of immigration detention as currently used as anything other than punishment. For ICE, detention serves not as a means to ensure compliance with court dates, but as a strategy to get immigrants to give up, waive their due process rights and accept removal from the country.

Nineteenth person dies in immigration detention this year.

There is an under-reporting in national media regarding the number of persons who have died in ICE detention during the second Trump administration. This week the 19th person to die in 2026 perished at a detention facility in Louisiana, bringing the total to 52 deaths since the beginning of 2025. In contrast, the annual average death total in ICE detention, during the four years of the first Trump administration, was twelve (including 2020 COVID-19 deaths), and the annual average during the Biden presidency was less than seven deaths. An investigation into ICE detention deaths by the San Francisco Chronicle published in April identified a very troubling pattern of medical misdiagnoses and delay in delivery of necessary treatment behind a substantial number of the deaths.

This is not a Wisconsin-specific news item. I know of no deaths of immigrant detainees in Wisconsin. But all persons in the United States should be troubled and angry about the death toll in facilities overseen by an agency demanding hundreds of billions of tax dollars to run immigration enforcement.

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Other news

• Federal judge pauses sentencing to weigh argument in Wisconsin judge’s immigration case conviction (AP)

• Opinion: Wisconsin immigrant moms find courage and hope in community (Milw. Journal-Seninel)

• Kenosha community outraged over anti-immigration posters (Spectrum)

Featured Resource

Last week I described the court decision granting a preliminary injunction to Yessenia Ruano and other class members who have faced deportation even though they had pending petitions for relief based on their status as victims of trafficking or violence against women. Counsel for the plaintiff class have now produced an extensive toolkit of materials for lawyers who have clients in these situations to assist them in getting the relief promised by that court decision.

June 2, 2026

This week we have some good news updates on stories of Wisconsin mothers of US citizen children who have been caught up in the mass deportation machine.

Elvira Benitez-Suarez released from ICE detention.

Elvira Benitez-Suarez of Sheboygan Falls was released from an immigration detention center in Kentucky last Tuesday after being granted bond by an immigration judge. She had been taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at a routine immigration check-in in Milwaukee on March 10.

The 51 year-old small business owner has lived in the US for 36 years after arriving as a teen ager fleeing sexual assault, and has 4 US citizen children and 4 grandchildren. Her case has gained a high profile in Wisconsin because it highlights a current system which locks away people for no conceivable reason other than cruelty.

On arriving back in Milwaukee after her release, Benitez-Suarez told the press she was very, very, happy and excited to have her freedom back, and had felt that every day in immigration detention was “like a thousand years.”

According to her lawyer Marc Christopher in an interview with WUWM, an immigration judge had previously ruled Benitez-Suarez was entitled to a green card, and then on the very last day, the government appealed that order and shortly after acted to re-detain her. Now an immigration judge has again been convinced that this mother and grandmother need not be held in a jail in Kentucky while the government tries to deprive her of a green card.

Meanwhile Benitez-Suarez must deal with the uncertainty of waiting for the outcome of the government’s appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals, a process which could take a year or more.

Milwaukee Teachers Aide Yessenia Ruano must be allowed to return to US from El Salvador judge rules.

A year ago, Yessenia Ruano boarded a plane, forced to leave Milwaukee for her native El Salvador. Despite having a job as a teacher’s aide in Milwaukee schools, owning a home and having two US citizen daughters, the government insisted they planned to deport her. Although her petition to obtain a special visa available to victims of human trafficking (a “T-visa”) was still pending, federal immigration officials refused to let her stay. Rather than being picked up, chained and flown out of the country, Ruano self-deported back to El Salvador with her two daughters. You can see images from their new life in El Salvador in this story from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

She did not give up her fight to return to the US. Ruano became one of the named plaintiffs in a federal court class action in California which alleged that ICE had illegally changed a prior policy which would have let her, and other victims of trafficking or violence against women, stay in the country while their petitions for protection were pending.

In a decision on May 20, a federal district court judge in California issued a preliminary injunction, ruling that the government must allow Ruano to reenter the United States while her T-visa application is being decided. He found that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on all of their claims that the government had acted arbitrarily and capriciously and in violation of the law.

I met Yessenia Ruano a year ago. By coincidence, I happened to be on the same flights she took to El Salvador as she self-deported along with her daughters. During the layover in Houston we had a chance to talk, and I would later visit her and her family in El Salvador and deliver the “Unbreakable Spirit“ award given to her by Voces de la Frontera. When I messaged Yessenia this week after hearing the latest news, she told me she had been working to establish her life in El Salvador, but now she would need to think about packing.

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Other news

• Democratic Women’s Caucus Urges DHS to Reinstate Protections for Immigrant Survivors Immediately (DWC)

• Bryna Godar on a lawsuit over immigration holds in Wisconsin (PBS Wisconsin)

• Relief groups brace for end of food assistance for Wisconsin refugees (WPR)

Featured Resource

A Guide for Employers: What to Do if Immigration Comes to Your Workplace — put together by the National Immigration Law Center, this guide provides employers with important information about how to plan and react before, during and after an ICE raid.

May 26, 2026

The children who are the collateral damage of a mass deportation policy.

This week as the school year comes to a close across Wisconsin, we take a look at how the current immigration enforcement surge is impacting children.

There are currently between 140,000 and 149,000 children under the age of 18 living in Wisconsin with at least one immigrant parent. The vast majority of these children are U.S. citizens by birth, but an estimated 11,000 to 13,000 are non-citizens. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction calculated public school enrollment in the 2023-24 school year of 4334 students who had been born outside the country. Among the citizen children, tens of thousands of these children live in “mixed-status” households, and over 13,000 U.S. citizen children in the state have at least one undocumented parent.

These children live under the constant threat of losing a parent to detention or deportation solely due to immigration status. Aggressive enforcement efforts across the country which flash on TV screens, along with hundreds of immigration arrests in communities across Wisconsin, have created widespread fear and destabilized entire communities.

Added to the fear of a parent’s detention, children without permanent immigration status can face detention and removal themselves. An April 2026 report by the Marshall Project reviewed government data and found that ICE has detained 6200 children nationwide, a ten-fold increase over the Biden administration.

A survey conducted by the Head Start associations in Wisconsin and two other states found providers reporting decreased attendance, high anxiety and increased behavior challenges in kids, related to immigration enforcement. About half of Head Start program leaders in the states surveyed, 52%, said there had been at least one instance of ICE activity in neighborhoods surrounding their site within the past 12 months.

When a parent is detained, the consequences for the children are immediate and devastating. A recent study by the Brooking Institution estimated that nationwide, 205,000 children live in a household where one or both parents had been detained by the Trump administration since the beginning of 2025. Yet despite these numbers, there is no structure to address the needs of the children, at least three-fourths of whom are US citizens:

The bottom line is that there is no systematic approach to protecting the children of those detained by ICE. ICE does not directly involve itself in safeguarding the well-being of a detainee’s children, and only refers to child protection if children are present at an arrest and no alternative care is immediately available. Parents also prefer to avoid engaging with child protective services, especially in a heightened enforcement environment when those in their caregiving networks may be at risk of apprehension.

The sudden removal of a parent frequently triggers the collapse of a household’s economic foundation, leading to loss of income and housing insecurity for the children left behind. Because the federal immigration system prioritizes removals and lacks meaningful legal pathways to preserve family unity, family separations often become permanent. Children may be placed into the foster care system—not because of parental neglect, but simply because their caregivers are detained. In this chaotic process, siblings can find themselves split across different households.

Ultimately, while the children of immigrants in Wisconsin are overwhelmingly American citizens deeply rooted in the state, they can end up as the collateral damage of a federal mass deportation policy.

Detained at airports for old drug convictions

A recent story highlights the risks faced by green card holders who travel internationally with any kind of past criminal conviction. A person with permanent resident status, often referred to as a green card holder, can typically only be removed for committing an “aggravated felony.” However, when returning from abroad, customs and border patrol has greater discretion to deny a permanent resident reentry, and under the Trump administration that discretion is resulting in persons being place in immigration detention with cases started to revoke their legal status and expel them from the country.

This is the situation facing Everlee Wihongi, a citizen of New Zealand who is a long term green card holder living in Hortonville, Wisconsin. On a recent trip returning from New Zealand, she was detained at the Los Angeles International airport, despite having reentered the US on similar trips in previous years. The reason for her detention? A twelve year old felony marijuana possession charge, to which she had pleaded no contest. It is not a conviction which can get a permanent resident deported, but it can give the federal government the right to refuse their admission back into the country if they travel internationally.

Wihongi’s case has received publicity in her birth country of New Zealand, with coverage of the harsh conditions she has faced in ICE detention as she has been transferred multiple times among detention facilities. She is not an isolated case. Local Wisconsin immigration attorneys interviewed by Wisconsin Watch described other permanent resident clients who wound up in immigration detention after returning from international travel.

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Other News

• New citizens feel responsibility and freedom after taking oath of citizenship (WPR)

• Foreigners in U.S. must apply for green cards abroad, new Trump administration rule says (PBS)

• Baldwin, other senators join calls to release Salah Sarsour from immigration detention (AP)

• Minnesota county charges ICE officer in shooting during immigration crackdown (PBS)

• Milwaukee refugees waiting on green cards scrambling in wake of SNAP, Medicaid cuts (Milw. Journal-Sentinel)

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Featured Resource

The ICE Flight Monitor from Human Rights First is a monthly report which tracks the flights of aircraft used by ICE to move detained immigrants from site to site within the US and to deport immigrants to countries around the world. Read it to learn about Air Wisconsin’s flights as part of ICE removal operations, for example.

May 19, 2026

ICE’s massive surveillance network and some local efforts to slow it down

This week we take a look at how the deportation machine has engaged in a massive expansion of digital surveillance as part of mass removal operations across the country.

AI and data analytics power the Trump administration’s deportation efforts by centralizing vast amounts of disparate data, automating the identification and location of targets, and providing ICE agents with real-time biometric surveillance tools. These technologies are being weaponized to streamline the entire “deportation lifecycle,” from initial prioritization to final removal. We are being tracked in the physical world as well as in the online world.

The backbone of the ICE data operations is sophisticated data analytics platforms that break down information silos between agencies.

A major ICE tool is “ImmigrationOS”. Developed by Palantir under a $30 million contract, this AI system is designed to provide “near real-time visibility” into the movements of immigrants living in the US. It performs three main functions: streamlining targeting and who will be prioritized for removal, tracking self-deportations, and managing deportation logistics.

Palantir also developed ELITE (Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement). This software maps potential targets, generates individual dossiers, and assigns “confidence scores” to addresses obtained from multiple sources to facilitate on-the-ground raids in neighborhoods around the country.

Then the federal government pushes this information into smartphone apps carried by ICE and CBP agents for “Real-Time Field Surveillance.” Mobile Fortify is a smartphone application which allows ICE agents to scan a person’s face or fingerprints and instantly search federal and state databases containing over 200 million images. ICE reportedly treats the app’s match as a “definitive” determination of status, sometimes ignoring physical documentation like birth certificates. Mobile Fortify is assumed to be right even when the person in front of the agent pulls out documentation of legal status.

The Mobile Fortify application is also downloadable to the smartphones of local sheriffs’ deputies in those counties where sheriffs have signed 287(g) agreements in Wisconsin.

ICE uses AI products to conduct “always-on” surveillance of digital footprints to identify targets for visa revocation or deportation. ICE contracts with dozens of companies to conduct 24/7 social media monitoring and to link those results with cellphone location data gathered by ad networks in phone apps. ICE can monitor phone location data across entire neighborhoods to identify and track individuals.

One controversial surveillance tool is license plate reader technology from Flock Safety which is sold to state and local law enforcement agencies, as well as private groups like neighborhood associations. The Flock system allows users to search for times when a particular car has passed cameras in the system, or to create an alert when a specified license plate is spotted. Flock asserts that it does not share its data with ICE, and that it is the decision of any state or local agency which has deployed the cameras to decide whether that data is shared with other agencies. A May 2025 report by 404 Media, however, found more than 4000 instances of state or local agencies making immigration related searches in the Flock system either as a favor or at the request of ICE.

Advocates around Wisconsin are fighting community by community to limit the deployment of the Flock license plate readers. They want to limit Flock systems not just to prevent ICE from using it, but to prevent general abuse of community members’ privacy by law enforcement agencies. They are having some success, including termination of Flock contracts in Dane County, Oshkosh, and elsewhere in the state.

More broadly, the ACLU of Wisconsin supports Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) legislation to require law enforcement to be transparent about all its surveillance technology purchases, not just Flock systems.

For individuals concerned about immigration enforcement, the key takeaways here are the importance of understanding the privacy and location services settings on our smart devices which we carry on our persons and can let third parties, including ICE, know where we are. Everyone should understand that ICE is monitoring everything which is posted to social media — if a face appears in a photo, facial recognition software is identifying that face and matching it against wanted and target lists. Community residents should learn the policies of their local law enforcement regarding information sharing with ICE and advocate to prevent information sharing.

Milwaukee’s Airport becoming a regular hub for ICE AIR

According to the most recent ICE Flight Monitor monthly report published by Human Rights First, 92 flights left Milwaukee’s General Mitchell Airport so far in 2026 in connection with ICE removal operations. In contrast, there were no such flight departures in all 2025. (The data shows up in a table on page 28 of the report). No other Wisconsin airport has been used by ICE operations in 2026.

The growth relates to Air Wisconsin’s recent contract to become one of the charter carriers for ICE in its national operations. This new role for the former regional carrier came about after the company was sold to CSI Aviation, an ICE contractor. According to the ICE Flight Monitor, Air Wisconsin is now one of the leading airlines shuttling detainees from site to site within the continental US.

In Other News

Federal Judge Sends Lawsuit Challenging ICE Detainers Back to Wisconsin Supreme Court (ACLU-WI)

Suit challenging ICE detainers to remain with Wisconsin Supreme Court (Milw. Journal-Sentinel)

Michigan Supreme Court restricts ICE civil arrests at courthouses (Detroit Free Press)

This Photo Hurt Mandela Barnes in 2022, But Public Opinion Has Shifted (Urban Milwaukee)

Archivists see surge in Wisconsin residents seeking Canadian citizenship (Wausau Pilot & Review)

Featured Resource

What Am I Signing When I Sign My Deportation from the National Immigration Project. Federal immigration authorities put incredible pressure on persons they detain to give up their cases and be voluntarily removed to their country of origin. Advertisements encourage immigrants living in the country to self-deport using the CBP One smartphone app and receive payment for doing so. This resource from NIP provides comprehensive information about the options and consequences of agreeing to leave the country.

On May 6, the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) issued a sharp statement directed at Dane County “sanctuary politicians.” The federal government is demanding that the county honor an ICE detainer for a Nicaraguan immigrant, who was booked into the jail in Madison on April 27 on two counts of second-degree sexual assault. The DHS press release stated:

This illegal alien is charged with two counts of sexual assault of an elderly victim at an assisted living facility,” said Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis. “This dirtbag was released into the country by the Biden Administration. DHS is calling on sanctuary politicians in Dane County, Wisconsin to NOT release this criminal from jail back onto the streets to commit more crimes. We need Wisconsin sanctuary politicians to cooperate with us to remove criminals from our country

ICE uses such inflammatory rhetoric to (1) demonize the immigrant population in the country, and (2) to attempt to get Sheriffs in Wisconsin to honor voluntary ICE detainers, an illegal practice for which the ACLU of Wisconsin is currently suing five sheriffs across the State.

But ICE’s hyperbolic public statements have nothing to do with real public safety. ICE filed its detainer request on April 28, just hours after the defendant’s initial booking. Despite the aggressive language from federal officials about local policies, the defendant is still in custody in the Dane County jail as of today with bail set at $200,000.

The DHS statement only serves as political pressure, claiming that Dane County’s refusal to honor such detainers risks a future release into the community. The federal government is using press releases to frame local bail and detention policies as an immediate threat, even while those individuals are still working through the local judicial system.

This latest missive directed at Dane County is a repeat of last year, when the Dane County Jail held an immigrant charged with two counts of homicide by intoxicated use of a vehicle. At that time, ICE also claimed that the practice of the jail not to honor detainers would result in the release of a dangerous undocumented individual. But once again, this defendant is still in the Dane County Jail on a bond which was raised from $250,000 to $5 million at the request of local prosecutors.

In contrast, this week we had updates on two cases where DHS and ICE are not interested in talking. They involve two long term residents of Wisconsin who qualify for green cards and have raised families here, but ICE has detained them and seeks to expel them from the country. One is the case of Elvira Benitez Suarez. This mother from Sheboygan Falls with no criminal record was nabbed by ICE when she and her husband mistakenly crossed into Canada near Niagara Falls. Although a judge has found she qualifies for a green card and ordered her released, ICE subsequently appealed and later took her back into custody, far away from her family in a detention center in Kentucky. ICE asserts that Benitez has no right to be released on bond, but a new ruling from the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals that bond hearings are required, may lead to her release. Although a federal judge in Kentucky appears to be slow walking her habeas petition, her attorneys are rushing to take advantage of that new ruling according to Wisconsin Watch.

Similarly, a popular Mexican restaurant owner in Madison was arrested by ICE last January 23. Although he has a green card, ICE wants to deport him for a twenty year old conviction for cocaine possession with intent to distribute for which he received a sentence of three years probation. Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers granted him a pardon, to eliminate the conviction as a grounds for removal, and he was released from detention. DHS, however, has vowed to appeal and return him to detention.

Why does ICE seek to have so many persons in detention rather than at home with families while their immigration cases play out? Simply put, immigration detention induces people to give up their rights to remain in the country at much higher rates. The Washington Post found that detained immigrants are electing voluntary departure today at seven times the rate which existed during the Biden administration, and most of those choices are made by people being held in immigrant detention centers nationwide, often under severe conditions.

Upcoming Events:

* On Wednesday, May 13, at 5:30pm, join Seattle International Foundation for an evening with an independent journalist covering El Salvador and the use of Salvadoran prisons to detain people deported by ICE—without trial, without rights, without accountability. Location: Puddlers Hall, 2461 S. Saint Clair St., Bay View, Milwaukee. Register here.

* On Thursday, May 14, at 6 p.m., the ACLU of Wisconsin will host an educational training webinar on how to exercise your right to protest. As First Amendment Rights are under attack, it is important for us to know what our constitutional rights entail, so that we are able to exercise those rights, especially when it comes to the right to protest the actions of our government. Sign up here.

 * On Friday, May 15, Representative Delia C. Ramirez (IL-03) will host “Deputized for Disaster: The Trump Administration’s Dangerous Use of Local Police to Fuel Deportations and Chaos in American Communities,” a Congressional shadow hearing on how the Trump administration is turning state and local police into a deportation force through the 287(g) program. Friday, May 15 from 7:30-9:30 a.m. CDT. The hearing will be livestreamed here: https://x.com/repdeliaramirez

If you have an event you would like me to include in Wisconsin Immigration Focus, send the relevant information to focus@wi-immigration.com.

Featured Resource:

Maybe this isn’t a “resource,” but if you want to know if your local Sheriff has signed a 287(g) agreement, ICE keeps a list of them here. The list is updated almost daily, so new agreements show up quickly.

Large solidarity rallies in Milwaukee and Madison

May 1 each year is International Workers Day, a day which commemorates the Haymarket Affair in Chicago, a violent clash between police and workers. For the past 20 years, it has also been a day of advocacy for the rights and dignity of immigrants in the US, and in Wisconsin this effort has gone under the name “A Day Without Immigrants.”

The two largest marches and solidarity events in the state took place in Milwaukee and Madison, sponsored by Voces de la Frontera and a broad coalition of labor, progressive, and faith-based organizations.

Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces, explicitly linked the immigrant and labor themes of the day:

[W]e’re not going to be divided as working people, and that we stand in solidarity and we’re calling for an end to the abuse. And for resources not to go to persecution of immigrants and separation of families, or to make billionaires wealthier, but to go to working people.

Demonstrators held signs calling to “Defund ICE”, “End 287(g)”, “Immigrants are Welcome Here”, and “ICE Out” and a variety of more colorful epithets. There were also signs for worker rights and protesting a range of Trump administration policies. These coincided with other protests across the nation highlighting “Workers Not Billionaires.”

This being an election year, a few of the candidates for governor chose to use May 1 to speak about immigration enforcement.

Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany, was active on social media on May 1, tweeting on X: “As governor I will ban sanctuary cities” and he blasted Madison and Sun Prairie school districts for cancelling classes in light of the number of teachers who planned to participate in May Day events.

In contrast, State Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), who is running in the Democratic primary for governor said at the Madison rally:

The beautiful immigrant community, our community, we make this state stronger. I cannot imagine the depth of moral rot and dysfunction that would move a federal agency to abduct or disappear our neighbors without a sense of shame or an admittance of wrongdoing… ICE is truly a cruel enforcer of fascism.

In general, however, I found few statements from the Democratic candidates from governor on May 1, although, as we will explore in a future newsletter, most candidates have expressed some positions on how to react to immigration enforcement in the state.

News coverage of the May Day rallies:

• Wisconsinites rally for immigrant rights on the 20th anniversary of ‘La Gran Marcha’ (WUWM)

• Protesters in Madison march in solidarity with immigrants during May Day actions (Wis. Examiner)

• May Day Protestors Denounce ICE, Trump (Urban Milwaukee)

• Gallery: Immigrant rights rally in Madison responds to escalating attacks, due process violations (Isthmus)

• May Day march in Milwaukee unites immigrants, workers against Trump policies (Wis. Examiner)

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Collateral v. Targeted Immigration Enforcement

An article in Wisconsin Examiner on May 4 titled Immigration street sweeps led to more ‘collateral’ arrests of noncriminals analyzes a new classification of “collateral arrests” included in recently disclosed ICE arrest data. As the article explains,

Immigration arrests are usually based on warrants obtained ahead of time, showing either a removal order from immigration court or evidence of a crime or charge that makes the person subject to deportation.

But collateral arrests can result from street sweeps and raids in which a person is singled out for questioning based on appearance or proximity to someone wanted on a warrant. That person could be taken into custody if agents think they may be subject to deportation and also likely to flee if released.

In other words, when ICE has a warrant (administrative or judicial) they are looking for a specific person to detain who is named in the warrant. Usually this is someone who (a) has already been ordered removed from the country and has not departed, or (b) someone with a prior criminal record who either has no legal status or has some kind of status short of citizenship.

The article’s analysis of ICE data from August 2025 through the first week of March 2026 determined that roughly a quarter of all arrests nationwide during that period were classified by ICE as “collateral,” but there was wide variation from state to state in those percentages. Wisconsin’s neighbors Illinois and Minnesota had higher than average rates of collateral arrests at 40% and 30% respectively, while more than 50% of arrests in the District of Columbia were collateral. The higher rates of collateral arrests generally coincided with areas like Chicago, Minneapolis and DC which have experienced ICE enforcement surges. In such surges we see masked, anonymous ICE agents making arrests, not based on warrants in their possession, but based on ethnicity, language, job or appearance.

Wisconsin has not had a similar enforcement surge, and hence the percentage of collateral arrests in Wisconsin was below 10% from August through March. The vast majority of the immigration arrests to date in Wisconsin have been targeted, with a large percentage taking place at jails and prisons. The practical takeaway of this data is to highlight that persons in Wisconsin at highest risk have always been those with a prior criminal record, no matter how minor, and those persons with an outstanding removal order. Such persons should make sure they have in place a plan for the possibility of ICE showing up at any moment and a possible rapid removal from the country.

Featured Resource

Steps to Take to Prepare Your Family This is a thorough collection of information from Informed Immigrant about how to develop a plan for the possibility of deportation.

Photo credit: Joe Brusky / Voces

A team of Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel immigration beat reporters surveyed county sheriffs across the State of Wisconsin about their policies for dealing with ICE. The resulting story is headlined Some Wisconsin sheriffs are deepening ICE ties. Others are pulling back. This was a follow-on report to a similar survey the paper conducted a year ago.

In general, across Wisconsin there appears to be less cooperation with ICE than a year ago, at least on paper. However, policies vary widely, as found by the survey, from sheriffs like Marathon County who entered into greater cooperation by signing a 287(g) partnership agreement with ICE, to Milwaukee County which prohibits cooperation in the absence of a judicially signed warrant.

One significant change from a year ago was a large increase in the number of sheriff departments which now say they do not honor ICE detainers. Detainers are voluntary requests from ICE that a jail continue to hold an immigrant for up to 48 hours after they should have been released under state law. There has been increased attention to this issue since the ACLU of Wisconsin sued five sheriffs across the State, asking courts to declare that honoring an ICE detainer is an illegal practice in Wisconsin. Now 48 sheriffs tell the Journal-Sentinel that they do not hold persons on ICE detainers.

The new report includes access to copies of those policies or survey answers provided by the sheriffs.

In a separate story, the reporters describe discovering that several sheriffs were using outdated policies obtained from a private company named Lexipol. The outdated language, which contravenes established law, would allow deputies to detain people for whom they have “reasonable suspicion” entered the country illegally, including those who aren’t in custody or part of a criminal investigation. After the paper pointed out the issue, three of the sheriffs quickly updated their policies. The 2018 ACLU of Wisconsin report, Fixing Wisconsin Sheriff Policies on Immigration Enforcement, outlines a number of additional criticisms of Lexipol standard language in use around the state.

May 1 — A Day Without Immigrants

Friday May 1 is the annual day of action for immigrant rights in Wisconsin. “Day Without Immigrants” (May Day) rallies and marches are occurring in Milwaukee and Madison. These events are primarily organized by Voces de la Frontera and focus on labor and immigrant rights.

Milwaukee

• 10:00 AM: Rally begins at the Voces de la Frontera offices (733 W. Historic Mitchell St.).

• 11:00 AM: Mass march departs toward the Federal Building (517 E. Wisconsin Ave.).

• 12:00 PM: Main program and speakers at the Federal Building.

Madison

• 12:00 PM: Gathering and rally at Library Mall (715 State St.).

• 1:00 PM: Mass march toward the Wisconsin State Capitol (State Street side).

• 2:00 PM: Main program begins outdoors at the top of State Street on the Capitol steps.

In Madison, the school district canceled school May 1, after teaching staff signaled mass absence for the May Day protests.

Solo el pueblo salva el pueblo. “Only the people save the people” reflected Michael Mace about the Day Without Immigrants movement in an Opinion piece by in the Journal-Sentinel.

Additionally, UpNorth News has this listing of additional protests around the state for May 1, with the theme of “Workers Over Billionaires”, in celebration of International Workers Day, and where advocating for the rights of immigrant workers is sure to be part of the message.

The new ICE operations space in Milwaukee
For years, the primary ICE office in Wisconsin has been located at 310 East Knapp Street, in Milwaukee. Among other roles, this downtown location serves as a check-in center for individuals under ICE supervision. From January 2025 through March 2026, more than 140 individuals were taken into ICE custody at the Knapp St. office and detained according to data from the Deportation Data Project.

It has been widely reported that ICE is opening a new facility in Milwaukee at 11925 W. Lake Park Drive. On March 19, the Journal-Sentinel wrote that the new ICE facility appeared to be complete, with black SUVs parked outside. On April 22, the paper reported that ICE will pay annual rent of $880,000, but operations did not appear to have started yet at the location.

The current Knapp Street location in downtown is leased from the Milwaukee School of Engineering which bought the building in 2023. Last week MSOE students protested the ongoing lease to ICE outside the inauguration of the new president of the school. For its part, MSOE claims it is powerless to terminate the lease and evict ICE because of laws in favor of the federal government.

Other news

• Baldwin Says Republican Budget Leaves DHS Agents Without Guardrails (WPR)

• Milwaukee students rally for safe schools and defunding ICE (WISN12)

• Wisconsin Watch launches immigration court data tracker (Wis. Watch)

• Immigrant advocates help refugees with work authorization confusion, fear of detention (WUWM)

This Week’s Featured Resource

The National Immigrant Law Center is a website everyone should bookmark for useful know your rights information and immigration alerts. An example is their Community Alert: Immigration Arrests at Airports which describes how ICE and TSA are sharing data and collaborating as ICE makes an increasing number of arrests at airports around the country.

Today the Milwaukee Common Council passed provisions aiming to prevent ICE agents from coming into the City masked and anonymous. The new ordinance is part of the “ICE Out” package proposed by City lawmakers. This ordinance prohibits law enforcement officers from wearing face coverings while interacting with the public in the performance of their duties, subject to limited exceptions. It also requires officers acting in an official capacity to display identifying information on their uniforms or, upon request, verbally provide their agency affiliation and last name, badge number, or identification number. Violations are punishable by a forfeiture of $5,000 to $10,000. The City is also prohibiting ICE from staging operations on City owned property without getting a permit first.

These measures were prompted by the ICE surges in Chicago and Minneapolis, where masked, anonymous ICE agents terrorized local communities as they looked for immigrants to detain and deport. Since the conclusion of the Minneapolis surge, there has not been a comparable surge in other cities in the country. That pause has given Milwaukee and other communities around the state time to prepare and consider how they will react if ICE comes storming into their town.

ICE List of “Worst of The Worst” is Simply Propaganda

The Trump administration regularly claims that it is deporting the “worst of the worst” in its mass deportation efforts. In fact, ICE even publishes a webpage with a state-by-state listing of the “Worst of the Worst.” The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel took a look at that list and found just how misleading it is, in a story headlined Who are ICE’s ‘worst of the worst’ in Wisconsin? Most were already in prison.

The craziest story is the story of Miguel Angel Rogel-Anchundia, an Ecuadorian who was captured by US forces on a drug-running boat in the Pacific Ocean in international waters. (This was in 2018 before the Trump administration started blowing up drug boats from the air in violation of international law). He was convicted in federal court in Tampa and then eventually sent to the federal prison in Oxford, Wisconsin. ICE apparently took custody of him at the prison, along with three other Ecuadoran convicted drug smugglers, but now lists all of them as Wisconsin ICE arrests of the “worst of the worst.”

The Journal-Sentinel found that of the 272 persons in the list from Wisconsin, “the majority were already serving prison time, often for convictions handed down long before the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.” In other words, ICE was picking people up from state and federal prisons to deport, but attempting to claim that it was removing dangerous immigrants roaming local communities.

Another example from the article: “[F]ormer professional Colombian soccer player Jhon Viafara Mina, who was extradited to the U.S. for conspiring to traffic cocaine into the U.S., prosecuted in Texas and sentenced in 2021. His only connection to Wisconsin is that he served time at the Oxford.”

According to the paper’s study, 100 of the 272 “worst of the worst” were listed as being picked up in Oxford, Wisconsin. ICE does not disclose that these were persons serving time in a federal prison, or that the crimes they committed may not have happened in Wisconsin, or even in the United States.

While admittedly many of the crimes on the list are serious, others are low-level offenses like retail theft and illegal re-entry into the US. The Journal-Sentinel reported that only 18% of the persons on the Wisconsin list were convicted of violent crimes.

In another piece this week, titled ICE arrests of people without convictions grows sixfold in Wisconsin, the Journal-Sentinel used ICE arrest data from the Deportation Data Project, to show that, contrary to the “worst of the worst” narrative, the category of arrests which has grown fastest is the arrest of persons who have not been convicted of crimes.

Shame on Air Wisconsin

According to a report from the ICE Flight Monitor at Human Rights First, Air Wisconsin currently provides the most planes for ICE to transport immigrants as part of Trump’s deportation machine.

Featured Resource
The ACLU of Wisconsin has a set of immigration Know Your Rights materials for a variety of situations when persons are confronted by ICE agents. Scenarios include ICE showing up at your home or place of work, pulling over your car, or appearing at a place of worship. Your rights when detained by ICE are also outlined.

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There are five county sheriffs in Wisconsin who rent out space in their jails to ICE in support of immigration enforcement. The sheriffs of Dodge, Waukesha, Sauk, Douglas and Brown counties are in the jail rental business to improve their bottom lines. With ICE and the federal government on a nationwide search for more space to hold immigrants who have been arrested in mass deportation effort, the Sheriffs in these counties have offered out beds in their respective jails.

Dodge has long been the primary ICE detention facility in Wisconsin, while the others hold far fewer persons. The following data is from DetentionReports.com which provides a very usable tool to look at available ICE detention data.

Dodge:
Average number being held for ICE: 112
Average length of stay: 24

Douglas:
Average number being held for ICE: 28
Average length of stay: 37 days

Sauk:
Average number being held for ICE: 10
Average length of stay: 19 days

Waukesha:
Average number being held for ICE: 1
Average length of stay: 2 days

Although the Brown County Sheriff has a contract with ICE and held persons for ICE at points during 2025, Brown County does not show up in current ICE detention statistics.

The Sauk and Douglas county jails only began to hold significant number of detainees for ICE with the start of the second Trump administration in 2025. Their explanations for doing so have focused on bringing in revenue to support their budgets.

The Sauk County Sheriff put up a statement on his website to offer this explanation for being involved in the immigration detention business:

As Sheriff, I do not make any decisions on the apprehension of the detainees (absent some other crime having been committed) or deportation of these detainees. I merely provide food and shelter until a determination is made by federal authorities.

There have been protests in Superior regarding the Douglas County contract with ICE. According to the Duluth Monitor, the jail was paid $285,000 in 2025 to hold immigrants for ICE. The Douglas County Sheriff asserted he did not want the ICE contract, but that the County Board’s budget for the jail forces him to find $2 million in revenue outside of county funds. Douglas County signed a contract in February increasing the per diem rate it receives from ICE to $99.

Immigration detention has long been big business for the Dodge County Sheriff’s Department. That department reportedly makes as much as $6 million per year off its contract with the federal government which includes ICE as well as other federal prisoners. In addition to providing jail beds, Dodge County provides transportation services for ICE, including some 246 trips for more than 50,500 miles according to the Sheriff’s 2025 Annual Report.

Under Wisconsin Statutes section 59.54(16), it is the county board which must approve contracts to hold federal prisoners in a county jail. This, of course, gives those same county boards in each of these counties the power to terminate those contracts, and stop their local jails from being part of the federal deportation juggernaut.

Other Wisconsin immigration news

• Wisconsin attorneys partner with federal litigators as deportation cases grow more complex (Milw. Neighborhood News)

• Attorneys for Islamic Society of Milwaukee leader will push for his release from custody (WPR)

• Mobile Fortify: ICE’s Dystopic Facial Recognition App (ACLU-WI)

• Sentencing Date Set in Dugan Case (Urban Milwaukee)

• Advocates embrace Wisconsin law allowing DACA holders to obtain occupational licenses (Wis. Examiner)

Featured Resource of the Week

We Have Rights is a series of powerful and informative videos based on true stories to provide real life action points for what to do when ICE is outside our doors, is in our homes, stops us in our communities, and/or arrests us. A collaboration between the ACLU and Brooklyn Defender Services, these videos are an excellent teaching tool and available in several different languages. You can access the entire series here.

The arrest of Salah Sarsour

On March 30, Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, was arrested by ICE. Sarsour, a Palestinian born in the West Bank, has permanent resident (green card) status in the US and has lived here for thirty -two years with no reported criminal record. He has a US citizen wife and children.

Sarsour found himself surrounded by a dozen ICE agents on the morning of March 30, and was then quickly hustled out of Wisconsin and ultimately to ICE detention in the Clay County Indiana jail.

The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement labelling Sarsour a “terrorist” who had been arrested by Israel during the 1990s, and claimed that he lied on his application for a green card.

But those who know Sarsour are rejecting that characterization according to Isiah Holmes in the Wisconsin Examiner:

“This is a man who came to the United States and kind of lived the American dream,” Othman Atta, executive director of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, told the audience of community members, press, activists, and local elected officials. “And they are trying to tarnish his image. They’re trying to target him.”…

When he was a teenager, Sarsour was arrested and detained by the Israeli police. “He served two years,” said Atta. “Many of you who know him know that his passion for Palestine, his passion for justice, was based on the experience he had and that his family and friends had. He would talk to us many times how for 80 straight days, he was interrogated, and brutalized, and tortured while he was in Israeli military custody.”

There has been an outpouring of support from the Milwaukee community. Other faith leaders in the Milwaukee area, Milwaukee’s mayor and county executive, and members of its Congressional delegation all added their voices to condemn the arrest.

The case represents another attempt by the Trump administration to use immigration enforcement to stifle the free speech rights of critics of the government of Israel and its actions towards Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Prior to his arrest, Sarsour had been subjected to a vigorous attack campaign by allies of the Israeli government, linked to his role on the board of American Muslims for Palestine, including an investigation launched by Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.

In a statement, one member of Sarsour’s legal team declared:

“Salah immigrated to the United States nearly 33 years ago. The U.S. government fully vetted his visa application at that time. It is difficult to believe that DHS’s position now is not rooted in a violation of his First Amendment right to speak about the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank,” said Kathryn Brady, Head of MLFA’s Immigration Litigation Department.

The federal government has targeted numerous immigrants with legal status because of their pro-Palestinian activism centering around the war in Gaza. Mahmoud Khalil was arrested, detained, and faces possible deportation for engaging in campus protests, and Rümeysa Öztürk was detained for writing an op-ed about human rights violations in Gaza.

Sarsour’s attorneys have filed a habeas petition in federal court in Indiana seeking his immediate release. Muslim Legal Fund of America press release

Additional overage of the case:

· Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

· New York Times

· Associated Press

· PBS

New ICE arrest statistics for Wisconsin are released

New statistics from ICE obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests by the Deportation Data Project have been released providing us with greater insights into arrests by ICE in Wisconsin and throughout the country. That data can be downloaded and analyzed at DeportationData.org.

The new data show that from January 2025 through the first week of March 2026, there were 1760 immigration arrests in the state of Wisconsin, or an average of 125 per month. Roughly 1 out of every 5 arrests was of a person who had no criminal record, slightly more than half, 54%, had a prior criminal conviction, but only 1 out of every 5 was a person convicted of what ICE classifies as a “Level 1” or serious felony.

The arrests in Wisconsin include people transferred directly from state and federal prisons and county jails into ICE custody, persons taken into custody at check-ins at the ICE office in Milwaukee, and arrests which occur out in the community.

For a very useful analysis of the data see this graphic analysis by Paul Kiefer at Wisconsin Watch.

Evers vetoes Assembly ICE collaboration bill

Governor Tony Evers vetoed Assembly Bill 24, a Republican-backed measure which would have forced local county sheriffs to collaborate with ICE or else lose a percentage of their state funding. The bill would have overridden the decisions of those local sheriffs who have decided that immigration enforcement is not part of their role and have prioritized community safety concerns over acceding to a politically motivated enforcement surge.

As described in detail in the ACLU of Wisconsin’s reports on the Jail to Deportation Pipeline, the primary way that most persons from Wisconsin end up in removal proceedings is through some contact, however slight, with the criminal justice system. Assembly Bill 24 would have further sped up that pipeline by requiring local jails to conduct investigations of persons’ immigration status in many circumstances, even when it had no connection to the reason someone was in jail. With the governor’s veto of the measure, local sheriffs are free to respond to local community concerns and make the decision not to collaborate with ICE.

Other Wisconsin immigration stories

Federal judge denies Hannah Dugan’s request for new trial (WPR)

Immigration to Wisconsin plunges, yet still fuels nearly half of population growth (Wisconsin Watch)

Trump’s mass deportation plan has broken the quiet of small US towns: ‘We have to take care of each other’ (The Guardian)

A Republican Farmer Relies on Immigrant Work. He Sees His Party Erasing It (New York Times)

Featured Statistic

The Duluth County Jail was paid more than $285,000 to house immigrant detainees for ICE during 2025. (Source: Duluth Monitor).

Immigration News Stories for Wisconsin

• ICE re-arrests Sheboygan Falls mother after judge halted deportation and cleared green card path (Wis. Watch, March 10, 2026) -- Months after an immigration judge canceled her deportation order and cited family hardship in setting her on a path to legal residency, ICE officers arrested Elvira Benitez during a routine check-in in Milwaukee.

• Immigrants fight ICE detention in federal court — and increasingly win (Wisconsin Watch, March 8, 2026) -- Over the past six months, dozens of immigrants held in Wisconsin jails awaiting deportation have challenged their detention in federal court. Judges ruled in their favor in more than half the cases, pushing back on new federal immigration enforcement practices. Wisconsin’s federal courts have not seen comparable volumes of immigration-related habeas corpus petitions, which challenge the legality of a person’s detention, in at least a decade.

• Madison immigration law center expanding as staff steels itself to continue fight against Trump (Wis. Examiner, March 6, 2026) -- Already bursting at the seams, Community Immigration Law Center is working this year to grow its staff from eight lawyers and four paralegals to 10 lawyers and 16 paralegals in an effort to fill the gaping need across Wisconsin for immigration attorneys. The organization has also beefed up its rapid response capabilities, so when a community organization such as Voces de la Frontera hears about an immigration arrest, that person and their family can be quickly connected with an attorney through CILC.

• Here Are Six Stories of Immigrants in Milwaukee (Milwaukee Magazine, March 11, 2026) -- Life as an immigrant in Milwaukee has often held degrees of risk, even for those following the rules. The federal crackdown of the past year has turned up the pressure even further.

• Following ICE Verifiers as they prepare in Milwaukee (CBS58, March 5, 2026) -- Wisconsin continues preparing for the possibility of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to come to our neighborhoods, though it has not been confirmed that they would arrive in force as they did in Minneapolis. One of the ways our community is getting ready is through “ICE Verifiers.”

• Council passes two ‘ICE Out MKE’ items, including resolution calling for ICE abolishment (Milw. Record, March 3, 2026) -- The Milwaukee Common Council approved two items from a previously announced “ICE Out MKE” legislative package. One of the items was a largely symbolic resolution declaring the City’s general opposition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and calling for its abolishment.

• Milwaukee officials try to reassure residents at immigration safety meeting (Milw. Journal-Sentinel, Feb. 26, 2026) -- About 100 people attended the Feb. 25 meeting, where community members peppered police officials with questions around how they would protect residents against ICE agents’ possible misconduct. Would police intervene if excessive force was used or if an agent was damaging private property?

• Walworth Co. officially enters ICE agreement amid ACLU lawsuit (WTMJ, Feb. 26, 2026) -- Walworth County Sheriff’s Office is one of the latest law enforcement agencies in Wisconsin to formally sign a 287(g) agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Walworth County Sheriff Dave Gerber is one of five Wisconsin sheriffs named in the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin on behalf of immigrant rights organization Voces de la Frontera. The ACLU has argued that holding individuals for ICE after they should have been released, a practice known as a detainer, constitutes an illegal “new arrest” under state law. The sheriff’s office said they are entering a 287(g) agreement based on “legal guidance” from their counsel in the lawsuit.

• Chippewa Valley advocates question the sheriff’s account of four people detained by ICE (Wis. Examiner, Feb. 23, 2026) -- The coalition is questioning the level of cooperation between local law enforcement, including the Eau Claire County Sheriff’s Department and the city of Altoona Police Department, with ICE, as well as the narrative offered by Eau Claire County Sheriff Dave Riewestahl about what transpired on Feb.17. Riewestahl said in a press release late Feb. 17 that his office was contacted by ICE agents who said they would be at a construction site in the city of Altoona, near the city of Eau Claire, to arrest a suspect who had allegedly assaulted a law enforcement officer.

• Winnebago County Board declines to take up resolution denouncing ICE action in Minnesota (WPR, Feb. 25, 2026) -- The Winnebago County Board declined to take action on a resolution condemning federal immigration actions in Minneapolis, removing the item from its agenda Tuesday night without debate. The board took a voice vote to remove the issue from the agenda.

• Vulnerable House Republicans have softened on immigration. Derrick Van Orden hasn’t. (Wis. Watch, Feb. 25, 2026) -- Rep. Derrick Van Orden stands out among vulnerable House Republicans: He has not softened his rhetoric on President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement tactics, despite public outcry over the killings of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota.

• ICE disapproval in Wisconsin (Aol.com, Feb. 25, 2026) – From latest Marquette poll of Wisconsinites: when it comes to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the poll found 56% of people disapprove of the agency’s handling of immigration laws while 44% approve. The question had sharp partisan differences, with 87% approval from Republicans and 97% disapproval from Democrats.

• Air Wisconsin Turns to ICE (Wis. Watch, Feb. 20, 2026) – ICE contractor CSI’s acquisition of Air Wisconsin transformed the airline’s flight patterns within a matter of weeks. The airline’s website no longer lists passenger routes, but flight data collected between Jan. 9 and mid-February indicates that the airline has largely ceded its role as a Midwestern regional carrier. Instead, the airline increasingly looks south: Destinations in Louisiana and Texas are deportation hubs which replaced the mid-sized Midwestern airports that were, until recently, the airline’s most frequent destinations.

• In town hit hard by ICE, this ‘abuelita’ tries to keep familie s afloat (Milw. Journal-Sentinel, Feb. 26, 2026) – Denise Flaherty, 72, is a retiree from the corporate world who lives on a farm, speaks no Spanish and doesn’t have a background in social work, law or immigration advocacy. But she is generous, tenacious and unflappable. Fueled by what’s happening in her backyard, she now spends almost every day, all day, driving around Baldwin, trying to keep afloat the immigrant families who remain. Most are too afraid to leave their homes or drive their own cars.

• WI Farmer’s Union calls for immigration reform amid labor uncertainty (Big News Network, March 6, 2026) -- With massive increased immigration enforcement efforts, Wisconsin is grappling with labor ramifications threatening some of the state’s key industries. F armers are continuing to experience significant uncertainty about whether employees will show up for work.

• Changes to federal immigration process stress members of UW-Madison international community (Daily Cardinal, March 4, 2026) -- The University of Wisconsin-Madison and other employers across the United States face new federal guidelines for highly-specialized H-1B international visa sponsorship that prioritize higher-paying positions and, in some cases, require a $100,000 fee, following changes made by the Trump Administration last fall. The new federal requirements join others on a list of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, heightening worries among some international faculty.

Featured Statistic

Since January 2025, immigrants have filed 26,335 habeas petitions in federal courts seeking release from detention, 47 of those cases were filed in Wisconsin’s federal courts. (Source: ProPublica).

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