Elvira Benitez Suarez stepped out of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) office in downtown Milwaukee on Monday to cheers from a crowd of supporters — her first time leaving the building without handcuffs.

The 51-year-old Sheboygan Falls woman left U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody last week on bond; her daughter picked her up outside the northern Kentucky detention facility where she had spent the previous two months. 

“I didn’t see daylight for 17 days, so I was very, very heartened and excited that I saw my family,” she said. 

The Monday morning check-in in Milwaukee was her first interaction with immigration authorities since returning to Wisconsin. She arrived with her family, attorney and two members of the Milwaukee Common Council in tow. 

Nearly a dozen other immigrants wove through the crowd to line up behind Benitez for their own check-ins; some picked up contact information from her attorney while they waited to enter the building. 

Benitez’s time in Kentucky was her second stint in ICE custody in the past year. Benitez, who emigrated from Mexico as a teenager and lived without legal status for over three decades, first landed in detention after a wrong turn on a family road trip took her across the Canadian border in July 2025. U.S. immigration authorities arrested her when she reentered the country. Benitez had no prior interactions with law enforcement or the federal immigration court system. 

In her absence, Benitez’s two adult daughters, both U.S.-born, took in their school-age siblings and helped manage their parents’ painting and cleaning business. 

A federal district court judge in Ohio ruled last fall that Benitez is eligible for a green card, citing — among other factors — the hardships her children experienced in her absence. After waiting a month for immigration authorities to complete her background check, Benitez returned to Wisconsin in December, only to be arrested again during a check-in at the Milwaukee DHS office in March while the agency appealed the judge’s ruling. 

“We checked in, everything went fine, and we were actually walking out the door when they stopped us,” recalled her attorney, Marc Christopher. 

After stops in Chicago and Indianapolis, Benitez landed in a cell at the Campbell County Detention Center, a northern Kentucky jail that contracts with ICE to hold immigrants facing deportation proceedings. Benitez recounted finding fellow Wisconsinites in her unit; nearly two dozen other immigrants detained in Wisconsin have passed through Campbell County within the last year.

But a recent decision by an Ohio-based federal appeals court opened a door for Benitez to again return to Wisconsin. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last month that a year-old Trump administration policy requiring detention for most immigrants in deportation proceedings amounts to a violation of due process rights, joining federal appellate courts in New York and Georgia. Appellate courts in Louisiana and Missouri have sided with the Trump administration, and the appellate court based in Chicago remains divided on the issue.

The 6th Circuit holds jurisdiction over Kentucky, and its ruling allowed Benitez to file a bond motion in immigration court — an option once available to most immigrant detainees that largely vanished after the Trump administration introduced its mandatory detention policy last year. An immigration court judge in Memphis granted her bond motion on May 21, setting her bond amount at the minimum allowed under court rules: $1,500.

As a condition of her bond, Benitez will continue checking in at the Milwaukee DHS office.

Benitez’s Monday morning check-in was brief and straightforward. Like other immigrants granted bond, she was directed by immigration officers to download a tracking app that will prompt her to take a photograph of her face once a week to compare against booking photos.

DHS is still appealing last year’s ruling that set Benitez on track to secure legal permanent residency. That appeal, currently in the hands of the federal Board of Immigration Appeals, is still pending. 

“I would never put anything past the Board of Immigration Appeals,” Christopher said during a press conference on Monday, alluding to the board’s recent tendency to side with the Trump administration on immigration court rule changes. Nevertheless, Christopher added that he believes Benitez’s case is strong enough to defy the odds.

Benitez herself is still recovering. “I can’t sleep,” she said, recounting the grim details of her latest stint in custody — fellow detainees whose pregnancies ended in miscarriages, late-night bus trips with erratic drivers and no seat belts, and harassment from nonimmigrant inmates with whom she shared a cell in Kentucky. Benitez noted that she is in contact with the families of several fellow detainees who remain in Kentucky.

Her eldest daughter, Crystal Aguilar, also needs time to bounce back. In her mother’s absence, “my life was on hold,” she said. A return to normality still seems far away, she added.

The post Freed on bond, Sheboygan Falls woman returns to Milwaukee immigration office amid legal limbo appeared first on Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.

Update, May 21, 2026:

An immigration court judge in Tennessee granted a $1,500 bond for Elvira Benitez Suarez on Thursday morning. Benitez will remain in custody at the Campbell County Detention Center during the 30-day window in which the U.S. Department of Homeland Security attorneys can file an appeal.

Thursday’s bond hearing came just over a week after the Ohio-based 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Trump administration’s year-old policy requiring mandatory detention for most immigrants facing removal. Benitez’s attorney, Milwaukee-based Marc Christopher, told Wisconsin Watch that the short turnaround reflected agreement among Benitez’s legal team, a federal district court judge and DHS itself that her case merited speedy consideration.

Original story, May 12, 2026:

A Sheboygan Falls woman is poised to test a new federal ruling reopening the door for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees to seek release on bond. 

An Ohio-based federal appeals court ruled May 11 against the Trump administration policy requiring mandatory detention for most ICE detainees, the latest blow to a rule adopted last summer amid an escalating nationwide immigration enforcement crackdown.  

Detainees “should have a forum to explain that their backgrounds and connections to their communities justify release on bond while they undergo their removal proceedings,” 6th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Eric Clay wrote in the panel’s majority decision. Denying bond hearings, he added, amounts to a violation of their due process rights. 

The court’s ruling sent Wisconsin immigration attorneys scrambling to file bond motions for their clients detained in Ohio, Michigan and Kentucky — all under the 6th Circuit. Among those now able to seek bond: Elvira Benitez Suarez, currently detained at the Campbell County Detention Center in northern Kentucky.

Benitez, 51, has now spent two stints in ICE detention, as Wisconsin Watch has reported. 

She fled an abusive household in Mexico at 15, crossing the border with a younger sibling and settling in the Midwest. Though she remained undocumented for decades, she had no run-ins with law enforcement or immigration authorities until a GPS error on a family road trip through Michigan in July 2025 led her across the Canadian border.

The incident landed her in an Ohio immigration detention facility for six months. In her absence, her two adult daughters — both U.S. citizens — took in their school-age siblings.

A major shift in federal immigration court policy last year left Benitez unable to post bond.

Since 1996, federal law has required immigration authorities to detain — without bond — anyone found crossing the U.S. border without authorization. Prior administrations applied that rule relatively narrowly, meaning immigrants arrested in the interior of the U.S. could often seek a bond hearing in immigration court.

The Trump administration cast that precedent aside in July 2025, when ICE Director Todd Lyons issued a new interpretation subjecting anyone in deportation proceedings to mandatory detention without the possibility of bond. The Board of Immigration Appeals, a panel of judges who set the rules for the federal immigration court system, signed off on the interpretation in September. 

The board has more frequently sided with the Department of Homeland Security than immigrants facing deportation for at least a decade, but the distribution of decisions is more lopsided than ever: The body has favored DHS’s position in more than 90% of decisions issued since President Trump returned to office last year, a recent NPR analysis found.

The rule change triggered an ongoing legal battle over the validity of the Trump administration’s interpretation; more than 400 federal district court judges have ruled against the White House’s position, while roughly 50 have backed the new policy. Judges in Wisconsin’s Western District Court have uniformly ruled against the mandatory detention rule, while those in Wisconsin’s Eastern District are divided.

Federal appellate courts are also split: Aside from the 6th Circuit’s May 11 decision, the New York-based 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and the Georgia-based 11th Circuit Court of Appeals have ruled against the mandatory detention policy, whereas the Louisiana-based 5th Circuit and the Missouri-based 8th Circuit have sided with the Trump administration. 

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Illinois and with jurisdiction over Wisconsin, remains divided.

With bond off the table, thousands of immigrants in ICE custody have turned to a backup option: habeas corpus petitions, filed in federal district courts — administered separately from the federal immigration court system — to challenge their detention.

Federal district courts have received tens of thousands of habeas petitions in the past year, including more than 70 in Wisconsin’s Western and Eastern District Courts combined. 

When a federal district court approves a habeas petition, the court generally orders an immigration court judge to hold a bond hearing.

Benitez’s first habeas petition produced a more unusual victory: Judge Richard Drucker of the Cleveland immigration court, citing the emotional toll on her younger children, canceled her deportation and set her on the path to legal residency, though a delayed background check added more than a month to Benitez’s initial stay in a detention facility.

Released in late December, Benitez reunited with her family in Wisconsin while DHS appealed Drucker’s order. She continued attending mandatory check-ins at the agency’s field office in downtown Milwaukee, where ICE agents re-arrested her on March 10. After a stop at an ICE detention facility outside Chicago, the agency transferred Benitez to Campbell County, where nearly two dozen immigrants detained in Wisconsin have spent time within the last year.

Marc Christopher, a Milwaukee immigration attorney who represented Benitez during her first detention, told Wisconsin Watch in March that no statute required DHS to detain her while awaiting the outcome of its appeal. Her arrest, Christopher wrote, served “no legitimate public safety purpose.”

“It separates a mother from her vulnerable U.S. citizen children despite a federal immigration judge already recognizing the extreme hardship her removal would cause them,” he added.

Following the March arrest, an ICE spokesperson told Wisconsin Watch that “being in detention is a choice,” arguing that Benitez could leave custody by agreeing to self-deport.

Benitez’s new Ohio-based attorney filed a habeas petition on her behalf with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky in March. Judge Chad Meredith, a Trump appointee, joined the court’s bench last fall. He has received more than 80 habeas cases involving immigrants in ICE custody since his confirmation, most of which are still active; he has yet to side with an immigrant detainee, but he has denied a half-dozen habeas petitions outright. 

The 6th Circuit’s latest ruling could give Benitez a shorter route out of custody. Christopher filed a bond motion for Benitez “the minute (the ruling) came out,” he told Wisconsin Watch. “Given the unusual circumstances of her case,” Christopher added, he plans to ask Meredith to order a bond hearing on a short turnaround, rather than waiting more than a week. DHS can appeal bond decisions.

Christopher isn’t alone in his haste. Aissa Olivarez, an attorney with the Madison-based Community Immigration Law Center, filed a bond motion for another client held at the Campbell County Detention Center just after the news broke — a first since the Board of Immigration Appeals approved the mandatory detention rule last September. 

“We are now working to identify other people who have reached out in the past,” she added, “to see who might be eligible for bond now.”

Olivarez and other immigration attorneys are still awaiting a decision from the 7th Circuit; the U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion requesting expedited oral argument  on Monday. 

The issue may reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

“It’s up to the justices whether they want to take the case,” Christopher said, “but traditionally on cases involving immigration, cases where there’s been a clear circuit split, and where it affects literally tens of thousands of people, I think it’s going to be near the top of the issues they want to resolve.”

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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. More than a third of the petitions heard in Wisconsin since 2016 were filed in the past six months.

Two forces are driving the influx: the Trump administration’s effort to halt bond for virtually all detainees and its enforcement surge in neighboring Minnesota. 

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Board of Immigration Appeals ruled last September that all unauthorized immigrants in ICE custody are ineligible for bond, meaning they must remain in custody while their case plays out.

The ruling reversed a long-standing practice that previously enabled many immigrants to continue their cases while out on bond. In its wake, habeas petitions became one of few remaining paths to an exit.

Wisconsin’s growing tally of habeas petitions pales in comparison to national figures. Federal district courts nationwide have received more than 24,000 habeas petitions from detained immigrants since January 2025, with numbers surging after the Board of Immigration Appeals decision, overwhelming federal prosecutors tasked with defending the legality of ICE detentions.

Soon after the board’s ruling, the Trump administration targeted Minnesota in its immigration crackdown, deploying thousands of federal agents to patrol the Twin Cities and nearby rural communities. The White House claimed in early February that the campaign resulted in the arrests of more than 4,000 immigrants.

Since January 2025, ICE has transferred at least 108 immigrants from Minnesota to the Douglas County jail in Superior, Wisconsin. The sheriff’s office contracts with ICE for detainee housing, as do three other Wisconsin counties.

At least 15 immigrants held in Douglas County have filed habeas petitions in Wisconsin’s Western District Court since September 2025. Judges have thus far sided with immigrants four times, including two Ecuadorian men arrested in a raid on a construction site in a Minneapolis suburb. Five of the cases remain pending.

Those detained in the Douglas County jail made up two-thirds of the Western District’s immigration-related habeas petitions between September 2025 and February 2026. 

While arrest locations were not available for every case, available data indicates that 60% of immigrants who passed through the Douglas County jail between January and October 2025 were arrested in Minnesota.

The Madison-based court had not previously handled an immigration-related habeas case in over a decade. 

Habeas petitions in the recent past were a “hodgepodge,” said Milwaukee immigration attorney Benjamin Crouse, and were often dismissed or denied by judges in Wisconsin’s Eastern District.

Prior to last September, many habeas petitions challenged the legality of detaining immigrants for months at a time without a clear end date. A Colombian man transferred into ICE custody after a drug arrest in 2014 filed a habeas petition after spending more than 20 months at the Dodge County Detention Facility in Juneau, arguing his detention had stretched beyond reasonable time limits. 

Judge William Griesbach denied the man’s petition in 2016. Griesbach has ruled on 17 habeas petitions in the past decade, granting only one: a 2018 petition filed by a Mexican asylum seeker who spent more than two and a half years in the Kenosha County Detention Center without a bond hearing.

In some cases, Griesbach and other federal judges had no choice but to deny or dismiss habeas petitions: In at least 10 cases filed in Wisconsin’s Eastern District Court since 2016, federal immigration officials deported immigrants before the court could fully consider their petitions. 

Nearly as many immigrants left ICE custody through other routes, including community supervision and asylum, before a judge could rule on their habeas petitions.

Despite the influx of new cases in the Western District, the Eastern District has still heard roughly two-thirds of the immigration-related habeas petitions filed since September. 

Most federal district court judges who have considered habeas petitions since September have ruled against the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision prohibiting bond hearings for detained immigrants. 

Wisconsin’s Eastern District judges are split. Griesbach called the board’s position “persuasive” in December, rejecting a habeas petition filed by a Venezuelan man arrested alongside his wife during a routine check-in at the Department of Homeland Security’s downtown Milwaukee office earlier that year. That man, Diego Ugarte-Arenas, left ICE custody after receiving asylum in January.

Judge Brett Ludwig also sided with the Trump administration’s position on detaining immigrants without bond. Trump appointed Ludwig to the Eastern District bench in 2020; then-President George W. Bush appointed Griesbach to the court in 2002. 

Eastern District judges Byron Conway, a Biden appointee, and Lynn Adelman, a Clinton appointee, have both criticized the board’s ruling. “Courts have nearly universally rejected the conclusion of the Board,” Conway wrote in an October order granting the habeas petition of a Nicaraguan man arrested during an incidental run-in with ICE agents.

Western District judges have uniformly ruled against the Board of Immigration Appeals’ bond decisions.

Keeping cases in courts like Wisconsin’s Western District is a high priority for attorneys representing detained immigrants.

“It’s less about jurisdictions where you’re successful and more about avoiding jurisdictions where it’s more problematic,” said St. Paul immigration attorney Solomon Steen, who has represented two clients detained in the Douglas County jail.

Many of ICE’s largest detention facilities are in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi — states within the jurisdiction of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which last month backed the Board of Immigration Appeals’ bond eligibility decision.

When a client arrested in Minnesota lands in a Wisconsin jail, Steen said, attorneys can find them within “hours or days.” Tracking clients’ locations becomes tougher once they are transferred to larger detention facilities elsewhere, he added.

With thousands of immigrants now bouncing between distant detention centers, Steen said many face pressure to give up on their legal cases. “You won’t know if you’ll be able to contact a lawyer if you get detained,” he said. “So wouldn’t it be easier to just take a voluntary departure or take a removal order in immigration court just so that you will know where you are and what’s happening?” 

Steen and other attorneys are now working to keep clients’ cases in Midwestern courts — and out of the 5th Circuit’s jurisdiction — even when their whereabouts are unclear, preserving their chances of a successful habeas petition.

Even before the Board of Immigration Appeals blocked most detainees from seeking bond, voluntary departures — wherein an immigrant leaves the U.S. to avoid a deportation on their record — increased 21-fold between January and September of last year. 

Meanwhile, an order from a federal district court judge in California has opened the door for many of Wisconsin’s current ICE detainees to request bond for the first time in months. 

Judge Sunshine Sykes of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California initially ruled in November that the Department of Homeland Security’s practice of denying bond hearings to most immigrant detainees ran afoul of federal law. 

DHS didn’t budge, maintaining that the Board of Immigration Appeals’ rulemaking authority takes precedence over a ruling in federal district court. Chief Immigration Court Judge Teresa Riley, a Department of Justice employee, later directed judges in immigration courts nationwide to continue denying detained immigrants’ requests for bond hearings. 

Sykes doubled down last week, rebuking DHS for ignoring her earlier order. 

“It is not the executive department’s province and duty to say what the law is,” she wrote. 

Sykes vacated Board of Immigration Appeals bond rules in all states outside of the 5th Circuit, which still leaves most immigrants in ICE’s largest detention centers unable to request bond hearings. 

Crouse recently observed one Chicago immigration court judge notify immigrants about Sykes’ latest order.

 “They’re taking this a little more seriously now, but we still don’t know exactly what this looks like,” he said. 
He and other Milwaukee-area immigration attorneys are again filing bond motions for their clients. “We’re getting hearings,” he added.

Aissa Olivarez, an attorney with the Community Immigration Law Center in Madison, confirmed that immigrants detained in Dodge County are receiving notice that they are eligible for bond. So far, she said, there is no indication federal immigration authorities are rushing to move Wisconsin detainees to holding facilities farther south.

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Last week we asked for your questions about immigration enforcement in Wisconsin, particularly as thousands of federal immigration agents patrol Minnesota’s Twin Cities, conducting door-to-door searches for immigrants and clashing daily with protesters and observers.

One reader reached out for information about Wisconsin’s firearms laws, citing the example of armed civilians at anti-ICE protests in Minnesota. The question preceded the Jan. 24 killing of Alex Pretti by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officer in Minneapolis — a shooting that escalated tensions in Minnesota, sparked national protests and reignited questions about unchecked federal power. 

The episode also renewed a national conversation about the implications of exercising Second Amendment rights during protests and interactions with law enforcement. Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse at Minneapolis’ Veterans Affairs hospital, held a concealed carry permit for the handgun he carried that day. Video of the incident shows a CBP officer confiscating the handgun shortly before other agents shot Pretti multiple times, killing him.

Here’s the reader’s question and our answer below:  

I would like to know more about open carry in Wisconsin. I know Wisconsin has more permissive open carry laws compared to Minnesota. But, I know there are some restrictions as to locations as well.

Wisconsin law is, at least on the surface, fairly permissive on the matter of carrying firearms in most public spaces — a practice often referred to as “open carry.” 

“As long as you’re not a prohibited possessor for a firearm and you’re an adult, you are allowed to lawfully open carry a firearm in the state of Wisconsin,” said Milwaukee defense attorney Tom Grieve, a former state prosecutor and Second Amendment commentator.

Those prohibited from possessing a firearm under federal or state law include those with a felony conviction, anyone convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence or anyone subject to a domestic violence protective order. Others prohibited include people found not guilty of a felony by reason of mental illness, those adjudicated incompetent by a court or those with a history of involuntary commitments for mental illness or drug dependence.

Legal permanent residents can lawfully own a firearm, provided they meet other eligibility requirements. Most foreign nationals with nonimmigrant visas, including temporary employment-based visas, cannot own guns. Federal law also bars unauthorized immigrants from owning firearms — a rule that withstood a recent challenge in federal court.

But carrying openly, particularly without a concealed carry license, can be a legal minefield. Carrying a firearm on federal property — including post offices — or on school grounds is a felony, and Wisconsin law sets a 1,000-foot radius around all school properties in which possessing a firearm is generally illegal. In urban areas, Grieve added, “you’re almost always within 1,000 feet of a school.”

The right to carry — either open or concealed — also does not extend to police stations, courthouses or correctional facilities. Private property owners may prohibit guns on their premises and direct anyone violating their rules to leave. “Signs or no signs, if you’re asked to leave, you have to leave,” said Nik Clark, president of the advocacy group Wisconsin Carry, Inc. Private property owners cannot, however, bar people from keeping a gun in their personal vehicle while on their premises.

Concealed carry license holders are allowed to carry within 1,000 feet of a school under state law, but they are not exempt from the law prohibiting firearms on school grounds. Licensees may also carry their guns in bars and taverns, but only if they do not drink alcohol. 

Wisconsin residents over the age of 21 who are permitted to own a firearm can apply for a concealed carry license through the Wisconsin Department of Justice. Applicants must prove they have completed a firearms training course and background check and pay a $40 fee to obtain their first license, which remains valid for five years. 

State law generally prohibited Wisconsinites from carrying concealed firearms until 2011, when then-Gov. Scott Walker signed into law broad concealed carry rights that extend to most public spaces, including the state Capitol. 

The state issued or renewed more than 67,000 concealed carry licenses in 2024. Bryan Voss, a Milwaukee-area firearms instructor and member of the Wisconsin Libertarian Party, said the demographics of concealed carry license applicants are shifting. 

“I’ve heard that Black women are the most rapidly growing population of gun owners,” he said, “and the makeup of the classes does seem to support that.”

Most states either honor Wisconsin concealed carry licenses or do not require a license to carry a concealed firearm. Neighboring Illinois and Minnesota do not honor Wisconsin licenses, nor do 12 other states and the District of Columbia.

A growing number of states, including Illinois, prohibit openly carrying “long guns” — meaning rifles and shotguns — at protests. Those rules aim to prevent armed confrontations between protesters, counterprotesters and law enforcement, said University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor John Gross. “What (law enforcement) don’t want,” he said, “is a situation where you have two armed groups facing off against one another with the police in between them.”

But Wisconsin law generally allows both open and licensed concealed carry at political demonstrations. A few demonstrators carried rifles outside the Wisconsin State Capitol during a massive protest against COVID-19 restrictions in 2020, for instance. 

Minnesota also allows concealed carry permit holders to bring firearms to political demonstrations. 

Family members have confirmed that Pretti held a concealed carry permit for the handgun that a CBP agent confiscated moments before the shooting. Minnesota laws allow concealed carry permit holders to openly carry their firearms, although videos show Pretti had his handgun holstered and was holding a phone camera.

Wisconsin attorneys and gun rights advocates argue gun owners considering openly carrying their firearms at protests should think carefully about their decision.

“We have a right to our own self-defense, and the defense of our family and of our communities,” Voss said. “(But) I usually advise people against open carry. I find that there are very few situations in which that makes anyone feel better or really does you any good. Worst case scenario, it makes you the target.”

“When you are open carrying a firearm people generally think, ‘Oh, this is a great way to deter someone,’” Grieve said. “It might (be), or they’re just going to make sure the first thing they do is grab your firearm.”

Clark broadly cautioned against bringing firearms to protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

“I would encourage anyone who wants to go ‘demonstrate’ armed to keep a safe distance from law enforcement,” he wrote in an email. “Wave your flag, say what you want to say, but don’t get in close contact with law enforcement. I would advise anyone not to try to interfere with law enforcement at all. But if you do interfere with law enforcement, doing so armed is presenting yourself as a deadly threat and that is dangerous for both law enforcement and agitators.”

Still, Grieve said, carrying a firearm in the presence of law enforcement is not intrinsically grounds for officers to react with deadly force, as some Trump administration officials suggested in the immediate aftermath of Pretti’s killing. 

“If that’s the case, then game wardens in the United States would be slaughtering tens of thousands of Americans every year,” he said, “because those are law enforcement officials who, by their very nature, are dealing with armed Americans on a daily and hourly basis.”

Voss challenged the White House’s initial efforts to blame Pretti’s death on his decision to carry a firearm. In his view, none of Pretti’s actions captured on video justified the shooting. “At what point did (Pretti) do something that invited an immediate execution?” he asked.

Gross shares a similar view of the shooting. “He was a lawful gun owner legally carrying his firearm in a public space, and any arguments from the Department of Homeland Security or the FBI or other members of federal law enforcement that his possession of that weapon by itself indicates some intent to harm federal law enforcement (are) completely ridiculous.”

He was referring to comments from FBI Director Kash Patel and then-Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino questioning Pretti’s reasons for carrying a firearm on Jan. 24. Bovino has since been removed from his role.

“If that were true, it would eviscerate the Second Amendment right to possess a firearm,” Gross added. “It would essentially be saying, ‘If federal agents believe you have a gun, and you potentially could use that firearm against them, then they have the authority to disarm you or even use deadly force against you to protect themselves.’”

If you are considering carrying a firearm in Wisconsin either openly or concealed, consult with the Wisconsin Department of Justice and, if possible, an attorney to learn more about how to legally and safely exercise your Second Amendment rights, Grieve said. 

Wisconsinites may remember another incident that placed the intersection of firearms rights and protests in national headlines: In August 2020, then-17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse of Illinois shot and killed two men in separate confrontations while patrolling Kenosha as part of an informal volunteer militia amid civil unrest following the shooting of Jacob Blake by a Kenosha police officer. Rittenhouse later stood trial for homicide and reckless endangerment, among other charges. A Kenosha County jury acquitted Rittenhouse in 2021.

Rittenhouse has since become a gun rights advocate, and the shooting of Pretti prompted some national pundits to compare his exercise of Second Amendment rights to Pretti’s. Rittenhouse himself weighed in on Monday via Twitter. “Carry everywhere,” he wrote. “It is your right.”

The post Guns and protests: What are Wisconsin’s laws on open and concealed carry? appeared first on Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.

Editor’s note: This story, published in September, has been updated.

As fears grow over immigration enforcement, some community members want to better document the activities of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. 

Comité Sin Fronteras, an arm of Voces de la Frontera, is training people to serve as “community verifiers” – who confirm or deny reports of ICE actions and document incidents when they do happen. 

A key element of the project, dubbed, “La Migra Watch,” is to raise awareness about the hotline anyone can use to report possible ICE activity, said Raul Rios, an organizer with Comité. 

“That is how, statewide, we can get involved and get on the ground to help each other,” Rios said. 

Rumors of ICE sightings in Milwaukee in Milwaukee over the past few weeks prompted Voces De La Frontera issued a statement on Sunday.

“We’re asking for your help in stopping the spread of unverified claims, particularly about ICE being spotted in hotels and other locations. Spreading unverified rumors only causes unnecessary anxiety for our community, especially for undocumented immigrants,” it read.

They are asking residents to call 1-800-427-0213 to report ICE sightings.

In this video, Rios explains how the verification process works, and we follow a verifier after a call to the hotline is made. 

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Two of the Trump administration’s largest immigration enforcement operations have unfolded just across Wisconsin’s border. 

In September, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security dispatched hundreds of federal agents to Illinois, citing state “sanctuary policies” that bar local law enforcement from participating in immigration enforcement. In a press release announcing the operation, DHS Assistant Secretary Trisha McLaughlin called Illinois “a safe haven for criminal illegal aliens.” 

Dubbed “Midway Blitz,” the operation dramatically increased the pace of immigration arrests in greater Chicago within its first month-and-a-half. The surge coincided with frequent clashes between federal agents and protesters, who documented incidents in which agents drew firearms while conducting immigration arrests or facing demonstrators. Within a month, the operation resulted in two shootings by federal agents.

DHS withdrew from the operation’s command center at Naval Station Great Lakes by mid-November, as did Texas National Guard members deployed to support immigration enforcement officers. The agency in December shifted its attention to Minnesota, where it launched “Operation Metro Surge.” That operation has already resulted in thousands of arrests, DHS announced Monday. As in Chicago, it has also sparked daily confrontations between activists and immigration officers and led to two shootings, including the Jan. 7 incident in which an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good, a U.S. citizen.

News of the immigration crackdowns in neighboring states has prompted some in Wisconsin to wonder: Might our communities be next?

While the Illinois and Minnesota operations have undoubtedly touched Wisconsin — some immigrants detained in Chicago last fall passed through Milwaukee while in ICE detention, for instance — DHS has yet to devote the same attention to Wisconsin.

Still, Wisconsin Watch has tracked agency arrest and detention records for months, noting a sharp increase in apprehensions beginning shortly after President Trump’s inauguration last January. 

Here are some other storylines we’ve followed: 

• A vast majority of the roughly 1,000 immigrants arrested by ICE in Wisconsin between January and October of last year had prior criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. But arrests in Wisconsin of immigrants with no criminal history were ticking upward. Roughly 17% had no prior criminal convictions or pending charges. Roughly half of those without criminal histories were arrested at DHS’ downtown Milwaukee office, often while checking in on the status of their immigration cases. 
• Immigrants picked up by ICE while awaiting a decision in a criminal case often forfeit their bail. In many cases, Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne said, prosecutors are left in the dark when ICE detains a defendant in their jurisdiction. 
• DHS’s claims about arrestees’ criminal histories do not always match court records. Among the two dozen immigrants arrested in Manitowoc last October — the largest ICE raid in Wisconsin since Trump took office — was Abraham Maldonado Almanza, a dairy worker from Mexico. DHS claimed he had a prior conviction for identity theft, but court records in Wisconsin and Iowa, where Maldonado Almanza lived before moving to Manitowoc, show nothing to corroborate the claim. DHS also claimed that the Manitowoc operation netted a Honduran national charged with sexual assault of a child, but that man, Hilario Moreno Portillo, had been in ICE custody for months at the time of the Manitowoc arrests, court records showed.

Even without enforcement surges like those in Illinois and Minnesota, the Trump administration’s immigration policy overhauls are reshaping Wisconsin. We recently documented the consequences for two immigrant workers in key sectors of the state’s economy: a Mexican engineer at an aluminum foundry in Manitowoc and a Nicaraguan herdsman who lacks legal status while working on a dairy farm near Madison. Their employers, who rely on immigrant labor to expand or maintain their operations, are also feeling the pinch, as will consumers if farmers’ and manufacturers’ hiring woes drive up prices.

You can find more of our immigration coverage here. 

As we continue reporting on the White House’s immigration crackdown, we want to hear from you. What questions would you like us to answer? What are we missing? Where should we look next? 

Email me at pkiefer@wisconsinwatch.org.

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Elvira Benitez of Sheboygan Falls is just one step away from receiving her green card. 

But more than a month after an immigration judge agreed to grant her permanent residence pending a biometric background check, she’s still sitting in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Ohio, where she spent half of 2025. 

On Friday, Dec. 19, Cleveland immigration court Judge Richard Drucker cancelled Elvira Benitez’s removal from the country, her attorney Marc Christopher told Wisconsin Watch. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reserved the right to appeal his ruling within the next 30 days, but Christopher expects she will be able to return to Wisconsin before the end of the year.

The reason she hasn’t returned yet? The Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, told an immigration court judge that a staffing shortage delayed the background check, which requires running her fingerprints through a national registry.

The ongoing immigration crackdown has strained some of the immigration system’s most basic infrastructure, and Benitez is one of many stuck as a result. Many immigration attorneys, including Benitez’s, say increased pressure on the system from mounting arrest numbers and rapidly shifting policies has “exponentially inflamed” many of its long-standing flaws, even as the Trump administration spends billions trying to keep up with its own demands.  

Those flaws have appeared in many forms: defendants in felony cases deported before a judge can issue a verdict, inconsistent application of ever-changing asylum rules and inefficiencies that cost the administration little while dramatically affecting the lives of people like Benitez. 

How has that played out in Wisconsin? Wisconsin Watch has documented the shifting landscape in a range of stories during a chaotic year for immigration policy. 

Accidental Canadian trip triggers arrest

Benitez, 50, fled an abusive home in Michoacán, Mexico, as a teenager, crossing the border with her 8-year-old sister and making her way to the Midwest, said Crystal Aguilar, Benitez’s eldest daughter. She lived without legal status for more than three decades, entering the immigration court system only after her arrest this year.

She landed in ICE custody in July after accidentally crossing the Canadian border due to a GPS mixup during a family road trip in Michigan. In her absence, her two adult daughters – both U.S. citizens – took charge of their school-age siblings and the family’s painting and cleaning business.

“I have four kids of my own,” Aguilar said. “So we’re kind of just all over the place, taking turns.”

Benitez was among more than 25,000 people ICE arrested in July alone, a Wisconsin Watch analysis found. Monthly arrests eclipsed 30,000 by September, including at least 143 in Wisconsin. Relatively few of those detainees have remained in the U.S. More than 65% of those arrested from January through mid-October have already left the U.S., either through deportation or, less frequently, voluntary departure. 

The time between an arrest and a deportation can vary widely. One Mexican man picked up in an October ICE raid in Manitowoc, for instance, was deported within four days of his arrest, while a Nicaraguan asylum seeker arrested in the same operation waited over a month in custody before opting to return to Nicaragua. 

The Trump administration’s “big” bill-turned-law, encompassing most of its policy and spending priorities, took effect just days before Benitez’s arrest. It included a record $178 billion for DHS, including funding for at least 1 million annual removals, additional detention beds and thousands of new ICE officers and federal immigration prosecutors. The bill added or expanded upon nearly two dozen fees for immigrants, asylum seekers and seasonal visa holders, including a $1,600 fee that Benitez paid to cancel her removal from the U.S. 

Wisconsin’s jails at center of crackdown

The additional funding has enabled ICE to contract with a growing number of Wisconsin sheriffs’ offices to secure beds in county jails for its detainees. 

The Dodge County jail in Juneau, for instance, held an average of more than 100 ICE detainees per day in September – the most recent complete month of detention data. 

Other county sheriffs have supported ICE enforcement efforts by honoring agency detainer requests by holding inmates suspected of immigration violations past their scheduled release dates, buying time for ICE agents to take them into custody. The Wisconsin Supreme Court this month agreed to hear a lawsuit challenging the legality of such practices.

While Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, has claimed the administration is prioritizing “the worst first” for deportation, just over 40% of immigrants arrested by ICE nationwide between January and mid-October had prior criminal convictions, and nearly a third had no prior criminal history or pending charges. 

In Wisconsin, however, nearly 60% of immigrants arrested by ICE during that period had at least one prior criminal conviction, while less than 20% had no prior criminal history or pending charges.

Most immigrants with prior convictions or pending charges arrested by ICE in Wisconsin this year have been deported. Roughly half of arrested immigrants with no criminal record — such as Benitez — have not. 

But even the quicker deportations of immigrants facing pending criminal charges pose challenges. When defendants land in ICE custody, their criminal cases generally go on without them, often with no explanation of their absence. 

The immigration crackdown has left Wisconsin courts with loose ends: missing defendants, victims without a chance to testify and thousands of dollars in forfeited bail. For some defendants facing serious prison time, Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne argued that deportation can serve as a “get-out-of-jail-free card.”

Asylum seekers face legal whiplash

Immigrants with no criminal history have often landed in drawn-out legal proceedings complicated by sudden rule changes. 

Reversing decades of precedent, DHS announced in July that most immigrants in ICE custody would be ineligible for bond and instead subject to “mandatory detention.” Benitez, whose arrest nearly coincided with the rollout of the policy, was among the detainees unable to leave custody as a result.

Asylum seekers have faced particularly intense policy whiplash. Among other changes, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Board of Immigration Appeals opened the door in October for immigration courts to more easily toss out asylum cases and instead deport applicants not to their home countries, but to “third countries,” primarily in Latin America and Africa. 

The volume of cases before federal immigration courts — faced with a backlog that has declined only slightly from a peak of 3.7 million cases in 2024 — and the pace of rule changes have led to inconsistent prosecutions. 

In November, DHS prosecutors moved to deport the Nicaraguan asylum seeker arrested in Manitowoc to Honduras. His attorney said he ultimately chose to return to Nicaragua, where he risks retaliation for his involvement in protests against authoritarian President Daniel Ortega, to avoid landing in Honduras, where he spent only a few days on his trek north to the U.S.

But DHS did not suggest third-country deportation when a fellow ICE detainee in Dodge County appeared in court just over a week later. 

Diego Ugarte-Arenas, a 31-year-old asylum seeker from Venezuela, was arrested alongside his wife during a routine check-in at a DHS office in Milwaukee in late October. An immigration court judge in Chicago granted the couple asylum last week, though Ugarte-Arenas will remain in ICE custody while DHS appeals the judge’s ruling. Meanwhile, his wife, Dailin Pacheco-Acosta, just returned to Madison, where the couple has lived since 2021. Pacheco-Acosta spent the past two months in an ICE detention facility in Kentucky, but a federal judge approved her release earlier this month.

“When you move this quickly and have this volume of cases, not every case gets treated the same,” said Ben Crouse, an attorney representing the Venezuelan couple. The inconsistency, Crouse added, reflects the “crazy arbitrariness of the system.” 

Arrest brings opportunity

The peculiarities of federal immigration law turned Benitez’s arrest into an opportunity to secure permanent residency. She had few pathways to legal status as an undocumented immigrant, her attorney Marc Christopher said, but her placement in deportation proceedings brought her before a judge who could cancel her removal and issue her a green card. 

Judge Richard Drucker of the immigration court in Cleveland signaled his intent to do just that on Nov. 6, citing the hardships Benitez’s absence would impose on her U.S.-born children. 

But the long-delayed background check stood in the way.

DHS notified the court on Wednesday that it was finally complete, setting the stage for what may be Benitez’s last hearing by the end of this week. 

The agency did not respond to Wisconsin Watch’s questions about whether staffing shortages were delaying background checks systemwide.

Aguilar says the step forward in her mother’s case does not resolve the systemic problems that have kept her jailed.

“The disorganization surrounding my mom’s detention underscores a broader failure,” she wrote to Wisconsin Watch. “When families cannot get basic information or timelines, it reflects a system that has lost its ability to function responsibly.”

The post Background check delay shows crackdown’s strain on immigration system appeared first on Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has agreed to hear a lawsuit challenging five Wisconsin sheriffs’ practices of holding detainees in their jail for handoffs to ICE.

The ACLU filed the lawsuit in September on behalf of the Milwaukee-based immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera. It names sheriff’s offices in Brown, Kenosha, Marathon, Sauk and Walworth counties as respondents. 

All five sheriffs’ offices honor ICE detainers —  nonbinding requests that a law enforcement agency assist ICE in taking custody of a person suspected of being in the country illegally by holding an inmate in a jail up to 48 hours past the person’s scheduled release. The local law enforcement agency can then pass the detainee directly to ICE officers.

The lawsuit argues that the detainers qualify as an arrest and that state statutes prohibit law enforcement agencies from making arrests based on ICE’s administrative warrants.

While most Wisconsin sheriffs’ offices honor ICE detainers, the lawsuit claims that five named offices received roughly a quarter of all detainers issued to Wisconsin sheriffs’ offices between January and July of this year. 

The sheriff’s offices have differing relationships with ICE. Brown and Sauk counties, for instance, also contract with ICE to hold immigrant detainees in their jails, meaning a person could remain in the same jail after entering ICE custody. Kenosha County has no such contract, but it does participate in a federal grant program that partially reimburses local law enforcement agencies for incarceration costs in exchange for data on undocumented inmates. 

ICE records list more than 130 arrests at county jails in Wisconsin between January and July of this year. Nearly 40% of those arrested were awaiting a ruling in their first criminal case. Only one of those arrests took place in the Milwaukee County House of Corrections. ICE agents have arrested at least four people at the Milwaukee County Courthouse since April.

In its initial petition, Voces de la Frontera urged the Supreme Court to immediately take up the case as a statewide concern. The court’s order, published on Wednesday afternoon, allows the plaintiffs to skip the lower courts entirely.

Liberal justices have a 4-3 majority on the court. At least four unnamed justices voted to immediately accept the case. Justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley, both conservatives, dissented. Justice Brian Hagedorn, who often votes with conservatives, discussed the process in an opinion that did not specify his vote.

“When this court grants review in a case, we almost always let our grant order proceed without comment or dissent,” he wrote, later adding: “Even if some of my colleagues publicly record their dissent, as in this case, that does not necessarily reveal which justices voted for or against the petition in closed conference.”

Voces de la Frontera has 30 days to file a brief in the case. The court has not yet scheduled oral arguments in the case.

None of the five sheriffs’ offices named in the lawsuit immediately responded to requests for comment.

“We are reviewing the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s order and evaluating our next steps in this litigation,” Milwaukee attorney Sam Hall, who is representing all five sheriffs, wrote in an email Wednesday evening. “We are confident, however, that Wisconsin sheriffs who honor ICE detainers do so fully within the bounds of Wisconsin law and the federal legal framework governing immigration enforcement.”

The post Wisconsin Supreme Court to weigh sheriffs’ cooperation with ICE appeared first on Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will move its Milwaukee processing operations from a downtown building owned by the Milwaukee School of Engineering to a site on the Northwest Side, an ICE spokesperson said in an email to NNS.

ICE has been using the university-owned building at 310 E. Knapp St. as a processing center, a presence that has drawn weekly protests from students and community members since June. 

A spokesperson for the General Services Administration, the real estate arm of the federal government, said the GSA “remains focused on supporting this administration’s goal of optimizing the federal footprint, and providing the best workplaces for our federal agencies to meet their mission,” in a statement to NNS.

Demonstrators have been calling on the university to cut ties with the agency.

MSOE officials say the university inherited the federal lease when it purchased the building in 2023 and does not have the legal authority to remove ICE.

Alan Madry, professor emeritus at Marquette University Law School, said there is no question the federal government has eminent domain authority in such situations. 

The federal government has the legal power to take or use property for public purposes even if a private landowner or local government objects.

A ‘phased’ transition

In a statement to NNS, ICE said the transition “will follow a phased approach to ensure a smooth and efficient process,” and that the agency “remains committed to maintaining continuity of operations as the office becomes fully operational.”

Processing centers are typically used to conduct interviews and sometimes hold people for the short term rather than overnight detention. 

The ICE spokesperson did not provide a timeline for the move, but said the new location at 11925 W. Lake Park Drive will operate as a processing center, not a detention facility.

In a statement, Jeremy McGovern, spokesperson for the Milwaukee Department of Neighborhood Services, said the city has no additional inspections scheduled for the Lake Park Drive site and that the certificate of occupancy is already in place. 

Because the federal government is not subject to local zoning and permit requirements, McGovern said, the city cannot determine when the site becomes active and has limited knowledge about the federal timeline.

Protests continue

The university says it intends to use the Knapp Street building for academic purposes once ICE leaves. But Noah Dinan, a sophomore studying software engineering at the school, said the lack of clarity about the move raises troubling possibilities. 

The transition could take years, or ICE could expand its Milwaukee operations rather than relocate, said Dinan, who is a member of the university’s chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America.

The organization has circulated petitions, contacted alumni and joined the weekly Friday protests. 

Dinan also pointed to the financial incentives of leasing to ICE. 

According to the General Services Administration’s September 2025 lease inventory, the federal government is paying the university about $2.1 million per year to occupy the Knapp Street site through April 2028.

Despite the news that ICE has plans to transition from Knapp Street to its new property, Dinan said he and other students plan to continue protesting. 

“Our campaign is one of sanctuary,” Dinan said.

Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

The post ICE plans to leave facility on Milwaukee School of Engineering campus appeared first on Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.

Stacey Murillo Martinez arrived at the Fond du Lac County courthouse in June to pay a $1,500 cash bond for her husband, Miguel Murillo Martinez, as he sat in jail facing drunken driving, bail jumping and firearms charges. 

Scraping the funds together was no small feat. Stacey lives on a fixed income, so Miguel’s boss chipped in. She expected the court to eventually return the $1,500. Bond is meant to serve as collateral to incentivize defendants to show up for their court dates, as she believed Miguel would. 

She did not know U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers would wait inside the Fond du Lac County Jail later that day to take Miguel, an immigrant from Honduras, into their custody. 

Five months later, Miguel still sits in an ICE facility near Terre Haute, Indiana. His detention caused him to miss a court date in September, prompting the Fond du Lac County judge to issue a bench warrant for his arrest. 

“They didn’t tell me, ‘You’re guilty’ or ‘You’re not guilty,’ ” he said, his voice muffled and distorted by the facility’s phone system. 

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Stacey said in early November, referring to the fate of her husband and the bail money – three times the monthly rent for the couple’s double-wide in a Fond du Lac manufactured home park. 

ICE records list more than 130 arrests at county jails in Wisconsin between January and July 2025. Nearly 40% were awaiting a ruling in their first criminal case. Only one of those arrests took place in the Milwaukee County House of Corrections.

ICE agents have arrested at least four people at the Milwaukee County Courthouse since April, including a man facing battery, disorderly conduct and bail-jumping charges in late October. According to his defense attorney, the man’s family had paid his $5,000 bail prior to his arrest by ICE.

While defendants sit in ICE custody, their criminal cases generally continue without them — sometimes with no explanation of their absence to the court. As ICE ramps up its enforcement efforts nationwide, Wisconsin courts are increasingly left with loose ends: defendants without their day in court, victims without a chance to testify and thousands of dollars in forfeited bail paid by family, friends and employers.

“If I get out, I’m going back to my house, and then I have to appear in county court,” Miguel said. 

Miguel is not the only recent example: ICE picked up his nephew, Junior Murillo, at the Fond du Lac County Jail in October as he faced charges for disorderly conduct and domestic abuse.

The Fond du Lac County Jail has transferred 10 people into ICE custody this year, Sheriff Ryan Waldschmidt said. His county is among 15 Wisconsin local governments to have signed agreements with ICE to assist in identifying and apprehending unauthorized immigrants. These are often called 287(g) agreements, referencing the section of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act authorizing the program. 

Fond du Lac is also among the more than two dozen Wisconsin counties participating in the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, through which the Department of Justice partially reimburses incarceration costs for agencies that share data on unauthorized immigrants in their custody. Fond du Lac County received nearly $25,000 through the program in fiscal year 2024, according to Waldschmidt.

Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney said ICE has been “very easy for us to communicate and work with,” and his prosecutors inform judges if a defendant is arrested in the courthouse. Waldschmidt noted that while his office communicates with prosecutors about inmates in county custody with ICE holds, it lacks a written policy requiring them to notify prosecutors of handoffs to ICE. 

Criminal and immigration courts collide

Wisconsin courts do not consistently track whether a defendant has entered ICE custody, but multiple Wisconsin defense attorneys told Wisconsin Watch that immigration authorities frequently arrest defendants shortly after they post bail. 

“The judge will issue a $500 cash bond, somebody in the family will post it before I’m able to tell them, ‘please don’t,’ and the client will get transferred into immigration custody, where they’re really not able to make the appearance in circuit court,” said Kate Drury, a Waupaca-based criminal defense and immigration attorney.

In rare cases, prosecutors work with ICE to extradite defendants from detention centers in other states – or, even rarer, from other countries. Doing so is complicated and expensive, especially for smaller counties.

Toney said his office can’t justify expenses for bringing any out-of-state defendant back to prosecute lower-level cases, such as driving without a license. 

Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne is similarly reluctant to spend thousands to extradite defendants from faraway detention facilities. “If it’s a misdemeanor retail theft (charge), let’s say, and the person is in California, that extradition cost may be $5,000,” he said. “We’re probably not going to spend $5,000 or bring that person back.”

Ozanne’s office did, however, successfully fight for custody of a Honduran woman accused of killing two teenagers while driving drunk on Highway I-90 north of Madison in July. ICE detained Noelia Saray Martinez Avila, 30, after her attorney posted a $250,000 bond to release her from the Dane County jail in August. Martinez Avila is scheduled to appear in Dane County court in December.

Defendants in ICE custody can sometimes appear for Wisconsin court hearings via video call, though some attorneys report struggling to schedule those from immigration detention centers. 

“Jails and private prisons that operate immigration detention facilities aren’t super focused or motivated in helping defendants make their scheduled court appearances,” Drury said.

When a defendant misses a court date, Toney’s office typically requests a bench warrant and moves to schedule a bail forfeiture hearing — regardless of whether ICE detention caused the absence, he said. 

Making exceptions for ICE detainees would mean “treating somebody differently because of their immigration status,” Toney said. Still, attorneys in his office can exercise their own discretion when deciding whether to seek a warrant or bail forfeiture, he added. The prosecutor responsible for Junior Murillo’s case, for instance, did not request that the court forfeit his bail after his ICE arrest.

Ozanne argued against forfeiting defendants’ bail if they miss a court date while in ICE custody. 

“It wasn’t their unwillingness to show up” that prevented them from appearing in court, he said, adding that his office would be willing to return bail money to whomever posted it on the defendant’s behalf.

“The problem is that we don’t necessarily know” whether a person is in custody, Ozanne added. While he, like Toney, has reported no difficulties communicating with ICE, the agency doesn’t proactively inform his office when it arrests immigrants with active cases in Dane County. 

ICE did not respond to emailed questions from Wisconsin Watch.

Mindy Nolan, a Milwaukee-based attorney who specializes in the interaction between criminal cases and immigration status, said judges generally issue warrants for defendants in ICE custody to keep their criminal cases alive if ICE releases them or they return to the country after deportation. 

“Over the years, what I’ve heard from judges is (that) if the person is present in the United States in the future, they could be picked up on the state court warrant,” she said.

Hearings without defendants

Wisconsin law gives courts at least 30 days to decide whether to forfeit a defendant’s bail. 

“The default assumption seems to be that the immigrant could appear and the statute places the burden on the defendant to prove that it was impossible for them to appear,” Drury said. “But how does the defendant meet that burden when they’re being held in immigration custody, transferred all over the country, potentially transferred outside the United States?”

Wisconsin courts have held more than 2,700 bail forfeiture hearings thus far in 2025, though the state’s count does not provide details on the reasons for defendants’ absence. If the defendant misses the hearing, the defendant’s attorney or those who paid the bail can challenge the forfeiture by demonstrating that the absence was unavoidable. 

On a Friday morning in late October, a Racine County judge issued a half-dozen bail forfeiture orders in just minutes. The court had scheduled a translator for most of the cases, and she sat alone at the defense table, occasionally scanning the room in case any defendants slipped in at the last minute.

“The problem is getting someone at the bond forfeiture hearings to assert those arguments on behalf of clients,” Drury said. Public defenders are often stretched thin, and family members may be unaware of upcoming hearings. Court records indicate Miguel Murillo lacks a defense attorney assigned to his case in Fond du Lac, leaving only Stacey to argue against bail forfeiture. 

Such hearings tend to be more substantial when attorneys are present, boosting the likelihood of bail money being returned. 

Miguel Murillo’s case does not involve an alleged victim, meaning forfeited bail would go to Fond du Lac County. Court costs typically exceed the value of forfeited bail, Toney said. 

When cases involve alleged victims, Wisconsin law requires that courts use forfeited bail for victim restitution – even without a conviction.

What’s missing are judicial findings that the defendant is responsible for the alleged actions and caused suffering to the victim, Drury said. 

“Without a conviction, I don’t understand how you maintain that policy and the presumption of innocence, which is such an important constitutional cornerstone of this country.”

Immigration arrests often throw a wrench in the gears of the criminal justice system, Ozanne said. 

“It’s most problematic for us when the person hasn’t gone through their due process,” he said. “We have victims… who don’t really get the benefit of the process or have the ability to communicate with the courts about what they think should happen.”

“In a sense,” he added, “that person has a get-out-of-jail-free card.” 

Months in ICE detention 

Miguel Murillo left Honduras a decade ago, initially settling in Houston. While in Texas, he says he survived a shooting and sought, but never obtained, a U-visa, which provides temporary legal status to victims of certain crimes. 

The shooting prompted him to head north to Wisconsin, where he found construction work and married Stacey, a lifelong Wisconsinite. Court records mark occasional run-ins with law enforcement and misdemeanors over the last five years, culminating in the April 2025 charges that preceded his ICE arrest. 

Stacey, who is receiving treatment for breast cancer, relied on her husband to keep their household afloat. In his absence, she said, “I have to beg, plead, and borrow to get any assistance.” 

“Right now, as I go through this situation… there’s no one to take care of her,” Miguel told Wisconsin Watch. The couple hope that argument will sway a Chicago immigration court judge to release him from ICE custody. The court held its final hearing on his order of removal case in late October, Stacey said, but has yet to issue a ruling.

Junior’s case progressed far more quickly. After his arrest in October, he spent just over a week in ICE custody before immigration authorities put him on a plane to Honduras. 

Miguel, on the other hand, has spent roughly five months in various ICE detention facilities. He was scheduled to appear by video in Fond du Lac County court Thursday morning. He never joined the call. 

“I don’t know what happened,” he wrote to Wisconsin Watch afterwards. “I was waiting and (facility staff) didn’t call me.”

Stacey couldn’t attend the hearing for health reasons, and Miguel has yet to secure an attorney for his Fond du Lac case. Court records do not indicate whether the prosecutor requested forfeiture of his $1,500 bail.

The post Courts left with loose ends when ICE detains criminal defendants appeared first on Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.

Milwaukee immigration attorney Anthony Locke spent the first weekend in November wrapping his head around the latest ground-shaking rule change for asylum cases. His Department of Homeland Security (DHS) counterpart apparently did the same while pushing to deport one of Locke’s clients.

Locke represents a Nicaraguan asylum seeker arrested in a late September ICE operation in Manitowoc. That client was set to appear before an immigration court judge on Nov. 4 in a hearing Locke hoped would move the man closer to securing his right to remain in the U.S. 

But five days earlier, the Board of Immigration Appeals — a powerful, if relatively obscure Department of Justice tribunal that sets rules for immigration courts — had paved the way for courts to more easily toss out asylum cases and instead deport applicants, not to their home country, but to a “third country” they barely know. 

Just before the Nov. 4 hearing, the DHS attorney motioned to dismiss Locke’s client’s case and deport him to Honduras, through which he had only briefly passed on his trek north. Locke now has until early December to argue that his client could face “persecution or torture” in Honduras. 

“Trying to demonstrate that they’re scared of a place they’ve had minimal contact with,” he said, is akin to proving a negative. 

If the judge sides with DHS, the Nicaraguan man will be sent to Honduras without an opportunity to make his case for remaining in the U.S.

“I am, quite frankly, not too hopeful, and I’ve had to be quite honest with my client about that,” Locke said. “This is so sudden, so jarring, and it has such an immense impact.”

The full impact of the appeals board ruling remains to be seen, but it has the potential to affect the cases of thousands of immigrants who entered the asylum process since President Donald Trump’s first administration in 2019 began establishing “safe third country” agreements, starting with Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. 

U.S. law for decades guaranteed anyone physically present in the U.S. the right to seek asylum, but the agreements allowed the U.S. to instead send asylum seekers to third countries to seek legal status there. 

While Joe Biden suspended most third country agreements during his presidency, Trump, upon returning to office in January, revived them as a means to limit asylum applications and facilitate deportations. The list of countries willing to accept the deportees is still growing, though not all have signed formal “safe third country” agreements.

The Board of Immigration Appeals overhauled the process of sending an asylum seeker to a third country. Its ruling allows DHS to send asylum seekers to countries through which they did not pass en route to the U.S. It also requires immigration courts to consider whether asylum seekers can be sent to a third country before hearing their cases for remaining in the U.S., creating the proving-a-negative scenario Locke described. 

The ruling may not impact those who filed for asylum before third country agreements were forged. 

DHS did not respond to Wisconsin Watch’s request for comment.

Locke’s client entered the U.S. in 2022, requesting asylum on the grounds that his protests against Nicaragua’s ruling party made him a target for persecution. The man entered the country through a Biden-era “parole” program that allowed some immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to live and work in the U.S. for two years, Locke said. Roughly a third of new arrivals to Wisconsin who entered the immigration court system since 2020 came from Nicaragua, though not all secured parole. 

The Trump administration ended the parole program earlier this year, claiming that the roughly 500,000 immigrants who entered the country through the program had not been properly vetted and that participants limited opportunities for domestic workers.

Locke’s client landed in the immigration court system in September after his arrest in Manitowoc. He is currently in custody in the Dodge County jail — one of a growing number of local detention facilities in Wisconsin housing ICE detainees. 

One of his fellow detainees, Diego Ugarte-Arenas, faces a similar predicament. The 31-year-old from Venezuela entered the U.S. in 2021 alongside his wife, Dailin Pacheco-Acosta. The couple filed for asylum upon reaching Wisconsin, citing their involvement in opposition to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Pacheco-Acosta found work as a nanny in Madison, and Ugarte-Arenas found a restaurant job. 

ICE last month arrested the couple during a routine check-in at DHS’ field office in downtown Milwaukee, forcing them to argue their asylum case in the immigration court system. Ugarte-Arenas remains in Dodge County, while his wife sits in a county jail in northern Kentucky. Another recent Board of Immigration Appeals decision limits their ability to post bond and continue their case while reunited in Wisconsin. 

The couple appeared in court for the first time on Nov. 12, both via video call. Though separated by hundreds of miles, the cinderblock walls behind them made their settings look almost identical. 

As they waited for their case to reach the top of the queue, the couple watched the court field-test the new rule on third-country deportations as the DHS attorney motioned to send another asylum seeker to an unnamed third country. But when Judge Eva Saltzman called their case, the DHS attorney did not make the same motion.

“When you move this quickly and have this volume of cases, not every case gets treated the same,” said Ben Crouse, an attorney representing the couple. The inconsistency, Crouse said, reflects the “crazy arbitrariness of the system.” 

After scheduling a follow-up hearing, Saltzman allowed the couple to speak to one another for the first time since their arrest. 

“Everything will be OK, you hear me?” Ugarte-Arenas said through tears. 

Saltzman moved on to the next case.

The post ‘So sudden, so jarring’: Immigration ruling streamlines deportations to countries asylum seekers barely know appeared first on Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.

A Venezuelan couple arrested Oct. 23 during a routine check-in at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s downtown Milwaukee office are attempting to continue their asylum cases while detained — one in ICE’s Dodge County detention facility and the other in a Kentucky facility. 

The arrests reflect an apparent shift in ICE’s interpretation of protections for asylum seekers, posing new risks for those waiting for immigration officials to hear their cases.   

Diego Ugarte-Arenas and Dailin Pacheco-Acosta fled Venezuela in 2021, crossing the border at Eagle Pass, Texas, by November of that year and encountering border patrol officers, according to an ICE spokesperson. Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have made the same journey in the last decade, of whom at least 5,000 have settled in Wisconsin. 

Milwaukee immigration attorney Ben Crouse, who took on the couple’s case after they were detained, told Wisconsin Watch that border patrol officers initially provided Ugarte-Arenas and Pacheco-Acosta with notices to appear in immigration court. Critically, those notices didn’t provide a date or time for their future hearing, preventing the immigration court system from opening removal cases against them. 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) at that time routinely issued notices to appear without specifying a hearing date, Crouse said, despite multiple U.S. Supreme Court rulings underscoring that notices must specify a time and date. 

“There was a lag time between the Supreme Court saying they had to have times and dates on the notice to appear and DHS actually communicating with (the Department of) Justice to put things on calendars,” Crouse noted.

The couple then made their way to Wisconsin and filed for asylum, a legal protection from deportation for immigrants fleeing persecution. Their joint application cited their involvement in the political opposition to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro as grounds for asylum, Crouse said.

The paths to asylum in the U.S.

Immigrants can take two paths to claim asylum in the U.S. 

Ugarte-Arenas and Pacheco-Acosta filed for “affirmative” asylum, managed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and generally open only to those without removal cases before an immigration court. Without complete notices to appear, Crouse noted, the couple’s cases had not yet reached the court, opening the door to this pathway.

Immigrants with open removal cases apply for “defensive” asylum with an immigration court judge.

At least 100 immigrants with Wisconsin addresses have entered the defensive asylum process between January 2020 and August of this year, court records show. Most came from Nicaragua, Colombia and Venezuela. Between 2019 and 2024, immigration court judges in Chicago — the court with jurisdiction over most Wisconsin cases — denied roughly 40% of asylum petitions, according to data collected by the nonprofit Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

Under the Biden administration, immigration authorities began correcting incomplete notices to appear, enabling them to move asylum applications from the affirmative process to the defensive process. That swap rarely landed asylum seekers in detention, Crouse said.

Ugarte-Arenas’ and Pacheco-Acosta’s arrests are part of a broader shift in ICE’s attitude toward asylum. Multiple Milwaukee-area immigration attorneys say the agency is now detaining immigrants after terminating their affirmative asylum case. 

An ICE spokesperson did not respond to Wisconsin Watch’s questions about its new approach. 

“ICE does not ‘randomly’ arrest illegal aliens,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “Being in the United States illegal (sic) is a violation of federal law. All aliens who remain in the U.S. without a lawful immigration status may be subject to arrest and removal.”

The couple is now pursuing the defensive asylum process while separated by hundreds of miles. In September, DOJ’s Board of Immigration Appeals, which can set rules for federal immigration courts, ruled that immigrants in ICE custody who entered the country “without inspection” are ineligible for release on bond. The decision mirrors an argument that the Department of Homeland Security has made in immigration courts nationwide since July. 

Navigating the asylum process from ICE detention is logistically difficult, Crouse noted. Scheduling a brief phone call can take days, he said, and attorneys must rely on faraway sheriffs’ offices to ferry paperwork to and from their clients. 

“Tiny little things take days to fix,” he added.

A shifting approach

ICE’s shifting approach to asylum is not limited to affirmative cases.

In recent months, the agency has also begun filing motions to dismiss the immigration court cases of defensive asylum seekers, said Milwaukee immigration attorney Marc Christopher. Once the immigrants’ cases are dismissed, ICE can place them in “expedited removal” proceedings — a fast-moving process that does not require a hearing. 

In some cases, Christopher said, “they dismiss a case in court and ICE is waiting right outside. Or they wait until they come to a check-in and arrest them there.”

ICE agents arrested roughly 75 immigrants at or near its Milwaukee office between January and July of this year, more than at any other Wisconsin site listed in agency arrest records during the period. Most of those arrested at the office, including Ugarte-Arenas and Pacheco-Acosta, had neither a past criminal conviction nor a pending criminal charge.

The Milwaukee office also includes a “holding room” in which an average of six people were detained at a time as of June, according to Vera Institute of Justice data. 

DHS recently extended its lease on the property, which is owned by the Milwaukee School of Engineering, until April 2026, with options to retain the space until 2028. ICE is preparing to open a new office on Milwaukee’s northwest side this fall.

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It’s Friday in Milwaukee, and here are some things we think you should know about. If you would like your event to be considered for this column, please submit your news by clicking here at least two weeks in advance.

1. Fall Wellness and Resource Fair: Saturday, Sept. 20

The Running Rebels Community Organization will host its fall health and wellness fair from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 20 at 225 W. Capitol Drive. There will be free health screenings, cooking demos and workshops. Click here to register. More information here.

2. Cancer in Our DNA: Saturday, Sept. 20

Families Fighting Hereditary Cancer and the Medical College of Wisconsin Cancer Center are partnering to lead a community forum about hereditary cancer. Attendees will learn about early detection, listen to personal stories, receive free genetic consultation and more. The forum is from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 20 at ThriveOn King, 2153 N. Martin Luther King Drive. Registration is required. More information here.

3. Native Plant Sale: Saturday, Sept. 20

The Menomonee Valley Urban Ecology Center will hold its annual native plant sale from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 20 at 3700 W. Pierce St. Shoppers can choose and purchase from a diverse selection of native plants to use as pollinators, enhance stormwater infiltration, use in rain gardens and other purposes.  More information here.

4. Weatherization and Home Upgrade Information Session: Saturday, Sept. 20

If you are a Harambee or Riverwest homeowner, Citizen Action of Wisconsin and Riverworks MKE invite you to an informational session that will teach you how to access $10,000 in grants through the Inflation Reduction Act to make your home more energy efficient and comfortable. The session is from 10:30 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Sept. 20 at Riverworks Development Corp., 526 E. Concordia Ave. Lunch will be provided. More information here. 

5. Milwaukee ICE Verifier Training Series: Saturday, Sept. 20

Voces de la Frontera will host training on how verifiers respond to ICE alerts in the community. As verifiers, you will learn to confirm or deny any ICE activity in the community. The training is from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 20 at 733 W. Mitchell St. Registration is required. More information here. In case you missed it: Video: How ‘community verifiers’ work to inform residents about ICE

Share your news through our Posts From Community portal

The post 5 things to know and do the weekend of Sept. 19 appeared first on Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.

As immigration enforcement increases in the city, some community members want to better document the activities of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.  

Comité Sin Fronteras, an arm of Voces de la Frontera, is training people to serve as “community verifiers” – who confirm or deny reports of ICE actions and document incidents when they do happen. 

A key element of the project, dubbed, “La Migra Watch,” is to raise awareness about the hotline anyone can use to report possible ICE activity, said Raul Rios, an organizer with Comité. 

“That is how, statewide, we can get involved and get on the ground to help each other,” Rios said. 

In this video, Rios explains how the verification process works, and we follow a verifier after a call to the hotline is made. 

The post Video: How ‘community verifiers’ work to inform residents about ICE appeared first on Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.

The federal government has extended its lease on a downtown property used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to federal lease records and the building’s owner. 

The property at 310 E. Knapp St. is owned by the Milwaukee School of Engineering but will remain in use by the federal government through at least April 2026, with options to extend through 2028, said JoEllen Burdue, the college’s senior communications director. 

“We do not have immediate plans for the building and will reevaluate next year when we know whether or not the government wants to extend the lease,” Burdue said.

The lease was originally scheduled to expire in April 2025. 

With a new ICE facility under construction on the city’s Northwest Side, the downtown lease extension raises the possibility that the federal government is expanding local immigration infrastructure or enforcement. This would be consistent with other forms of expansion in immigration enforcement, statewide and nationally. 

“I’m upset and concerned about what this means for my immigrant constituency. For my constituents, period,” said Ald. JoCasta Zamarripa, who represents the 8th District on the South Side.

Immigration infrastructure

The Knapp Street property is used by ICE as a field office for its Enforcement and Removal Operations, according to ICE. 

This includes serving as a check‑in location for individuals under ICE supervision who aren’t in custody and a processing center for individuals with pending immigration cases or removal proceedings.

According to a Vera Institute of Justice analysis, the number of people held at the Knapp Street location has been increasing. 

The Vera Institute is a national nonpartisan nonprofit that does research and advocates for policy concerning incarceration and public safety. 

The most people held by ICE at a given time at that Knapp Street location during the Biden administration was six. On June 3, 22 people were held there – also exceeding the high of 17 during President Donald Trump’s first administration, according to data from Vera Institute. 

The office generally does not detain people overnight but can facilitate transfer to detention centers that do. 

The functions carried out at the Knapp Street office mirror those planned for the Northwest Side facility.

City records show the West Lake Park Drive property will be used to process non-detained people as well as detainees for transport to detention centers.

The records also state that the property will serve as the main southeastern Wisconsin office for immigration officers and staff.

The U.S. General Services Administration, the federal government’s real estate arm, initially projected the new site would open in October. However, a spokesperson said there was no update and did not confirm whether that timeline still stands.

Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, responded to NNS’ requests for comment. 

Rise in immigration enforcement

As local immigration enforcement grows, so does enforcement throughout the state and the rest of the country. 

Nationally, the number of immigrants booked into ICE detention facilities increased in less than a year – from 24,696 in August 2024 to 36,713 in June 2025, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. 

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a nonprofit at Syracuse University that conducts nonpartisan research. 

Not only are more people being detained, but they are being detained for longer, said Jennifer Chacón, the Bruce Tyson Mitchell professor of law at Stanford Law School. 

A July 8 internal memo from ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons instructs agents to detain immigrants for the duration of their removal proceedings, effectively eliminating access to bond hearings. 

Eighty-four of 181 detention facilities exceeded their contractual capacity on at least one day from October 2024 to mid-April 2025, according to a July report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. 

The Dodge County Jail – which ICE uses to detain people apprehended in Milwaukee – is one of the facilities that exceeded its contractual capacity. On its busiest day, it held 139 individuals – four more than its 135-bed limit.   

In addition to Dodge County, Brown and Sauk county jails have also entered into agreements with ICE to house detained immigrants, according to records obtained by the ACLU of Wisconsin. 

ICE’s unprecedented budget

Noelle Smart, a principal research associate at the Vera Institute, notes that it remains unclear whether increased immigration enforcement drives the need for more detention infrastructure or expands to catch up with more infrastructure. 

But, Smart said, with ICE’s unprecedented new budget, the question of which one drives the other becomes less relevant.

Trump’s proposed ICE budget in 2025 was $9.7 billion – a billion more than ICE’s 2024 budget. An additional $29.85 billion was made available through 2029 for enforcement and removal as part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” 

“We know this administration intends to vastly increase the number of people subject to arrests and detention, and we expect to see increases in both given this budget,” Smart said.

Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.  

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