Mar 20, 2026, 12:02 PM CST
Share
This article is by Recombobulation Area contributing columnist Emily Mills, who was just honored by the Milwaukee Press Club with an award for “Best Single Editorial, Statement of Editorial Position or Opinion” for the column, “How AI is harming Wisconsin’s path to renewable energy.” Find more of Emily’s work here.
A mother in Sheboygan Falls on the path to her green card. A family man, restaurant owner, and green card holder in Madison. A Milwaukee Hmong woman and legal permanent U.S. resident.
These are just a few of the Wisconsinites recently swept up by President Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s sweeping anti-immigrant raids. Our friends, families, and neighbors are dealing with the direct consequences of a campaign of terror by the federal government and enabled by too many local law enforcement agencies.
Ever since Trump took office for his second term, we’ve witnessed the heartbreaking and frankly grotesque escalation of his regime’s anti-immigrant agenda. Lies and misplaced fears have been weaponized to justify full-scale occupations of American cities and the violent kidnapping, detention, and deportation of hundreds of thousands of people. The vast majority of those arrested and deported have no criminal record. Many are in the country legally via the asylum or green card process. Hundreds have been American citizens, including Native Americans. Adults and children alike are being held in huge detention centers and in terrible conditions.
We’ve watched in horror as our neighbors in Minnesota have been terrorized, brutalized, and murdered by ICE agents during the recent surge. Though not facing the same level of attack as our neighbors to the west and south, ICE arrests in Wisconsin have increased dramatically since the beginning of Trump’s second term.
We know definitively now that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been using daily arrest quotas to jack up their numbers, that it uses surveillance tech and databases that almost certainly violate every protection provided by the U.S. Constitution, and that the agency and its supporters have no regard for the law or over 4,000 orders by the courts that they are jailing people illegally.
Part of why ICE continues to lose in court is due to their reliance on using administrative vs. judicial warrants. Judicial warrants must be issued and signed by a judge and allow officers to enter and search your home or private place of business without your consent. Administrative warrants do not, which complicates due process in these arrangements with local law enforcement, which would require a warrant issued by a judge. ICE is authorized to lie to people about what kind of warrant they have and even when they’ve been rebuffed, often the officers force their way in to make arrests anyway. Adding local police to the mix only creates an even more dangerous and legally murky situation for residents while further eroding trust.
Horrifyingly, over a dozen Wisconsin counties and sheriff’s offices are actively cooperating with and profiting from ICE’s campaign to indiscriminately round up and disappear people. There are at least 14 formal agreements between Wisconsin counties and ICE. They vary from “warrant service officer agreements and a jail enforcement model, which gives local law enforcement more power, such as the ability to question people in custody about their immigration status,” according to reporting from WISN. Of those, four counties (Kenosha, Kewaunee, Marathon, and Waukesha) have signed jail enforcement model agreements as well.
At least 11 other counties are also part of the warrant service officer program, including Brown, Calumet, Fond du Lac, Manitowoc, Marquette, Outagamie, Sauk, Sheboygan, Washington, Winnebago and Wood.
According to Wisconsin Watch, “Since January 2025, ICE has transferred at least 108 immigrants from Minnesota to the Douglas County jail in Superior, Wisconsin.”
Meanwhile, the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office has continued to profit from its long-standing 287g agreement with ICE to transport and imprison detainees from Chicago’s horrific Broadview Detention Center. A recent case has led to allegations that, after a U.S. citizen was detained at O’Hare and brought to Broadview, she was then transported without notice to the Dodge County jail and then released in the middle of the night. ICE and the sheriff have denied this happened, despite compelling evidence to the contrary.
The ACLU of Wisconsin is suing to stop these agreements, and rightly so. “Wisconsin has not granted the power to honor the detainers, and that is something Congress left up to individual states,” Tim Muth, an attorney for the ACLU of Wisconsin, said on “UPFRONT.” In other words, we have the right to block cooperation entirely.
A few locations are standing up against the surge. Dane and Milwaukee Counties have ended or barred cooperation with ICE. It’s a start, but it’s not enough. More counties can and must act in the meantime to refuse to enter into these agreements or nullify the ones already in place. No amount of money is enough to erase the moral stain of cooperating with an administration hell-bent on terrorizing its citizenry and people here seeking better lives. We should be seeking to throw every possible handful of sand into the gears of this vicious process.
Republican lawmakers instead introduced a bill that would have forced all state law enforcement agencies to help ICE, at risk of losing state funding. Evers has said he would veto it, but moves like this only emphasize the need to elect a legislative majority and a governor in November who will continue to stand up against the cruelty and excess of the Trump regime.
They hope that by barreling in with shock and awe, by ignoring court orders and shuffling people around the country and in the dark of night, we the people will be too overwhelmed or cowed to stand up and put a stop to their actions.
We’ve seen that they can be opposed, though. Our neighbors in Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other targeted cities are showing us the many ways that everyday people can show up for each other. There are many tools at our disposal. An important one is to support legal efforts to prevent all local cooperation with ICE. Talk to your elected officials. Vote for people who will stand up against the terror, including county sheriffs. Know your rights and help others understand theirs. Let’s make sure we all have the things we need to weather the storm.
Read more from Emily Mills at The Recombobulation Area:
Emily Mills is a longtime freelance writer/reporter based in Madison. They previously served as Editor of Our Lives, Wisconsin’s only LGBTQ+ media outlet, and as an opinion columnist in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. You can currently find Emily’s work at tonemadison.com and at their own newsletter, Grist From the Mills.
Subscribe to The Recombobulation newsletter here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @ therecombobulationarea.
Already subscribe? Get a gift subscription for a friend.
Part of a group who might want to subscribe together? Get a group subscription for 30% off!
