Originally constructed in 1931, the Black Hawk Bridge was demolished due to safety concerns related to the construction of a new crossing between Lansing and rural Crawford County.
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The day after a jury voted to convict Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan on a felony charge, top Wisconsin Republicans called for her to resign, citing the state constitution.
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One proposal would prohibit the use of Medicaid funds to cover the cost of gender-affirming care for patients under age 18. Another would block all Medicaid and Medicare funding from hospitals that provide pediatric gender-affirming care
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WPR Music asked our hosts what they listen to on their off-time. Dr. Jonathan Øverby, host of world music on "The Road to Higher Ground," wrote about his experiences listening to and performing "Goin' Home."
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WPR Music asked our hosts what they listen to on their off-time. Stephanie Elkins, host of "Morning Classics," wrote about her love of listening to and playing folk music.
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Nothing can ruin a holiday get-together like an unexpected and expensive trip to the emergency veterinarian. Dr. Sam Bilko visited "The Larry Meiller Show" to talk about how to keep the holidays merry and bright for us and our canine companions.
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Judge Hannah Dugan leaves court in her federal trial, where she was convicted of a felony for obstructing immigration officers. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
According to the Eastern District of Wisconsin’s Interim U.S. Attorney Brad Schimel, freshly appointed to his position by President Donald Trump, the federal trial of Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan had nothing to do with politics. “There’s not a political aspect to it,” Schimel told reporters after Dugan’s felony conviction on charges she obstructed U.S. immigration agents as they tried to make an arrest inside the Milwaukee courthouse. “We weren’t trying to make an example out of anyone,” Schimel said. “This was necessary to hold Judge Dugan accountable because of the actions she took.”
Schimel didn’t say whether Dugan’s very public arrest and perp walk through the courthouse was also necessary, along with the social media posts by Trump’s FBI director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, crowing about the arrest and sharing photos of Dugan in handcuffs.
There is no doubt that the Dugan case was highly political from the start.
As a coalition of democracy and civic organizations in Wisconsin declared in a statement after the verdict, Dugan’s prosecution threatens the integrity of our justice system and “sends a troubling message about the consequences faced by judges who act to protect due process in their courtrooms.”
But Schimel is right about one thing: Dugan’s trial this week was mainly about “a single day — a single bad day — in a public courthouse.”
That narrow focus helped the prosecution win a conviction in a confusing mixed verdict. The jury found Dugan not guilty of a misdemeanor offense for concealing Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, the defendant she led out a side door while immigration agents waited near the main door of her courtroom to arrest him. At the same time, the jury found Dugan guilty of the more serious charge of obstructing the agents in their effort to make the arrest. The two charges are based on some of the same elements, and Dugan’s defense attorneys are now asking that her conviction be overturned on that basis.
An observer watching the trial from afar with no inside knowledge of the defense strategy might wonder why Dugan’s defense team didn’t enter a guilty plea on the misdemeanor charge and then strongly contest the felony obstruction charge as an outrageous overreach in a heavily politicized prosecution. That might have led to a more favorable mixed verdict, in which the jury found that Dugan was probably guilty of something, but that it did not rise to the level of a felony with a potential penalty of five years in prison.
I’m no expert, but daily reports from the trial this week gave me the strong impression that things weren’t going well for Dugan as long as witnesses and lawyers focused on a blow-by-blow account of the events of April 18. Witness testimony described an agitated Dugan, whose colleague, Judge Kristela Cervera, testified — damagingly — that she was uncomfortable with how Dugan managed the federal agents she was outraged to find hanging around outside her courtroom.
It’s not surprising that the jury agreed with the prosecution that Dugan was not cooperative and that she wanted to get Flores-Ruiz out of her courtroom in a way that made an end-run around the unprecedented meddling of federal immigration enforcement inside the courthouse. Like other judges and courthouse staff, she was upset about the disruption caused by ICE agents stalking people who showed up to court.
But, as Dean Strang, a law professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and a long-time Wisconsin criminal defense lawyer, told me in April just before he joined the defense team and stopped talking about the case to the press, “Whatever you think of the actual conduct the complaint alleges, there is a real question about whether there’s even arguably any federal crime here.”
The government’s behavior was “extraordinarily atypical” for a nonviolent, non-drug charge involving someone who is not a flight risk, Strang added.
The handcuffs, the public arrest at Dugan’s workplace, the media circus — none of it was normal, or justified. When Bondi and Patel began posting pictures of Dugan in handcuffs on social media to brag about it, “what is it they are trying to do?” Strang asked. His conclusion: “Humiliate and terrify, not just her but every other judge in the country.”
The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, Voces de la Frontera, and Common Cause-Wisconsin agree with that assessment, writing in their statement reacting to the conviction that Dugan’s felony conviction threatens the integrity of our justice system as a whole, and undermines the functioning of the courts by scaring away defendants, witnesses and plaintiffs who are afraid they might be arrested if they show up to participate in legal proceedings.
But that big picture perspective was not a major feature of the defense’s closing arguments, which relied heavily on raising reasonable doubt about Dugan’s intentions and her actions during a stressful and chaotic day.
That’s frustrating because, contrary to Schimel’s assertions, the big picture, not the events of “a single bad day” is what was actually at stake in this case.
One of the most distressing aspects of the Dugan trial was the prosecution’s through-the-looking-glass invocation of the rule of law and the integrity of the courts.
The federal agents called to the stand, the prosecutors in the courtroom, and Schimel, in his summary of the case, made a big point about the “safety” of law enforcement officers.
Repeatedly, we heard that immigration agents prefer to make arrests inside courthouses because they provide a “safe” environment in which to operate.
In his comments on the verdict, Schimel emphasized that Dugan jeopardized the safety of federal officers by causing them to arrest Flores-Ruiz on the street instead of inside the courthouse: “The defendant’s actions provided an opportunity for a wanted subject to flee outside of that secure courthouse environment,” Schimel said.
This upside-down view of safety has become a regular MAGA talking point, with Republicans claiming that when citizens demand that masked agents identify themselves or make videos of ICE dragging people out of their cars, they are jeopardizing the safety of law enforcement officers — as opposed to trying to protect their neighbors’ safety in the face of violent attacks by anonymous thugs.
Churches, day care centers and peaceful suburban neighborhoods are also “safe” environments for armed, masked federal agents. But their activities there are making our communities less safe.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Brown Watzka, delivering the prosecution’s closing argument, told the jury it must draw a line against judges interfering with law enforcement, or else “there is only chaos,” and that “chaos is what the rule of law is intended to prevent.”
But chaos is what we have now, with federal agents terrorizing communities, dragging people out of courthouses and private residences, deporting them without due process and punishing those who stand in their way in an attempt to defend civil society.
The real question raised by Dugan’s case is whether we believe the “safety” of the agents making those dubious arrests matters more than the safety of our communities, and whether we want the courts to be able to exercise any check on their exercise of raw power.
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Former President Bill Clinton, rock star Mick Jagger and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are seated at a table in this undated photo released as part of the Epstein files on Friday, Dec. 19, 2025, by the Department of Justice. Clinton has denied any connection to Epstein's alleged crimes. (Photo from Department of Justice)
WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice began releasing thousands of records Friday related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but questions remained over whether officials will meet the requirements of a law overwhelmingly backed by both Republicans and Democrats and signed by President Donald Trump.
The department posted four data sets of images and documents just after 4 p.m. Eastern.
The trove reviewed by States Newsroom reporters contains numerous images of Epstein with celebrities, including the late pop star Michael Jackson, rock legend Mick Jagger, illusionist David Copperfield and former President Bill Clinton. Many other faces in photos are redacted. The photos were released without dates or context.
A reproduction of Epstein’s contact list included entries for Trump, his late former wife, Ivana Trump, and his daughter, Ivanka Trump.
An array of photos of Trump with several women appeared amongst the files, according to a preliminary scan by the New York Times. But the Times also said most of the images already had been made public.
Trump, who is prolific on social media, had not yet commented in the hours after the files were released. During an earlier press conference on prescription drugs Friday, the president declined to take any questions.
Trump had a well documented friendship with Epstein, a hedge fund manager who enjoyed a circle of wealthy and influential friends — though Trump maintains he had a falling out with Epstein and was never involved in any alleged crimes.
Since July, when Justice officials announced no further files would be released, Trump had resisted loud protests, even from his base, that all investigative material in the government’s possession should be made public. Trump repeatedly called the files a “Democrat hoax,” despite the investigation occurring during his first administration.
Files in the first dataset include images of lavishly furnished rooms, including one that appears to have a taxidermied tiger, as well as bathrooms with framed photographs of women whose faces have been redacted.
Photos in the second data set reveal Epstein seated at a table with Jagger, and another of Clinton lying in a hot tub or spa with the top of his chest visible. Another photo was of Clinton with the late pop star Michael Jackson.
Clinton was also photographed with a woman, whose face is redacted, seated on his lap and with his arm around her. In another, Clinton and Epstein stand side by side, smiling at something off camera and dressed in shiny party shirts.
A spokesperson for Clinton posted on social media that the former president was unaware of Epstein’s illegal activities and cut the financier off socially before allegations were public. The spokesperson, Angel Ureña, also redirected attention back to Trump.
“This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever,” he wrote about the Trump White House. “So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be.”
In a Dec. 10 letter from Clinton’s lawyer obtained by the New York Times, the former president denies being connected to any alleged crimes Epstein committed.
Photos in the third dataset document Epstein’s travels to Europe, desert locations and island locales. Most photos of people other than Epstein, his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and Clinton are redacted.
The last dataset also included a completely redacted 119-page grand jury file from New York federal court. Both Epstein and Maxwell were prosecuted in New York, and the Justice Department requested the sealed records be made public.
Maxwell was convicted and sentenced for her role in the scheme to traffic teenage girls for sex.
The fourth trove of files appeared to relate to law enforcement and attorneys’ investigation into potential sex abusers, such as coordinating interviews and crafting timelines. A portion of the documents related to a 2019 grand jury were completely blacked out.
Following the Justice Department’s release Friday afternoon, both Rep. Tom Massie, R-Ky., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who co-sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act, released scathing statements.
“Unfortunately, today’s document release by @AGPamBondi and @DAGToddBlanche grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law that @realDonaldTrump signed just 30 days ago,” Massie posted on X.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News Friday morning the department will “release several hundred thousand documents today, and those documents will come in all different forms, photographs and other materials associated with, with all of the investigations into, into Mr. Epstein.”
But Blanche also said the release will carry over into “the next couple of weeks,” which would be past the Friday deadline set in the law.
The law, unanimously supported by the Senate and approved by the House 427-1, requires the Justice Department to publicly disclose “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in its possession that relate to Epstein or Maxwell.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a statement Friday slamming the department’s admission that it will not meet the law’s deadline. Trump signed the bill into law on Nov. 19.
“The law Congress passed and President Trump signed was clear as can be — the Trump administration had 30 days to release ALL the Epstein files, not just some. Failing to do so is breaking the law. This just shows the Department of Justice, Donald Trump, and Pam Bondi are hellbent on hiding the truth,” Schumer said, alleging a “cover up.”
“Senate Democrats are working closely with attorneys for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and with outside legal experts to assess what documents are being withheld and what is being covered up by Pam Bondi. We will not stop until the whole truth comes out,” the New York Democrat continued.
Schumer later criticized in a separate statement the late afternoon release as “just a fraction of the whole body of evidence.”
House Democrats Robert Garcia, D-Calif., and Jamie Raskin, D-Md., released a joint statement Friday stating they “are now examining all legal options in the face of this violation of federal law.” Garcia and Raskin are, respectively, the ranking members of the House Oversight and Government Reform and Judiciary committees.
Massie, who pushed to bypass Republican leadership to pass the legislation, published a 14-minute video on social media Thursday night regarding how the public should interpret whether the Justice Department follows the statute.
“How will you know if they’ve released all the materials?” Massie said. “Well, one of the ways we’ll know is there are people who covered this case for years, and I’ve talked to them in private, then they know what some of the material is that’s back there.”
The Kentucky Republican said he’s been in contact with victims’ lawyers who claim federal investigators are in possession of names that should be contained in the files.
“If we get a large production on December 19, and it does not contain a single name of any male who’s accused of a sex crime or sex trafficking or rape, or any of these things, then we know they haven’t produced all the documents. It’s that simple,” Massie said.
In a press conference Tuesday led by several Senate Democrats, Schumer said the lawmakers have been “preparing for any scenario” and warned “there will be serious legal and political consequences” if the Trump administration withholds documents required by law to be released.
The brief text of the law does not outline penalties if the deadline is not met.
Types of documents cited in the law include flight logs, plea agreements and immunity deals, and any internal DOJ communications about Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
The law states documents cannot be delayed, redacted or withheld “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.”
Victims’ identities must be redacted, and written justification is required for any information withheld, according to the law.
Carve-outs also exist for any material relating to ongoing investigations.
The department announced new investigations on Nov. 14 into Epstein’s ties to Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and prominent investor Reid Hoffman.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said Nov. 19 during a press conference that “information has come forward, new information, additional information.”
Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform have been releasing a trickle of private files from Epstein’s estate that were handed over in response to a congressional subpoena. Committee Democrats disclosed dozens more images Thursday.
The public disclosure of the digital files, released via a cloud folder without context, follows the committee Democrats’ announcement Dec. 12 that it had received 95,000 more images from Epstein’s estate.
Among those images was a photo of Trump surrounded by women whose faces had been redacted, and an image of apparent packaged condoms with Trump’s face on them and a sign reading “I’m HUUUUGE!” Another image, which featured an apparent “Bill Clinton” autograph, shows the former president posing with Epstein, Maxwell and others.
The latest batch of private records released included photos of Epstein with guests at meals and multiple photos of Epstein talking with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon across a sizable wooden desk in what appears to be an office with antique books and collectibles. Another photo shows Epstein dressed in traditional sheikh-style garments.
A few images of the New York Times’ David Brooks surfaced in the latest batch as well. Epstein is not in the frame with Brooks, an opinion columnist. The Times released a statement to media outlets Thursday that “Mr. Brooks had no contact with (Epstein) before or after this single attendance at a widely-attended dinner” in 2011.
Other images feature former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates standing with a woman whose face has been redacted by the committee, and a solo photo of Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
“Oversight Democrats will continue to release photographs and documents from the Epstein estate to provide transparency for the American people,” Garcia said in a statement Thursday. “As we approach the deadline for the Epstein Files Transparency Act, these new images raise more questions about what exactly the Department of Justice has in its possession. We must end this White House cover-up, and the DOJ must release the Epstein files now.”
Brown University President Christina Paxson speaks to reporters gathered at the Providence Public Safety Complex on Dec. 16, 2025. Gov. Dan McKee, far left, and Providence Mayor Brett Smiley are also pictured. (Photo by Christopher Shea/Rhode Island Current)
WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said late Thursday she was suspending applications for a diversity visa program because the man suspected of killing two Brown University students and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor this week obtained a green card through the program in 2017.
Noem said on social media she was “immediately directing (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”
Local authorities found the suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, dead in a New Hampshire storage unit late Thursday, five days after the shooting at Brown in Providence, Rhode Island, that wounded nine and killed two students.
Two days after the Brown shooting, an MIT professor was found shot in his home and later died at the hospital. Authorities also linked that killing to Neves Valente.
Neves Valente, 48, attended Brown in the early 2000s.
The diversity visa program, also known as DV1, grants up to 50,000 immigrant visas each year under a lottery system that aims to select individuals from countries with low rates of immigration to the U.S.
Most lottery winners reside outside the United States and are processed by the State Department. Lottery winners who are within the U.S. are processed by USCIS.
More than 14 million individuals applied for the program in 2021, the most recent year for which the State Department has data.
Noem said in her post she was acting on behalf of President Donald Trump, who tried to end the diversity visa program in his first term after an individual from Uzbekistan who came through the program carried out an attack in New York City that killed eight people.
It’s the latest effort by the Trump administration to curtail legal immigration after a tragedy.
The administration paused asylum applications after an Afghan national who was granted asylum was charged with killing one National Guard member and wounding another in last month’s shooting in Washington, D.C.
Republican leaders in the state Legislature called Friday for Judge Hannah Dugan to resign or be impeached after a federal jury convicted her this week of a felony charge in connection with an immigration enforcement action in April at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Republican leaders in the Wisconsin Legislature called Friday for Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan to either resign or face impeachment after her conviction Thursday on a federal felony obstruction charge during an immigration enforcement action in the Milwaukee County courthouse in April.
“If Judge Dugan does not resign from her office immediately, the Assembly will begin impeachment proceedings,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August (R-Walworth) said in a joint statement issued Friday. “Wisconsinites deserve to know that their judiciary is impartial and that justice is blind. Judge Hannah Dugan is neither, and her privilege of serving the people of Wisconsin has come to an end.”
They noted that the last time that a Wisconsin judge was impeached was in 1853. Republican lawmakers have also introduced a bill that would withhold pay for suspended judges.
After a four-day trial, a federal court jury convicted Dugan of felony obstruction for allowing a man who was in the country without legal authorization to exit her courtroom using a non-public hallway in April. Prosecutors argued that Dugan was trying to help the man avoid plainclothes federal immigration agents who were waiting in the public hallway outside her court.
Judge Dugan found guilty of felony obstruction in federal trial
The jury found Dugan not guilty on a second charge of concealing the man, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, from federal agents. Dugan was suspended with pay by the Wisconsin Supreme Court after her arrest by FBI agents in April.
In closing arguments, prosecutors cast Dugan as being angry due to the influx of ICE agents in the courthouse and said no one should second-guess law enforcement, including immigration officers. Defense attorneys told jurors that courthouse immigration arrests had created an environment of unease and that the federal government was trying to make an example of Dugan.
No sentencing date has been set for Dugan. Attorney Steven Biskupic, who helped represent Dugan, has said that his team plans to appeal the conviction.
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Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.
Unauthorized immigrants are not eligible for federally or state-funded health coverage in Wisconsin.
That includes Medicaid, Medicare and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and coverage purchased through the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) marketplaces.
Unauthorized immigrants also are not eligible for Wisconsin Medicaid or BadgerCare Plus.
Fourteen states, including Illinois and Minnesota, use state Medicaid funds to cover unauthorized immigrants, but Wisconsin does not.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers on Dec. 5 vetoed a Republican-backed bill that would have banned public money from going toward health care coverage for unauthorized immigrants.
Republicans said the bill was meant to be pre-emptive.
On Dec. 10, Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is running for governor in 2026, incorrectly said Evers’ veto allowed unauthorized immigrants “to continue to get taxpayer-funded health care.”
When Evers vetoed the bill he criticized it for “trying to push polarizing political rhetoric.”
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Did Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers allow unauthorized immigrants to get taxpayer-funded health care? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
For nearly two weeks following Election Day in 2024, former U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde, a Republican, refused to concede, blasting “last-minute absentee ballots that were dropped in Milwaukee at 4 a.m., flipping the outcome.”
But, just as when Donald Trump blamed Milwaukee for his 2020 loss, Hovde’s accusations and insinuations about the city’s election practices coincided with a surge of conspiratorial posts about the city. Popular social media users speculated about “sabotage” and “fraudulently high” turnout.
Hovde earlier this year told Votebeat that he believes there are issues at Milwaukee’s facility for counting absentee ballots, but he added that he doesn’t blame his loss on that. He didn’t respond to a request for comment in December for this article.
In Wisconsin’s polarized political landscape, Milwaukee has become a flashpoint for election suspicion, much like Philadelphia and Detroit — diverse, Democratic urban centers that draw outsized criticism. The scrutiny reflects the state’s deep rural-urban divide and a handful of election errors in Milwaukee that conspiracy theorists have seized on, leaving the city’s voters and officials under constant political pressure.
That treatment, Milwaukee historian John Gurda says, reflects “the general pattern where you have big cities governed by Democrats” automatically perceived by the right “as centers of depravity (and) insane, radical leftists.”
Charlie Sykes — a longtime conservative commentator no longer aligned with much of GOP politics — said there’s “nothing tremendously mysterious” about Republicans singling out Milwaukee: As long as election conspiracy theories dominate the right, the heavily Democratic city will remain a target.
Milwaukee’s emergence as a target in voter fraud narratives accelerated in 2010, when dozens of billboards in the city’s predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods showed three people, including two Black people, behind bars with the warning: “VOTER FRAUD is a FELONY — 3 YRS & $10,000 FINE.”
Community groups condemned them as racist and misleading, especially for people who had regained their voting rights after felony convictions. Similar billboards returned in 2012, swapping the jail bars for a gavel. All of the advertisements were funded by the Einhorn Family Foundation, associated with GOP donor Stephen Einhorn, who didn’t respond to Votebeat’s email requesting comment.
Criticism of Milwaukee extends well beyond its elections. As Wisconsin’s largest city, it is often cast as an outlier in a largely rural state, making it easier for some to believe the worst about its institutions — including its elections.
“One of the undercurrents of Wisconsin political history is … rural parts versus urban parts,” said University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee political scientist and former Democratic legislator Mordecai Lee. As the state’s biggest city by far, “it becomes the punching bag for outstate legislators” on almost any issue.
“People stay at home and watch the evening news and they think if you come to Milwaukee, you’re going to get shot … or you’re going to get run over by a reckless driver,” said Claire Woodall, who ran the city’s elections from 2020 to 2024.
Election officials acknowledge Milwaukee has made avoidable mistakes in high-stakes elections but describe them as quickly remedied and the kinds of errors any large city can experience when processing tens of thousands of ballots. What sets Milwaukee apart is the scrutiny: Whether it was a briefly forgotten USB stick in 2020 or tabulator doors left open in 2024, each lapse is treated as something more ominous.
Other Wisconsin municipalities have made more consequential errors without attracting comparable attention: In 2011, Waukesha County failed to report votes from Brookfield when tallying a statewide court race — a major oversight that put the wrong candidate in the lead in early unofficial results. In 2024, Summit, a town in Douglas County, disqualified all votes in an Assembly race after officials discovered ballots were printed with the wrong contest listed.
“I don’t believe that there is anywhere in the state that is under a microscope the way the city of Milwaukee is,” said Neil Albrecht, a former executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission.
Milwaukee grew quickly in the 19th century, built by waves of European immigrants who powered its factories and breweries and helped turn it into one of the Midwest’s major industrial cities. A small Black community, searching for employment and fleeing the Jim Crow South, took root early and grew substantially in the mid-20th century.
As industry declined, white residents fled for the suburbs, many of which had racist housing policies that excluded Blacks. That left behind a city marked by segregated schools, shrinking job prospects and sharp economic divides. The split was so stark that the Menomonee River Valley became a shorthand boundary: Black residents to the north, white residents to the south — a divide Milwaukee never fully overcame.
The result is one of the most segregated cities in the country, a place that looks and feels profoundly different from the overwhelmingly white, rural communities that surround it. That contrast has long made Milwaukee an easy target in statewide politics, and it continues to feed some people’s suspicions that something about the city — including its elections — is fundamentally untrustworthy.
The Rev. Greg Lewis, executive director of Wisconsin’s Souls to the Polls, said the reputation is rooted in racism and belied by reality. He said he has a hard enough time getting minorities to vote at all, “let alone vote twice.”
Albrecht agreed.
“If a Souls to the Polls bus would pull up to (a polling site), a bus full of Black people, some Republican observer would mutter, ‘Oh, these are the people being brought up from Chicago,’” he said. “As if we don’t have African Americans in Milwaukee.”
After former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes — a Black Milwaukeean and a Democrat — lost his 2022 U.S. Senate bid to unseat U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, Bob Spindell, a Republican member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, emailed constituents saying Republicans “can be especially proud” of Milwaukee casting 37,000 fewer votes than in 2018, “with the major reduction happening in the overwhelming Black and Hispanic areas.”
The message sparked backlash, though Spindell rejected accusations of racism. Asked about it this year, Spindell told Votebeat he meant to praise GOP outreach to Black voters.
Milwaukee organizer Angela Lang said she finds the shifting narratives about Black turnout revealing. “Are we voting (illegally)?” she said. “Or are you all happy that we’re not voting?”
The scrutiny directed at Milwaukee falls on voters and the city employees who run its elections.
Milwaukee’s most serious stumble came in 2004, when a last-minute overhaul of the election office contributed to unprocessed voter registrations, delayed absentee counts and discrepancies in the final tally. Multiple investigations found widespread administrative problems but no fraud.
“It was hard coming in at that low point,” said Albrecht, who joined the commission the following year, saying it gave Milwaukee the reputation as an “election fraud capital.”
In 2008, the city created a centralized absentee ballot count facility to reduce errors at polling places and improve consistency. The change worked as intended, but it also meant Milwaukee’s absentee results — representing tens of thousands of votes — were often reported after midnight, sometimes shifting statewide margins.
That timing is largely a product of state law: Wisconsin is one of the few states that prohibit clerks from processing absentee ballots before Election Day. For years, Milwaukee officials have asked lawmakers to change the rule. Instead, opponents argue the city can’t be trusted with extra processing time — even as they criticize the late-night results all but unavoidable under the current rule.
That dynamic was on full display in 2018, when former Gov. Scott Walker, trailing in his reelection bid, said he was blindsided by Milwaukee’s 47,000 late-arriving absentee ballots and accused the city of incompetence.
Proposals to allow administrators more time to process ballots — and therefore report results sooner — have repeatedly stalled in the Legislature. The most recent passed the Assembly last session but never received a Senate vote, with some Republicans openly questioning why they should give Milwaukee more time when they don’t trust the city to handle the ballots with the time it already has.
“The late-arriving results of absentee ballots processed in the city of Milwaukee benefits all attempts to discredit the city,” Albrecht said.
Without the change, to keep up with other Wisconsin municipalities, Milwaukee must process tens of thousands of absentee ballots in a single day, a herculean task. “The effect of not passing it means this issue can be kept alive,” said Lee, the UW-Milwaukee political scientist.
Some Republicans acknowledge that dynamic outright. Rep. Scott Krug, a GOP lawmaker praised for his pragmatic approach to election policy, has long supported a policy fix. This session, it doesn’t appear to be going anywhere.
Krug said a small but influential faction on the right has built a kind of social network around election conspiracy theories, many focused on Milwaukee. Because the tight counting window is part of the fuel that keeps that group going, he said, “a fix is a problem for them.”
Albrecht said that while Milwaukee had long operated under an unusual level of suspicion, the scrutiny that followed 2020 represented a shift he described as “complete insanity.”
That year, in the early hours after Election Day, Milwaukee released its absentee totals, but then-election chief Woodall realized she’d left a USB drive in one tabulator. Woodall called her deputy clerk about it, and the deputy had a police officer take the USB drive to the county building. The mistake didn’t affect results — the audit trail matched — but it was enough to ignite right-wing talk radio and fuel yet more conspiratorial claims about the city’s late-night reporting.
The scrutiny only intensified. A joking email exchange between Woodall and an elections consultant, taken out of context, was perceived by some as proof of fraud after Gateway Pundit and a now-defunct conservative state politics site published it. Threats followed, serious enough that police and the FBI stepped in. Woodall pushed for increased security at the city’s election office, saying that “there was no question” staff safety was at risk.
A similar dynamic played out again in 2024, when workers discovered that doors on absentee tabulators hadn’t been fully closed. With no evidence of tampering but anticipating backlash, officials zeroed out the machines and recounted every ballot. The fix didn’t stop Republicans, including Johnson, from suggesting something “very suspicious” could be happening behind the scenes. Johnson did not respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, errors in other Wisconsin communities, sometimes far more consequential, rarely draw similar attention. Take Waukesha County’s error in 2011 — a mistake that swung thousands of votes and affected which candidate was in the lead. “But it didn’t stick,” said UW-Madison’s Barry Burden, a political science professor. “People don’t talk about Waukesha as a place with rigged or problematic elections.”
In recent years there was only one substantiated allegation of serious election official wrongdoing: In November 2022, Milwaukee deputy clerk Kimberly Zapata was charged with misconduct in office and fraud for obtaining fake absentee ballots.
A month prior, she had ordered three military absentee ballots using fake names and sent the ballots to a Republican lawmaker, an effort she reportedly described as an attempt to expose flaws in the election system. Zapata said those events stemmed from a “complete emotional breakdown.” She was sentenced to one year of probation for election fraud.
“We didn’t hear as much from the right” about those charges, Woodall said.
More recently, the GOP has raised concerns about privacy screens — a curtain hung last November to block a staging area and, earlier this year, a room with frosted windows. Republicans seized on each, claiming the city was hiding something.
Paulina Gutiérrez, the city’s election director, told Votebeat the ballots temporarily kept behind the curtain “aren’t manipulated. They’re scanned and sent directly onto the floor,” where observers are free to watch the envelopes be opened and the ballots be counted.
But the accusations took off anyway. Even Johnson, the U.S. senator, suggested the city was “making sure NO ONE trusts their election counts.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.
Here’s why Milwaukee elections are always viewed with suspicion is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Update, Dec. 19, 2025, 12:50 p.m.:
Cleveland immigration court Judge Richard Drucker cancelled Elvira Benitez’s removal from the country on Friday, 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.
Original story:
Elvira Benitez of Sheboygan Falls is just one step away from receiving her green card.
But more than a month since 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 has spent half of 2025.
The reason? 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.
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.
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.”
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.”
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.”
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Background check delay shows crackdown’s strain on immigration system is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
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