In 2022, after living as a boy and going by a new name for several years, a 15-year-old from Madison, Wisconsin, wanted to make it official. Like most teenagers, he dreamed of getting his driver’s license, and his family wanted his government identification to reflect who he really was.

But Wisconsin law has a caveat: He would have to publish his old, feminine name and new name in the local newspaper for three weeks — essentially announcing to the world that he is transgender.

In many instances, if he had committed a crime, the law would afford him privacy as a minor. But not as a transgender teenager changing his name.

His parents worry the public notice now poses a risk as President Donald Trump has attacked transgender rights, asserted that U.S. policy recognizes only two sexes and described efforts to support transgender people as “child abuse.” The publication requirements endanger the community, lawyers working with trans people say, by creating a de facto dataset of likely transgender people that vigilantes and even the government could use for firing, harassment or violence.

Transgender people are over four times more likely to be victims of violence, research shows. Most transgender people and their families agreed to be interviewed for this story only if they weren’t named, citing safety concerns.

“Publication requirements really leave folks open and vulnerable to discrimination and to harassment more than they already are,” said Arli Christian, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “It can put people at risk of violence and blatant discrimination simply because of who they are.”

Wisconsin’s legal process stems from a 167-year-old law, one of many statutes across the country that Christian said were intended to keep people from escaping debts or criminal records. Changing one’s name through marriage is a separate process that does not require publication in a paper.

Although the right to change one’s legal name exists in every state, the effort and risk required to exercise it vary. Less than half of states require people to publicize their name changes in some or all cases, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a think tank that tracks voting and LGBTQ+ rights. 

Wisconsin law grants confidentiality only if a person can prove it’s more likely than not that publication “could endanger” them. But the statute does not define what that means. For years, some judges interpreted that to include psychological abuse or bullying, or they accepted statistics documenting discrimination and violence against transgender people nationwide. 

In 2023, however, a state appeals court set a stricter standard after a trans teenager was denied a confidential name change in Brown County, home to Green Bay. The teen said he had endured years of bullying, in which peers called him slurs and beat him up. Court records show the Brown County judge asserted that publishing the teen’s name wouldn’t expose him to further harm because his harassers already knew he was transgender. 

The teen argued that a public process would create a record available to people he met in the future. While the appeals court conceded a “reasonable judge” could agree, it found the Brown County judge had not improperly exercised her discretion in denying the request. Crucially, the appeals court determined that “endanger” meant only physical harm. The case wasn’t appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The combination of Wisconsin’s public requirement, the restrictive ruling and the Trump administration’s anti-trans policies has dissuaded at least one person from going through with a name change.

J.J Koechell, a 20-year-old LGBTQ+ advocate from suburban Milwaukee, tried to change his name in November but decided against it after a judge denied his request for confidentiality, ordering him to publish his change in the local paper and create a public court record if he wanted to proceed. 

“That’s already dangerous,” Koechell said of a public process, “given our political atmosphere, with an administration that’s trying to erase trans people from existence completely, or saying that they don’t exist, or that there’s something wrong with them.”

At the end of March, Wisconsin Democrats announced plans to introduce a bill that would eliminate the publication requirement for transgender people, so long as they can prove they’re not avoiding debt or a criminal record. Republicans, who control the Legislature, will decide whether it will receive a hearing or vote. 

There has been a push in some states to make it easier and safer for transgender people to update their legal documents. Michigan and Illinois laws removing publication requirements took effect earlier this year. And a California lawmaker introduced a bill that would retroactively seal all transition-related court records.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, did not respond to emails and a phone call to his office seeking comment. Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica sought comment from four other Republican leaders in the Assembly and Senate. Of the two whose offices responded, a staffer for Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August, R-Walworth, said, “It doesn’t look like something we’d consider a priority,” and a staffer for Senate Assistant Majority Leader Dan Feyen, R-Fond du Lac, said he was not available for comment.

Asked about the safety concerns people raised, a White House spokesperson said, “President Trump has vowed to defend women from gender ideology extremism and restore biological truth to the federal government.”

No exceptions for minors

Wisconsin’s law requires a transgender person to publish the details of their identity to change their name whether they are an adult or a child. The notice requirement makes no distinction based on age.

This is less privacy than the legal system typically affords young people, confirmed Cary Bloodworth, who directs a family law clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Bloodworth said both child welfare and juvenile courts tend to keep records confidential for a number of reasons, including that what happens in a person’s youth will follow them for a lifetime. 

“I certainly think having a higher level of privacy for kids is a good thing,” Bloodworth said, adding that she thinks the publication requirement is unnecessary for people of any age.

A mom living near the Wisconsin-Illinois border whose 11-year-old daughter recently went through the name-change process said these proceedings should automatically be private for children.

“The fact that we still have to fight to get something as simple as a confidential name change for a minor who is obviously not running away from criminal or debt charges is just so frustrating and overwhelming,” she said. 

The judge deciding their case seemed reluctant to grant confidentiality at first, questioning whether her daughter was being threatened physically, she said. The judge granted the confidential change. But the family remains shaken. 

“We live just in constant terror of the wrong person finding out that we have an 11-year-old trans child,” she said. “All it takes is one wrong person getting that information, and what we could end up going through, becoming a target, is horrifying.” 

Right before the pandemic, a teenager told her parents she was transgender. She spent much of that first year of her transition at home, attending virtual school like the rest of her peers in the Madison school district. She came out to only a few friends and wanted to keep her gender identity private, so she kept her camera off and skipped her high school graduation. 

When she decided to legally change her name, the prospect of publicizing her transition terrified her, according to her mom.

“I explained to her that it’s in tiny, tiny print, and it’s in some page of the paper that no one is going to read,” her mom said. “But it felt to her like she was just standing out there in public with a ‘TRANS’ sign on her.”

While fewer people read physical newspapers these days, much of their content gets published online and is easily searchable. The court case, too, becomes a public record that is stored online and sometimes aggregated by other websites that show up at the top of search results. 

The parents of the then-15-year-old boy who changed his name before getting his driver’s license discovered that happened to their son. When anyone — say, a prospective employer — searches the young man’s name, one of the first results shows his old name and outs him as trans.

“This is what somebody would use as their first judgment of him,” his mom said. “We certainly don’t want that to be something that people would use to rule him out for a job, or whatever it is he might be doing.” 

Like many other states, Wisconsin does not have laws that ban discrimination against transgender people in credit and lending practices or in public spaces like stores, restaurants, parks, doctor’s offices and hotels. However, Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, issued an executive order in 2019 banning transgender discrimination in state employment, contracting and public services.

After Trump took office again and began issuing executive orders attacking trans rights, the boy’s family started to investigate how they could retroactively seal the court records related to the name change. It wouldn’t change what was in the newspaper, but it could help them remove the online records. The court records also contain sensitive information like their home address that someone could use to harass them.

A friend who was a retired attorney helped their son craft an affidavit describing his experiences. His mom read from it during an interview. “‘Because of recent political events, I fear violence —’” she said before breaking off. “Oh God, I hate even reading this. ‘I fear violence, harassment, retribution because of my status as a transgender person.’”

Her son, who is now 18, shared a statement over email. 

“At this moment in time I’m probably more scared about being a trans person than I ever have been before, with the public record if you have my first and last name you can easily find my deadname and therefore find out I’m trans,” he said. “I would love to say that I feel safe and valued in our society but unfortunately I can’t, at times I feel that my personhood is being stripped away under this government.”

Anne Daugherty-Leiter, who has guided transgender clients and their families through the name-change process as board president of Trans Law Help Wisconsin, said where a person lives in Wisconsin, and therefore what court they must petition, affects their likelihood of getting a confidential change.

Confidentiality is important, she said, because of how the state handles changes to birth certificates. Wisconsin birth certificates that are issued through a confidential name change show only the new name. But if a person has to announce their name change publicly, birth certificates are amended to list both the person’s old and new names. Any time the person has to use that document, at the DMV or while getting a loan, it outs them, she said.

‘This is not who I am’

Koechell, a trans man and LGBTQ+ activist, was unwilling to go through with the name-change process after being denied confidentiality by a judge late last year.

Koechell lives in Waukesha County, a Republican stronghold where multiple schools have enacted policies critics have called anti-LGBTQ+. 

In a letter to the judge, Koechell wrote that people had sent him multiple threats and posted his family members’ addresses online, all for “being an advocate and being transgender openly in my community.” 

“I do not want to publish my deadname for people to use against me,” he said in an interview, using a term common among transgender people to refer to their birth names. “I don’t see a reason why people who are not particularly fond of me wouldn’t show up at a hearing like that and try and cause trouble.” 

Court records show the judge denied Koechell’s confidentiality request and his request to reconsider. The judge’s order referred to Koechell, a trans man with a masculine voice and beard, as “she” and “her.”

Koechell decided the public process wasn’t worth the risk. But it’s hard, he said, to move through life with his old identification.

“When I go to a new doctor or new appointment or something, then that’s the name on my chart, and then I get called that in a waiting room full of people, and it’s super uncomfortable. I just want to disappear,” Koechell said. “Then eventually, I have to correct the doctors, and I’m like, ‘Hey, just to let you know, I don’t go by that name. This is not who I am.’”

Data from the latest U.S. Transgender Survey found that 22% of people who had to show an ID that did not match their identity experienced some form of negative consequence, including verbal harassment, discrimination or physical violence. 

If the U.S. Senate passes the SAVE Act, which would require voters to prove citizenship with a passport or birth certificate, those consequences could include disenfranchisement. Transgender people who can’t change the name on their birth certificate or passport would be ineligible to vote, according to the liberal think tank Center for American Progress.

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican and chief sponsor of the bill, has said the legislation directs states to create a process for citizens with a “name discrepancy” to register. “No one will be unable to vote because of a name change,” he said.

After Trump won in November, Trace Schlax, a 40-year-old IT project manager, decided to expedite changing his gender marker on his passport, figuring he could update his name later in state court. 

“It matters,” Schlax said. He loves to travel but has encountered extra scrutiny from airport security with outdated documents. “I get comments from TSA when I go through to travel domestically, about my hair, about how I look. I get extra pat-downs.”

He sent his application in early December and crossed his fingers. He received it back in February, rejected. By that time, Trump had issued an executive order banning trans people from changing the gender markers on their passports. 

Schlax decided to continue updating what records he could, like his birth certificate and driver’s license. He worries about having conflicting documents. Will he get accused of fraud? Will he have trouble flying? 

But in the end, he decided it was still important to change his name and update his license to improve his day-to-day experience. 

And he decided to go about it publicly. It felt less painful, he said, to accept the risks rather than detail his personal, traumatic experiences to a judge only to have them decide he hadn’t endured sufficient danger. 

“Me changing my name and my gender marker affects absolutely no one but me,” said Schlax, who has a court date to change his name in late April. “Why does this have to be so hard? Why do I have to prove myself so hard?”

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Wisconsin Watch. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. 

Wisconsin’s name-change law raises safety risks for transgender people 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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Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan speaks with reporters Wednesday in his Madison office. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

House Democrats think their most likely strategy to prevent major cuts to Medicaid or other popular federal programs in the current budget reconciliation process will be to win over a few House Republicans.

“We just need three Republicans, basically nationwide, to say no to something,” said U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth) at a Q-and-A session with reporters Wednesday in his Madison office.

The Republican majorities in both houses of Congress are using the complicated budget reconciliation process to pass a spending plan that will allow them to extend tax cuts enacted in 2017 during President Donald Trump’s first term.

As part of that, House Republicans passed a blueprint calling for $880 billion in cuts to programs overseen by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Medicaid represents the largest expense item in the committee’s purview, and analysts have said Congress could only hit that target by making Medicaid cuts.

Pocan said estimates of the cost of preserving the tax cuts have risen in Washington, from $4.5 trillion in the original House proposal to “more like $7 trillion in tax cuts” in the current proposal combined from House and Senate alternatives.

The objective for House Democrats currently is to make cuts to Medicaid harder for GOP members to go along with, Pocan said. In Wisconsin, about 1.3 million residents are enrolled in Medicaid, including one third of the children in the state and 55% of seniors in nursing homes.

“You know, the more they hear that, at some point they may listen,” Pocan said of Republican members who won swing districts by narrow margins — and, he argues, they could push back against those sorts of cuts.

“I don’t expect them to maybe say it publicly and maybe to hold a town hall and say it, but if they say it privately in their caucus, that’s good enough, as long as three people won’t support something,” Pocan said. “That’s enough to kill something, right? So that’s kind of my goal is to keep facilitating that.”

The focus, though, is not on stopping the tax cuts, but stopping the cuts to Medicaid, SNAP and other federal programs.

“If we could stop that, and we could stop, maybe, some of the education cuts that might otherwise come … funds for low-income [districts], funds for special ed, I think they’re still going to move forward with their tax cut bill,” Pocan said.

He speculated that under those circumstances, the GOP majority would pay for the tax cut with a deficit increase. 

“Is that a good answer? No,” Pocan said. “But is it better than seeing people lose their health care right now or their food assistance through Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program? Yeah. So you know my job is to wake up in the morning and get excited about bad choices rather than the worst choices.”

Protesters outside the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in Greenbelt rally on April 4, 2025, in support of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father who was deported to El Salvador in an “administrative error,” calling for him to be returned to the U.S. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen Chris Van Hollen said Wednesday he was denied a meeting with Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, an El Salvador-born Maryland resident who was mistakenly deported to a mega-prison in his home country notorious for human rights abuses.

The Maryland Democrat met with El Salvador Vice President Félix Ulloa in the Central American country in an effort to help bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States. Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador, but a U.S. immigration judge issued a protective order in 2019 finding that sending him back to his home country would put him in grave danger.

After meeting with Ulloa, Van Hollen briefed reporters on the visit and said the Salvadoran vice president rebuffed his requests for contact with Abrego Garcia.

“I asked the vice president if I could meet with Mr. Abrego Garcia and he said, ‘Well, you need to make earlier provisions to go visit CECOT (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo),’” Van Hollen told reporters in El Salvador, referring to the mega-prison.

“I said, ‘I’m not interested, at this moment, in taking a tour of CECOT, I just want to meet with Mr. Abrego Garcia,’” Van Hollen said.

“He said he was not able to make that happen. He said he’d need a little more time. I asked him if I came back next week, whether I’d be able to see Mr. Abrego Garcia. He said he couldn’t promise that either,” the senator added. 

Van Hollen said he was also denied a phone or video call with Abrego Garcia to ask how he was doing and report that information to his family. 

The senator said he would contact the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador and request they ask the government of El Salvador to connect the two of them via phone, following a suggestion from Ulloa.

Van Hollen’s visit came a day after a federal judge in Maryland ordered the Trump administration to offer evidence on how it has sought to help with Abrego Garcia’s release from CECOT.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that the Trump administration must “facilitate” — but did not require — his return to the United States. El Salvador President Nayib Bukele also said Monday that he would not bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States.

The Trump administration has acknowledged in court that Abrego Garcia was deported due to an “administrative error.”

The administration accused him of being a member of the gang MS-13. He has not been charged or convicted of any criminal offenses, including gang-related crimes.

Van Hollen, noting that the Trump administration “illegally abducted” Abrego Garcia, said he “won’t stop trying” to get the wrongly deported man out of the prison and back to Maryland and predicted others would follow.

“I can assure the president, the vice president, that I may be the first United States senator to visit El Salvador on this issue, but there will be more, and there will be more members of Congress coming,” he said.

Administration responds

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security posted on social media Wednesday a copy of a restraining order Abrego Garcia’s wife sought against him in 2021 “claiming he punched, scratched, and ripped off her shirt, among other harm.”

In response, Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, told Newsweek she had a disagreement with him, but that things did not escalate and she did not continue with the civil court process. 

Late Wednesday afternoon, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt made a statement on the case, displaying the restraining order, repeating the accusation Abrego Garcia is a gang member and objecting to media references to him as a “Maryland father.”

“There is no Maryland father,” she said.

Patty Morin, the mother of a Maryland woman slain by a Salvadoran immigrant in the country without legal status, also appeared at the briefing and spoke in favor of the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation actions.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a press conference at the department's headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, April 16, 2025.  (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Wednesday the department will shift its research into autism toward potential environmental causes, though he declined to say exactly what the Trump administration would do if certain industries or pollutants were found responsible.

Kennedy, an environmental lawyer with no medical or research training, declared that autism is a preventable disease, argued research into genetic causes is a “dead end” and asserted that “we know it’s environmental exposure,” before saying HHS would fund “a series of new studies to identify precisely what the environmental toxins are that are causing it.”

“This has not been done before,” Kennedy said. “We’re going to do it in a thorough and comprehensive way and we’re going to get back with an answer to the American people very, very quickly.”

Kennedy said during his first press conference since receiving Senate confirmation that he wanted researchers to look into numerous potential factors, including mold, food additives, pesticides, air, water, medicines, ultrasound, age of parents, obesity in parents and diabetes in parents.

He pledged to have “some of the answers by September,” though he added the research will “be an evolving process.”

Kennedy appeared confident in his personal assessment that environmental factors lead to autism, without attributing that belief to any one industry or contaminant.

“This is coming from an environmental toxin and somebody made a profit by putting that environmental toxin into our air, our water, our medicines, our food,” Kennedy said. “And it’s to their benefit to normalize it, to say, ‘This is all normal. It has always been here.’ But that’s not good for our country.”

Autism experts, however, cast doubt on Kennedy’s assertion that environmental factors lead to autism and questioned his proposed timeline to prove such a link.

When asked by a reporter what exactly the Trump administration would do if research found conclusive evidence that one specific industry or pollutant was causing autism, Kennedy didn’t say whether HHS would push to ban it or close down any businesses. 

“I think we’re going to figure out a way to make pressure on them to remove it,” he said. “I think also there will be market forces that also exert pressure on them to remove it.”

Research difficult

Catherine Lord, professor of psychiatry with the school of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, said during an interview with States Newsroom following Kennedy’s remarks that trying to reach a definitive cause of autism before September was an “utterly ridiculous” timeline.

Lord said “the most likely hypothesis is that there may be interactions between genetics and, for example, environmental exposures, or even experiences like extreme prematurity.”

But she noted that studying the impact of environmental contaminants on people’s health, or a complex diagnosis like autism, is challenging because scientists obviously cannot expose people to toxins.

“It’s so difficult to do that work well, and people do it, but they can’t do it quickly,” Lord said. “And so I think that we do need work in that area, and I think it has been funded in the last few years. It just hasn’t come out with anything that is earth-shattering. It’s more the same thing, which is that if you’re exposed to something bad, your chances of having a child with any kind of neurodevelopmental disorder is going to go up.”

Lord expressed concern about moving funding and research away from genetic factors, saying “we do know that autism is genetic, so I think that is not under question.”

“I think the genetic work was moving forward,” she said. “It’s a slow pace, again, because they’re addressing so many different genetic patterns. But I think that at least there’s clear progress within this science.”

Limits funding for genetic research

Eric Fombonne, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Oregon Health and Sciences University, said during an interview that it was unwise for Kennedy to say there would be some answers about autism within a few months.

“It’s ridiculous to say that he’s going to unravel the etiology of autism in six months,” Fombonne said. “I mean, he could give, like, all the money of the world to any lab or any person. They could never report any results before several years from now, at the minimum.”

The pace of medical research, he said, is slow and Kennedy’s comments show “a complete ignorance and disregard for science and what we do and how complicated it is and the time it takes.”

Directing research dollars toward possible environmental contributors to autism will also limit the amount of funding available for genetic research, which Fombonne said “has been incredibly productive.”

“The pie is limited,” Fombonne said. “So if you move funds from genetic research to environmental research, you’re going to slow down the pace of genetic research.”

Fombonne explained that research into genetics and autism is “quite complicated” and has shown that not all genetic mechanisms are “the same across different families.”

“So it’s a very complex puzzle. And as you know, the brain is a very hard organ to study. So understanding the pathophysiology, which is associated with these gene variants, is a very hard process,” he said. “But we are doing that and we are progressing. And this has been paying off enormously over the last 20 or 30 years.”

Fombonne wouldn’t make the same assessment of potential environmental factors, saying there are no signs of higher rates of autism in certain areas or certain time periods, like scientists have found for some other conditions.

“There is no evidence that there is a cluster of cases of kids who have been living in a polluted area, or exposed to particular environmental circumstances,” Fombonne said. “There is no starting point, which is strong, to start environmental research somewhere we can say is going to pay off.

“So it’s going to be very exploratory initially, which may be a good thing to do. But at least, let’s do it well, and most of the studies so far are short.”

Krish Lal Isserdasani, who is from India, has been studying computer engineering at the UW-Madison since 2021 and plans to graduate on May 10. UW-Madison Engineering Hall. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

A federal judge has temporarily blocked the cancellation of a 21-year-old University of Wisconsin-Madison undergraduate student’s visa and any actions in relation to that by the Trump administration. 

Krish Lal Isserdasani, who is from India, has been studying computer engineering at the UW-Madison since 2021 with plans to graduate on May 10. On April 4, just a month before graduation, Isserdasani received notification from UW-Madison’s International Student Services office that his visa was cancelled and his authorization to be in the country would end on May 2. He received no communication from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or the State Department regarding the visa revocation.  

His cancellation was part of a wave of cancellations at universities across the country as President Donald Trump’s administration targets international students and ramps up deportation efforts in a crackdown on immigration.

U.S. District Judge William Conley wrote in his order Tuesday that Isserdasani has a “reasonable likelihood of success” on his claim that his visa was wrongly terminated and faces “possible devastating irreparable harm” as a result of the cancellation. Conley’s order bans the government from revoking his visa, detaining him or taking any other actions related to the cancellation pending a preliminary hearing April 28.

“The loss of timely academic process alone is sufficient to establish irreparable harm,” Conley wrote. “Given the amount of Isserdasani’s educational expenses and potential losses from having to leave the United States without obtaining his degree, the court concludes that Isserdasani credibly demonstrates that he faces irreparable harm for which he has no adequate remedy at law in the absence of injunctive relief.” 

Since the termination earlier this month, Isserdasani has reported a significant psychological impact on him, according to the order, including “difficulty in sleeping and fear that he will be placed in immediate detention and deportation.” 

“He reports being afraid to leave his apartment for fear of being apprehended at any moment,” the order states.

According to the complaint, Isserdasani and his family have spent about $240,000 on his education in the country. He would lose $17,500 on the current semester’s tuition and would be responsible for four months of rent despite not being able to stay in the country, the complaint states.  

Isserdasani is represented by Madison lawyer Shabnam Lotfi, who said in a statement to the Wisconsin State Journal that the “international students have done absolutely nothing wrong.” 

“They have followed U.S. laws and fully complied with the terms of their student status. They do not deserve this,” Lotfi said. “America must speak out against this injustice and not allow the Administration to distort the facts for their own political purposes.”

Isserdasani is one of dozens of students and alumni at University of Wisconsin institutions to have had their visas canceled by the federal government in recent weeks. There have been at least 26 at UW-Madison, 13 at UW-Milwaukee and several more at other campuses.

UW-Madison first announced cancellations on April 8, saying the university wasn’t notified by the government but had learned about them because staff has been reviewing federal databases every day to see whether students have been affected

According to the Associated Press, the Trump administration’s work to cancel visas has affected  at least 901 students at more than 128 colleges and universities nationwide. Some have been participants in protests about the war in Gaza, and others have had minor infractions, including traffic violations, according to published reports. 

Conley’s order indicates that Isserdasani appears to have had his visa canceled in relation to an arrest for disorderly conduct in November 2024 after he and friends got into an argument with other people while walking home from a bar one night. Madison District Attorney Ismael Ozanne declined to pursue charges after the arrest, and Isserdasani never had to appear in court and thought the issue was dealt with. He has had no other encounters with police, the order says. 

The university’s notification email that Isserdasani received stated that the reason given was “otherwise failing to maintain status” and he was “identified in criminal records check and/or has had their VISA revoked.” It said the termination “does not have a grace period to depart the U.S.” and that “employment benefits, including on-campus employment and any practical training you may have had authorized, end immediately when a SEVIS record is terminated. Therefore, you no longer have authorization to work in the United States.”

The order said Isserdasani “was given no warning, no opportunity to explain or defend himself and no chance to correct any potential misunderstanding.”

The judge’s order also covers the visa cancellation for Hamidreza Khademi, a 34-year-old citizen of Iran and graduate student at Iowa State University, who is also being represented by Lotfi.  Khademi graduated in December 2023, but was working in the country through a visa extension approved in 2024.

Khademi was arrested in February of 2024 and accused of evading arrest in a vehicle in Texas. However, the Texas Department of Public Safety eventually determined that there was no violation and decided against filing charges. His visa was terminated on April 10 and an email notifying him included similar reasoning as the one Isserdasani received. 

The judge reserved a ruling on the motion for a temporary restraining order for Khademi, pending further briefing by the parties, because he questioned whether the western Wisconsin court was the appropriate venue for the case. 

“Plaintiffs include no facts showing that venue is proper for the claims brought by Khademi, who appears to have no ties to the Western District of Wisconsin, nor do the events or omissions giving rise to his claims,” the judge wrote.

Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) speaks about how advocates can convince Republicans to fund the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program at the Great Lakes Audubon Society's 2025 advocacy day. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) said Wednesday the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program is “on life support,” adding that some of his Republican colleagues give it a 20% chance of being extended in this year’s budget debate before its expiration next year. 

Kurtz, Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine), Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) and Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Secretary Karen Hyun spoke Wednesday to a gathering of members of local Audubon Society chapters and staff of Audubon Great Lakes ahead of the organization’s advocacy day to lobby legislators to support conservation funding. 

The Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program was established in 1989 to help preserve local natural environments. Throughout its history, the program has enjoyed mostly bipartisan support as it has provided grants through the DNR to help local governments and nonprofits fund the acquisition, restoration and maintenance of public land, parks and wildlife habitats. 

In recent years, the program has become a flashpoint in the fight over the boundary between the executive and legislative branches of state government. Until a decision by the state Supreme Court last year, any member of the Legislature’s powerful Joint Committee on Finance had the authority to hold up a project funded through the stewardship program by placing an anonymous hold on that spending. 

The Court’s decision entirely removed the Legislature’s oversight of the program, a change that further turned Republicans against its continued existence. 

“We could make that process better, where it was not just one individual not liking something and being able to kill a project. I agree with that,” Kurtz said. “When the court case came in and basically took that entire process away, that was not good either, because there was no oversight. And I understand some of you believe whatever the DNR does is fine. That’s great. Some of my colleagues don’t believe that.”

Especially in the northern part of the state, Republicans have objected to stewardship funds being used to conserve land that then gets taken off of local property tax rolls — taking money away from already struggling small local governments. In other cases, Republicans have complained that proposals for projects under the grants rely too heavily on the state funds without the local governments providing enough of their own money. 

In his proposed 2025-26 budget, Gov. Tony Evers has requested the stewardship program be increased from its current funding of $33 million per year to $100 million per year for 10 years. 

Kurtz said he’s working on a bill that would return some oversight authority over the program to the Legislature without the anonymous objection provision. He added, though,  that if the Audubon members went to Republicans Wednesday saying, “‘It’s the governor’s budget or nothing,’ you already lost.” 

“I don’t need you to do that, because, I’m being very sincere, I’m trying to keep this alive, and if you go over there [saying that], there’s a good chance it’ll die,” he said. “So don’t do that. Let them, especially when you’re meeting with my colleagues, ask them what [their] concerns are. ‘Why don’t you like this? What is it about the program that we can do better so we can have another day to make sure we protect all our wonderful birds and animals.’”

Habush Sinykin noted that 93% of Wisconsinites support the program and said that in her purple district covering Milwaukee’s northwest suburbs, the stewardship program is hugely popular. She said the anonymous hold of a project in the district drew the ire of community members of both parties. 

“There’s a lot of understanding at the legislative level that in these uncertain times, with these newer maps, that our state representatives and senators, including those on the Joint Finance Committee, have to be wary and strategic about issues like this that are bipartisan,” she said. “They’re actually non-partisan. They are successful community building issues. So I think that’s a little bit where your leverage is to lean in hard. How popular these are.”

Aside from the stewardship program, the society members lobbying in the Capitol Wednesday were pushing for the state to increase protections for wetlands and grasslands, advance sustainable practices in the state’s agriculture and forestry industries and grow renewable energy production. 

On Wednesday morning, the administration of President Donald Trump announced a proposed rule that would rescind habitat protections for endangered species across the country. 

Marnie Urso, Audubon Great Lakes’ senior director of policy, said that with the federal government retreating from conservation efforts, state level efforts have become more important. 

“With that uncertainty, this kind of work is even more important, for state lawmakers to be on the path to conserving our natural resources,” Urso said. “The Knowles Nelson project program is bipartisan. It always has been a permanent foundation. So we know it has wide, widespread bipartisan support.”

Urso said leaning into that popularity could help advance the group’s priorities. 

“Even Trump voters like the Knowles Nelson Conservation Fund,” she said. “So we’re confident that by coming and talking, telling our story and getting to understand what’s important to our lawmakers, we can inform those decisions. And now it’s more important than ever to have state conservation programs continue.”

Prisoners look out of their cell as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem tours the Terrorist Confinement Center, or CECOT, on March 26, 2025 in Tecoluca, El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images)

This story was updated at 4:04 p.m. Eastern.

WASHINGTON —  A federal judge in Washington found probable cause Wednesday the Trump administration is in contempt of court for defying his order to stop flights of Venezuelan immigrants headed to a prison in El Salvador.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg gave officials one week to submit a list of steps they have taken, or will take, to comply with his order, or identify the official or officials who chose to send the planes to El Salvador, despite learning of his order, he wrote in a 46-page opinion Wednesday.

Boasberg wrote the government could “purge its contempt,” for example, by voluntarily obeying the order and giving the imprisoned men an opportunity to challenge their cases. Officials could also “propose other methods of coming into compliance.”

If the government does not attempt to remedy the situation, Boasberg will require declarations, or even live witness testimony, to identify who’s responsible for the noncompliance and refer them for criminal prosecution.

The case centers on President Donald Trump’s decision in mid-March to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport more than 200 Venezuelans – and other nationals – with suspected gang ties. The men were detained at the Salvadoran mega-prison Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT.

Despite Boasberg’s order to halt the flights, including returning two planes that were mid-air, immigration officials allowed them to land in El Salvador — and directed a third one to take off.

Boasberg wrote Wednesday that the “Government’s actions on that day demonstrate a willful disregard for its Order, sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt.”

“The Court does not reach such conclusion lightly or hastily; indeed, it has given Defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions. None of their responses has been satisfactory,” continued Boasberg, who was appointed to the bench in 2011 by former President Barack Obama and confirmed unanimously by the Senate.

Order ‘gleefully’ violated

Boasberg provided a detailed timeline in a memorandum opinion Wednesday accompanying his probable cause order.

The judge delivered a verbal order at 6:45 p.m. on Saturday, March 15, mandating the government halt any new deportation flights and bring any planes that had taken off back to the U.S. He later entered a written order into the record at 7:25 p.m., according to the court filing.

“By mid-Sunday morning, the picture of what had happened the previous night came into clearer focus,” he wrote. “It appeared that the Government had transferred members of the Plaintiff class into El Salvador’s custody hours after this Court’s injunction prohibited their deportation under the Proclamation.

“Worse, boasts by Defendants intimated that they had defied the Court’s Order deliberately and gleefully,” Boasberg wrote in his opinion.

He highlighted that Secretary of State Marco Rubio reposted on social media a post from El Salvador President Nayib Bukele who highlighted a headline about the judge’s order and wrote “Oopsie … Too late” with a laughing face emoji.

What followed was “obstructionism” and “stonewalling” from the government, according to Boasberg, as officials refused to answer basic questions about the timeline of the flights and whether the plaintiffs who were granted class status in the lawsuit were now in El Salvador’s custody. The government argued such information would compromise national security.

Boasberg denied the government’s motion to block his temporary restraining order, and an appeals court upheld it.

Supreme Court ruling

The Trump administration then appealed to the Supreme Court, and the justices ruled 5-4 on April 8 that Trump could use the wartime Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants but must provide them a chance to challenge their cases first.

Boasberg addressed that ruling in his opinion Wednesday, writing that even a win on appeal did not negate the government’s responsibility to obey the order while it was active.

“If a party chooses to disobey the order — rather than wait for it to be reversed through the judicial process — such disobedience is punishable as contempt, notwithstanding any later-revealed deficiencies in the order,” he wrote.

Disputed gang membership

Family members and attorneys for many of the deported men have disputed the Trump administration’s claims that those taken to El Salvador were members of the Tren de Aragua gang.

They claim the men were deported because ICE agents misinterpreted their tattoos. Many deportees had no criminal record and were in asylum hearings before an immigration judge, they added.

Among those deported was El Salvadoran native Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, whose wife, a U.S. citizen, has been fighting in a separate federal case for his release from CECOT. Abrego Garcia had a protective order from an immigration judge in 2019 shielding him from removal to his native country because of risks of gang violence.

The Trump administration has not complied with a court order to return him to the U.S. 

Sandra Lomeli testifies at a public hearing April 10, 2025, against a bill imposing new restrictions on the process for confirming eligibility for Medicaid. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

Legislation that would add new restrictions to the process of qualifying for Medicaid is on hold in the Wisconsin Capitol after meeting with resounding opposition at an Assembly hearing less than a week ago.

At a meeting Tuesday to vote on two other bills, State Rep. Dan Knodl (R-Germantown) told the Assembly Committee on Public Benefit Reform that he chairs that the Medicaid measure “has some work to be done yet.”

The bill’s author, Rep. William Penterman (R-Columbus), told the Wisconsin Examiner in an email message Tuesday that the legislation “is still in the Assembly Committee on Public Benefit Reform. The conversation on how to improve the bill is ongoing.”

An opponent of the measure, however, suggested that opposition testimony had prevailed in keeping it from moving forward.

“I think you all realized how terrible and harmful that legislation was,” said committee member Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee), directing his comment at his four Republican colleagues. “We heard two and a half hours of testimony overwhelmingly against that [bill].”

Clancy spoke before voting against two other bills that the committee passed 4-2 along party lines — one making sweeping revisions to Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance (UI) system, and the other barring local governments from instituting guaranteed basic income programs using tax dollars. 

Recipients marshal opposition to Medicaid measure

Medicaid covers acute and long-term medical care for low-income people as well as people with disabilities. It’s funded jointly with federal and state money and managed by the state under federal rules and guidelines.

With some exceptions, recipients must have incomes at or below the federal poverty guideline. Most Medicaid recipients must be reviewed once a year to confirm they are still eligible for the program.

AB 163 would direct the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) to conduct eligibility reviews every six months.

It also would add restrictions on the verification process — forbidding the state from automatically renewing Medicaid beneficiaries, forbidding the state from automatically filling in electronic forms with the recipient’s information except for their name and address, and cutting off a person’s ability to enroll in Medicaid for six months for failing to report a change that might make them ineligible.

Penterman, the only witness who testified at the bill’s April 10 public hearing, highlighted the statistic that 20% of Wisconsin residents are on Medicaid. 

He described the legislation as an effort to “reassess and restore integrity to the system by ensuring that only those who are truly needy and truly qualified for this coverage receive benefits.”

But the recurring message from a stream of hearing witnesses — the vast majority of them people with disabilities who rely on Medicaid for long-term health care in their homes or in the community or their family caregivers — was that the current eligibility requirements are already burdensome, and strict enough to keep out people who aren’t eligible.

“We heard from so many people who do a tremendous amount of work to prove to the state that they have low enough income, low enough assets, that they are who they say they are, that they meet the functional screen and all of the other requirements that the department has [for them] to be able to get in or stay in the program,” said Tamara Jackson, legislative policy representative for the Wisconsin Board of People with Developmental Disabilities, in an interview Tuesday.

The hearing came just two days after the bill was introduced April 8. Its fast track prompted an overnight opposition campaign by Medicaid recipients.

“We heard from people across the state who had said that they had contacted their state lawmakers about this particular bill and had really used it as an opportunity to tell them what they do to be allowed in the Medicaid program,” Jackson said.

Federal Medicaid debate draws attention

Recent Congressional action on federal legislation to extend tax cuts enacted in 2017 has included spending targets that would appear to make Medicaid reductions inevitable. Medicaid recipients have been following those debates and making public appeals to oppose cuts in the program — priming them to oppose the state proposal as well.

“I think that people are paying attention, and the reason there were so many contacts is because Medicaid is so important to folks and they’re willing to show up and talk about it,” Jackson said.

At the very start of the April 10 hearing, Penterman alluded to communications he had already received from advocates and said he planned an amendment to exempt people with developmental disabilities from some of the bill’s restrictions. He introduced the amendment later that day.

Several witnesses, however, criticized limiting the amendment to people with developmental disabilities, arguing that the bill’s requirements would be needlessly onerous for many other people.

Sandra Lomeli of Pewaukee was one of the hearing witnesses against the Medicaid bill. She is the mother of two adult children with severe disabilities who are able to get long-term care through Medicaid. One requires 24-hour care as a sexual assault survivor, she said.

Lomeli is also covered by BadgerCare Plus, the Wisconsin Medicaid plan for primary and specialty health care and hospitalization, because being her children’s family caregiver limits her working hours to a part-time nonprofit position.

She told the committee that she fills both sides of a ream’s worth of forms each year to confirm her children’s Medicaid eligibility. She said she spends 54 hours completing those forms and 10 hours confirming her own eligibility each year.

In her testimony Lomeli challenged lawmakers to enlist Medicaid participants and advocates if they wanted to write legislation to improve the program.

It appeared to Lomeli that her suggestion “took people by surprise that we would even be at the table,” she said in an interview Tuesday. “I don’t think they valued that we could add value — because if they did, somebody would have reached out.”

She said she doesn’t consider the legislation dead, however, which concerns her.

“The issue is not off the table yet,” Lomeli said. “They’re just going to reword it. We have won the battle now. We haven’t won the war.

UI change, basic-income ban, both pass on party lines

While setting the Medicaid bill aside Tuesday, the Committee on Public Benefit Reform advanced two others with only Republican votes.

AB 164 would rename Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance system as a “re-employment assistance” program with new requirements for workers and for the state agency that administers it.

Those include requiring recipients, who must currently make four work searches a week, to make two of those in the form of direct contacts with prospective employers. It also adds a variety of additional counseling procedures and requirements for people who receive unemployment benefits.

Department of Workforce Development Secretary-designee Amy Pechacek submitted written testimony expressing “concerns about this proposal due to the anticipated reporting burden for employers, potential costs, bureaucratic requirements, and lack of sustainable funding.”

Gov. Tony Evers vetoed similar legislation in 2023, citing similar complaints as well as the fact that it did not go through the state’s joint labor-management unemployment advisory council.

AB 165 would bar local governments from using tax dollars to create guaranteed income programs without a work or training requirement. Evers vetoed a similar bill to that one in 2023 as well, on the grounds it usurped local control. 

Rep. Christian Phelps (D-Eau Claire) made the same argument against the current legislation.

Knodl defended the both bills as helping to “protect the integrity of these systems, and that’s important if we want them to be sustainable in the future.”

Clancy argued that both should have been put on pause along with the Medicaid bill.

“But all three of those . . . bills are fundamentally the same,” Clancy said. “They are kicking people when they are down. They are hitting people at their most vulnerable, and frankly, in 2025, when national and state Republican policies have meant that people have more needs. We should not be attacking those social safety nets.”

Wisconsin State Capitol (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

Wisconsin lawmakers considered new tax incentives meant to encourage the development of more employee-owned businesses and cooperatives and to promote safe gun storage. Both measures drew bipartisan support during a hearing Tuesday in the Assembly Way and Means Committee. 

One bill — AB 17 — would provide a tax credit to businesses that make the transition to a model that gives employees a stake. The credit would cover 70% of the costs for converting a business to a worker-owned cooperative or 50% of the costs for converting the business to an employee stock ownership plan. Businesses could receive a maximum of $100,000 from the tax credit. 

In a worker-owned cooperative, employees jointly own the business and have control over its operations. Employee stock ownership plans give employees partial or full ownership of a company’s stock as an investment for their retirement. 

According to the UW Center for Cooperatives, there are 728 cooperatives across the state, including 33 worker-owned cooperatives. 

The bill would create an individual income tax subtraction and a corporate income and franchise tax deduction for  the capital gain realized from the conversion. It would also instruct the Department of Revenue to create a program to promote employee-owned and cooperative business structures, providing education, outreach, technical assistance and training.

“More than ever, Wisconsin benefits from companies keeping jobs here, investing in their communities and staying locally owned,” bill coauthor Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp) told lawmakers on the committee. This type of business structure, he said, is a “strong tool” to encourage that goal. 

James said the tax incentive would help businesses considering switching because the conversion process can be complicated and expensive.

According to the National Center for Employee Ownership, a transition to a worker-owned model can initially cost between $10,000 and $30,000. Converting to an employee stock ownership plan can generally cost between $100,000 and $300,000, with ongoing costs of $20,000 to $30,000 a year.

Several Wisconsinites who have benefited from making the switch testified in favor of the bill. 

John Dally, a veterinarian, said it would provide “critical support” for cooperatives in Wisconsin. Dally started a practice about 20 years ago with a colleague in Spring Green, and in 2020, they  acquired another location in Mazomanie. 

As they were getting older, he said, they began considering retirement and the future for their business, Cooperative Veterinary Care.

“We wanted to ensure the practice would stay in these small communities, continue to serve the families and the pets that we just come to know and love — we’ve worked with them for our entire careers — and we also wanted to have some fair and equitable options for our employees and have a return on our investment to sell,” Dally said. 

Dally said historically veterinary practices would be sold to younger associates, but with increasing costs of education, many young veterinarians cannot take on the additional debt that comes with taking it over. Private equity firms and large corporations have also been acquiring small practices in recent years, he said.

According to Brakke Consulting, a veterinary management consulting firm, nearly 25% of general veterinary practices and 75% of specialty practices, such as emergency and surgery care, are owned by large corporations. The issue of consolidation in the pet care field by large corporations has gotten the attention of U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. 

“We were looking around and thinking, what could we do, and I came upon this idea of employee ownership and it just made total sense,” Dally said. He said the transition in 2022 to a worker-owned cooperative cost about $30,000. He said a grant helped with the expense, and they also received support from the UW Center for Cooperatives. 

‘Tangible, positive impact’

Dally said that their team of veterinarians, technicians and assistants have been able to take ownership of the business. The employees, he said, range in age from 20 to 58 and come from a variety of backgrounds. 

“We all came together to create bylaws, manage the business, make decisions about how to allocate resources in smart and equitable ways,” Dally said. He said the cooperative has kept these veterinary services in these communities when they might have closed as they retired or sold to a large corporation who may or may not have kept them there. 

In the three years since transitioning, Dally said the worker cooperative has developed a beneficial health insurance program and a mental health program, invested in new equipment, raised wages and distributed additional profits back to the employees.

“It’s just created a tangible, positive impact on our local communities. It provides a clear pathway for employees to not only work for the business, but to own a piece of it and benefit from its success and all their efforts and enthusiasm,” Dally said. “Our experience in transitioning to this model is proof that it works, particularly in small communities.” 

Dally said it would not have been possible without the help they received, and  the bill could provide the necessary support to other businesses looking to make the transition. 

“It will allow businesses like ours to thrive and continue serving their communities while providing meaningful economic benefits for workers. It has the potential to change the landscape of business ownerships in Wisconsin, especially in these rural communities that are often overlooked by larger corporate interests,” Dally said. “We need your support to make this a reality.” 

Kristin Forde with the UW Center for Cooperatives told lawmakers that the center’s staff has  seen greater interest in employee ownership as a succession strategy for retiring owners, but the models remain largely unknown among business owners. 

Forde said the state is likely to face a crisis in business as Baby Boomers prepare to retire. 

“We really see employee ownership as… a solution to that problem,” Forde said. The legislation, she said, would tie together education and financial incentives to ensure that employee-owned cooperatives are a “feasible solution to retaining jobs and services in our communities.” 

Promoting safe gun storage 

Republicans and Democrats also appeared supportive of AB 10, which would eliminate sales taxes on devices meant to ensure safe storage of guns.

According to the CDC, unintentional injury is a top cause of death among children with guns being a leading method for injury. “It was kind of jarring to hear that,” bill coauthor Rep. Adam Neylon (R-Pewaukee) said. 

Neylon said unsecured firearms are a major cause for those deaths and injuries, and that  he wanted to propose a way to make safe storage more affordable. 

“This isn’t about politics,” Neylon said. “This is about saving kids’ lives.”

Neylon said after hearing from constituents and consulting with the state Department of Revenue, he has amended the bill to cover a variety of devices in addition to gun safes. 

The amendment defines  a “firearm storage device” as a locked and fully enclosed container and excludes glass-faced display cabinets. It adds “firearm safety” devices, “installed on a firearm designed to prevent unauthorized access to the firearm or to prevent it from being operated without first deactivating the device.” 

Rep. Joan Fitzgerald (D-Fort Atkinson) said she supports the action, but called for more to be done. 

“Protecting our kids and our communities should be top of mind for many of us… and there are a lot of people that are not responsible gun owners, so I do think we need to do more in this area,” Fitzgerald said. 

Gov. Tony Evers has also included the proposal in his 2025-27 budget, but Republican leaders on the Joint Finance Committee have removed it from his previous budget proposals and have said they plan to write their own budget. Fitzgerald asked Neylon why he proposed the measure if it was included in Evers’ budget. 

“I think, personally, this is at risk of being pulled out of the budget as a public policy item,” Neylon said. While his bill does have a fiscal impact, “I think there’s precedent of doing this through legislation in the past,” he added. “But if it ultimately is in a budget that I support, I would be happy about that.” 

Deductions for teachers’ classroom costs

Lawmakers also considered AB 64, which would allow teachers to claim a tax deduction of up to $300 for expenses, including professional development courses, books and other classroom supplies. It, too, has bipartisan support.

Bill coauthors Sen. Dan Feyen (R-Fond du Lac) and Rep. David Armstrong (R-Rice Lake said) the bill mirrors the deduction that is already available for teachers when they file their federal taxes.

“This would double the potential benefit and bring teachers significantly closer to be made whole,” Armstrong said. 

Armstrong noted that teachers “sometimes find it necessary to purchase books or supplies for their classrooms.”  He added that he has  two daughters who are teachers and remind him about the costs “consistently at the beginning of school.”

CESA 6 CEO Ted Neitzke told lawmakers his wife, a Sheboygan middle school language arts teacher, has a classroom with likely “tens of thousands of dollars worth of Mrs. Neitzke’s investments in books and materials.” 

“This is something that… would be a great tool for local school systems, especially when we’re competing nationally for talent, to be able to support our staff in reimbursing some costs that they spend,” Neitzke said. “Any little bit helps.”

Voces de la Frontera gather alongside allies in Milwaukee for a protest on May Day, 2021. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution Tuesday opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents “operating outside the limits of the law in and around the Milwaukee County Courthouse Complex,” while also calling on the sheriff to work with the county executive and chief judge of the First Judicial District to “ensure access to services and safeguard every individual’s constitutional right to due process.” 

During the board committee meeting Chairwoman Marcelia Nicholson called the resolution, which she authored with Supervisors Caroline Gomez-Tom and Juan Miguel Martinez, both “reactive” and “proactive.” The resolution also calls for Milwaukee County residents to be educated on their rights during immigration encounters, such as distributing educational material around the courthouse complex. 

“Let me be clear,” Nicholson said, “everyone regardless of immigration status deserves due process. And that’s not a radical idea, that’s the Constitution. And yet when federal immigration enforcement takes place in our courthouse complex, it sends families into hiding, deters survivors of violence from seeking protection and discourages tenants from asserting their rights.” Nicholson said that “it erodes trust in the very systems we are responsible for upholding.”

In early April, the community learned of two ICE arrests in the county courthouse. The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office said in a press statement that ICE had not given prior notice of one of the arrests and that the sheriff’s office was not involved in making the arrests. Days later, the men were identified as Edwin Bustamante-Sierre, 27, and Marco Cruz-Garcia, 24. ICE said that the men had been convicted of violent crimes or were linked to gangs. Online court records show that one of the men, Cruz-Garcia, was arrested the same day he went to family court for a domestic violence-related restraining order, which was dropped that day. 

Nicholson said the arrests took place in the “public hallways of our courthouse and Safety Building.” She added, “That action didn’t just detain individuals, it delivered a message: ‘This space may not be safe for people who look a certain way, or speaks a certain language.’” 

The arrests were widely condemned by local officials and activists. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said in a statement that the courthouse “stands as a cornerstone of justice where residents come to seek information, resources and fair participation in the legal process” and that “an attack on this safe, community-serving space undermines public trust, breeds fear among citizens and staff and disrupts the due process essential to our courts.” 

Milwaukee County Chief Judge Carl Ashley, as well as members of the Board of Supervisors also decried the arrests. Local groups from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin to Voces de la Frontera, and the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression also blasted ICE for making arrests in the courthouse.

The ACLU highlighted that ICE enforcement often causes immigrant communities to avoid contacting law enforcement, even when they are in danger of becoming crime victims. On April 10, Congresswoman Gwen Moore said in a statement that “ICE has seemingly front-run Milwaukee’s justice system, potentially denying the city justice and potential victims a remedy.” Moore added, “This Administration’s decision to remove sensitive location protections will stir even more fear in our communities, prevent victims of crime from coming forward, and disrupt houses of worship, schools, and hospitals.”

In a joint statement Nicholson, Gomez-Tom, and Miguel Martinez said that the resolution “puts us on the right side of history and the right side of humanity.” The resolution is “about helping people … protection process…[and] protecting the promise of what our Courthouse is meant to be – a place of fairness, access, and truth.” 

During public testimony on Tuesday, Sup. Willie Johnson Jr. said that he agreed that the arrests “were an erosion of trust”. Echoing Nicholson’s words Johnson said that “we are stewards of Milwaukee County government, we represent the citizens of this county and we should be respectful of the rights of people to go about their business, be where they need to be, and do what they need to do.” 

Sup. Miguel Martinez said “this is just the first step towards creating more action.” The board is expecting a report back from the sheriff and county executive regarding rules around the courthouse, he  said.

“This administration really is descending into 1939 Nazi Germany,” Miguel Martinez continued. “And I’m not saying that with hyperbole because there’s people that are getting deported and people that are citizens, and are not returning. We have people with residency getting their residency stripped away from them. And every single day, it descends into more and more madness.”

He said that it was the responsibility of board members “as local representatives of our communities, that we make sure that we fight every single day against this unlawful administration, and make sure that we let everybody know that we are here to protect them, and we won’t let our country descend into absolute tyrannical madness.”

Sup. Gomez-Tom added that it is the county government’s responsibility “to serve our community, and all inhabitants of our county.” Milwaukee County residents go to the courthouse for many different services besides the justice system, including victim services, child support or obtaining legal documents, “and everyone should have a right to do so, and to do so in peace,” said Gomez-Tom. 

Supervisors Anne O’Connor said that to her knowledge, the Trump administration is the first to pursue immigration arrests in what were once considered “safe places” such as courthouses or churches. 

At a press conference she attended in the days after the arrests, O’Connor said, ICE agents were parked illegally outside and wouldn’t identify themselves further. She described the feeling as “a cloak of anonymity” and said her constituents are concerned about vulnerable communities such as resettled Afghan-U.S. allies, Rohingya, and Congolese communities who get services from nonprofits.

Sup. Patti Logsdon abstained from voting on the resolution’s passage, saying her decision “is not a reflection of indifference or opposition to the values of justice or fairness,” but concern about the legal uncertainty surrounding the passing and implications of this resolution.” 

Logsdon asked for legal guidance as to what policies the county has in place already to guide ICE interactions, as well as the legal jeopardy elected officials who support policies that could conflict with federal immigration law may find themselves. Logsdon also questioned whether Milwaukee County could be sued for going against immigration enforcement, who would pay for it and how much it would cost “in defending and educating undocumented immigrants about their rights.”

Several members of the public also attended the board meeting, expressing support for the resolution, concern for immigrant communities and opposition to  Trump administration immigration policies.

Gomez-Tom noted that she is the daughter of Mexican immigrants.  “I know what that chilling effect looks like when someone in your family is at risk…maybe isn’t even at risk, but is scared that they could be at risk of being detained, of being questioned,” she said. “What happens is people get paralyzed.”

If you want to understand how Wisconsin Supreme Court elections became so political — with a record $100 million spent on this year’s nasty contest — it’s helpful to trace the history of former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman.

Gableman’s career began full of promise, diligence and ambition. His cousin told Wisconsin Watch’s Tom Kertscher that at a young age Gableman “was always the adult in the room.”

But over the course of his career he became entangled in partisan politics.

Gableman was willing to travel hundreds of miles to take political appointments around the state, even receiving a Burnett County judgeship for which he didn’t apply. Gov. Scott McCallum acknowledged to Wisconsin Watch part of the reason he picked Gableman was he was a Republican supporter, bypassing two local finalists recommended by McCallum’s advisory committee for judicial appointments.

When Gableman ran for Wisconsin Supreme Court, he authorized a misleading, racially charged political ad against his opponent. At the time it was shocking enough to draw a formal complaint, but the Supreme Court couldn’t agree if it violated the judicial code of conduct. Now, you couldn’t turn on the TV or scroll social media before this year’s April 1 election without a faceful of misleading ads.

Despite his staunch Republican presence on the state’s high court, writing key opinions on Act 10 and dismissing an investigation into Gov. Scott Walker, Gableman fell out of favor with the party after he attended the 2016 Republican National Convention, in possible violation of judicial rules against partisanship. After causing disturbances in hospitality suites, he had to be escorted to his hotel. Party support for him waned. He decided, at age 50, not to run for a second 10-year term.

And yet, when President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, Republicans called upon Gableman, who worked in Trump’s first administration, to investigate the results. Gableman found no evidence the election results were fraudulent and was called an “embarrassment” by the same Republican leader who hired him. The investigation ultimately cost taxpayers $2.8 million, four times more than its original budget. Now he’s facing a three-year suspension of his law license for his unprofessional conduct during the investigation.

The courts are not supposed to be subject to the same political whims of the legislative and executive branches. Supreme Court justices and judges run for office during nonpartisan spring elections for a reason.

As Kertscher’s account of Gableman’s career shows, raw power politics created this situation. It will be up to the public to decide if it wants something better.

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Michael Gableman’s story is a study in how politics have infected Wisconsin’s courts 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.