Gov. Tony Evers toured a new Milwaukee juvenile facility on Wednesday along with Department of Corrections leaders, closing another chapter in the troubled history of the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake youth prisons. The sleek, colorful new facility looked like  a well-resourced though highly secure school. The Southeast Regional Care Center for Youth, or SERC, will house 32 boys who are in the DOC’s custody. 

While serving their sentences the boys will have access to educational programs, a gym, a greenhouse and other opportunities to help prepare them to return to their communities. Since many of the boys will be from the Milwaukee area, the new $65.6 million facility will make it easier for their families to visit compared to Lincoln Hills, hours away in Irma, Wisconsin. 

“This new facility marks a historic milestone for our state and is the beginning of what I hope is a real, meaningful transformation of not only juvenile corrections in our state but of corrections in Wisconsin,” Evers said. “Not only will this new facility allow us to safely move our kids closer to their homes, their families, and their support systems, but it will give kids and families hope for a brighter future. With evidence-based strategies, this new facility will provide young people the role models, educational opportunities, and support needed so they can grow, be better, and do better, all while helping to reduce crime, prevent violence, and keep our kids, families and communities safe.”

SERC is located on Milwaukee’s North Side, tucked away a few blocks  from a busy roadway just north of Good Hope Road. At first glance the tan brick building resembles a small school, but a closer look reveals  large tinted windows and a few State Patrol vehicles parked outside. Walking through the front door, visitors come to  a metal detector station in a  front lobby with light colored walls, tiled floor and chairs. 

Wednesday’s official  tour of the new facility began with a visit to the SERC’s chapel. Next, Evers was guided by DOC Sec. Jared Hoy and DOC juvenile corrections administrator Lance Horozewski to an outside area surrounded by a high brick wall and security gate, where Evers viewed a basketball court and a large greenhouse next to  raised garden beds — one for each boy which the facility will house.

Heading back inside, Hoy and Horozewski showcased medical facilities with individual exam rooms and areas where youth can access needed dental care. There was also a large kitchen, and spaces where youth could learn welding and woodworking. Evers also looked over visiting areas complete with games and kiosks for video visits, a large indoor gym and basketball court and classrooms. Evers also checked out a creative room where the boys will be able to make and record music, and even make videos using a large green screen.

The area where the boys will be housed was  behind a door, which will be controlled by staff monitoring from an adjacent room. A common space contained couches, tables, a couple of phones and games. Down the hall were dorm rooms with wood floors and gray metal furniture, with one bed per room, a toilet, desk, and a window with a view of the outdoors, with a blind the boys can open or close. 

The design of SERC is intended to forge a new direction for juvenile incarceration in Wisconsin. For years, the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake schools were  notorious for reports of abuse and suffering for both youth housed there and the staff responsible for their care. Earlier this year, a federal judge ended mandatory oversight of Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake after the DOC had been found to be in “substantial compliance” with reforms mandated after a 2018 class action settlement.

Lincoln Hills’ troubled history led the Legislature to spend years planning to close the 500-bed facility, convert it to an adult prison, and open up smaller and safer juvenile facilities which would also be closer to home for the youth housed there. 

Evers appeared to approve of SERC as he walked through its halls. “But our work is not over — far from it, ” he said in a statement. “Our state is decades behind in how we think about corrections, and this new facility is the first step, but it is only a step. We must continue our work to modernize our corrections system into the 21st century and close Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake schools for good.”

Hoy said that looking around SERC “you see a school, not a prison.” He went on to say in a statement that “that’s because it is a school and even more. It’s a place to learn and to heal. There’s no barbed wire. No towers. There are big windows, color, space. And it’s all secure both for the youth and for the neighborhood. The design supports what we now know about adolescent development, and the programming offered here will follow suit with staff using evidence-based techniques to help youth make better choices and support rehabilitation.”

Hoy said at the beginning of November the first group of youth will be moved into SERC, with more to come over the following months into the holidays. “We’ve been recruiting for staff starting back in the summer,” said Hoy. “And so we’ve had two graduating classes already. We’ll have more than adequate staff. Not just safety staff — so your youth counselors that are here  — but education, treatment, all of those different functions are already on board…And then we will continue to staff up. We have another class graduating, I think at the beginning of November.”

Staffing shortages had long plagued Lincoln Hills and other DOC facilities. Hoy told the Wisconsin Examiner that the DOC has paid particular attention to staff-to-youth ratios for the SERC to help prevent burnout among staff, and has established staff wellness spaces. Hoy also said that “the space itself lends to a sort of feeling of wellness and calmness.”

Another Type 1 facility is being constructed in Dane County which is designed to hold 32 boys and eight girls. The DOC is also pushing for a third facility to be opened in northern Wisconsin in order to serve youth from that region of the state. Hoy told the Examiner that having multiple facilities would allow the DOC to cross-train and pull staff from one facility to another in order to help fill any gaps and prevent burnout.

Many of the staff who will work at the new facility are from the Milwaukee area, and theoretically might have an advantage in  relating with the youth there. Kashunda Brown, 37, one of SERC’s youth counselors, explained that she grew up on the North Side of Milwaukee where she learned what it’s like to experience poverty and living in a single parent home. Brown also has two boys of her own which “resonates with the youth that we encounter here,” she told the Examiner. 

Keana Berkhalter, 32, a licensed counselor who will be working with the facility’s Psychological Services Unit, is also from Milwaukee. “I’ve seen the complex issues and challenges that we have here, as well as the strengths that Milwaukee has,” Berkhalter told the Examiner. Berkhalter said that it’s important that youth know that the staff understand them because it helps them feel safe. “As human beings, it’s easier to connect to people that look like us, or at least that we have some sort of similar commonality.” 

The experiences the counselors share with the youth help them to connect. “I think that gives me leverage to connect to the youth, as well as help them feel safe and to talk to me and to want to trust and confide in me, to talk about things that maybe they don’t want to talk to anybody about.”

Brown said the greenhouse, raised beds, and creative spaces are especially important for the boys SERC will house. To anyone who questions whether the facility should feel more punitive, Brown says, “I think the punitive is them being away from their family.” 

She continued, “this should be, and is, a space where they can have different things that they don’t experience on the outside. A lot of people don’t have access to a basketball court at home. A lot of people don’t have access to gardening.” These translate into coping skills the boys can take home with them to avoid getting in trouble. 

Youth who learn that they enjoy woodworking, cooking, growing food in the garden or other activities available at SERC could take that with them and become more productive members of society, Brown said. “I think all the skills that they will get here, they can use on the outside. The punitive is them being in here.” 

A federal immigration judge ruled Wednesday that Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, can be deported. Judge Jayme Salinardi rejected accusations made by the Department of Homeland Security that Sarsour lied on his green card application over 30 years ago, and that he registered to vote despite not being a citizen. Salindari did, however, give what Sarsour’s attorneys called “extreme deference” to a 2025 memo by Secretary of State Marco Rubio stating that Sarsour — a vocal advocate for Palestinian rights  — is deportable “because his actions undermine” U.S. foreign policy.

The same morning Salindari ruled on Sarsour’s case, he announced his retirement. A different immigration judge will preside over further proceedings in Sarsour’s case. During a press conference Wednesday, attorneys representing Sarsour called the decision “unjust,” and said the timing of  Salindari’s retirement announcement was “odd.” 

Immigration attorney Patrick Taurel said that Sarsour — who is not taking interviews at this time — was “disappointed but not shocked” by the judge’s ruling, and that he understands that immigration judges are under pressure from the Trump administration. Last year, nearly 100 immigration judges were fired by the Trump administration, shrinking the number of judges by about a quarter, NPR reported. 

“It does feel odd,” said attorney Luna Droubi, who is representing Sarsour in a separate federal case arguing First Amendment retaliation by the government. 

Taurel said he plans to appeal Salindari’s ruling down the road. Now that Sarsour has been found deportable, the next question is whether he is eligible for any kind of relief, such as asylum. Taurel said that Sarsour will eventually be able to appeal his case to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which he described as more neutral than the immigration courts. Proceedings are expected to continue into next year and under a different judge, Taurel said. 

Sarsour was in Milwaukee when immigration agents arrested him in late March. They then transported him out of Wisconsin and to a detention center in Indiana. DHS accused Sarsour of lying on his green card application in the 1990s, and claimed that he had been convicted as a teenager in Israeli military courts of throwing Molotov cocktails in 1988, during the First Intifada uprising. Sarsour grew up in the West Bank under Israeli military occupation. DHS also said that Sarsour had been charged in Israel with illegally attempting to possess weapons and ammunition in 1995. Prosecutors also accused Sarsour of registering to vote in 2004 despite not having full citizenship.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, reached for comment on the ruling, reiterated the department’s assertion that Sarsour “is a terrorist who was convicted of throwing Molotov cocktails at the homes of Israeli armed forces.” The spokesperson wrote in an email to the Examiner that “due to a previous court order, this public safety threat was loose on our streets,” and said that the judge in Sarsour’s case sustained the government’s case that there were grounds to deport Sarsour. “All illegal aliens receive due process,” the spokesperson wrote. “If a judge finds an illegal alien has no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them. Period. Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, if you break the law, you will face the consequences. Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”

Sarsour is a legal permanent resident and has lived in the United States for over 30 years, during which time he has not been arrested or convicted of any crime prior to his immigration arrest. 

Sarsour’s attorneys dispute the accusations, saying that their client was  convicted of throwing stones, not explosives. They also introduced evidence that Israeli authorities tortured Sarsour to get his confessions which were signed in Hebrew, a language Sarsour can neither speak nor read. Experts and witnesses called to the stand by Taruel testified to the use of torture by Israeli authorities, a lack of due process rights afforded to Palestinians like Sarsour, and that Sarsour continues to suffer from PTSD due to his time in Israeli detention. Another expert said that Sarsour passed a polygraph test in which he denied having registered to vote. Prosecutors did not call any witnesses or experts for their side during the proceedings. 

Although Salindari rejected the accusations that Sarsour lied on his green card application and that he registered to vote, Taurel said that the judge did give “extreme deference” to Israeli documents concerning Sarsour’s convictions. Despite the testimony involving the nature of the Israeli military court system, Salindari found the convictions against Sarsour to be valid. 

Droubi said that Sarsour’s immigration case has no bearing on his federal First Amendment retaliation case, which she and Taurel believe is the reason the Trump administration targeted Sarsour for deportation and is supported by Salinardi’s ruling that he could be deported on foreign policy grounds. After Rubio said Sarsour’s “actions undermine U.S. foreign policy,” the Justice Department announced it would begin targeting the group American Muslims for Palestine, for which Sarsour is a board member.

Sarsour’s First Amendment claims, his lack of any criminal record in the U.S. and  his deteriorating health, contributed to a federal judge’s ruling that he should be released due to having a “substantial” claim of First Amendment retaliation.

“You have to ask yourself,” Droubi told  the Examiner, “if you are an immigrant, ‘Do I have the right to speak out about issues that matter to me? What if I draw a political cartoon? Am I going to be arrested and detained because of that? Is the government going to bring charges against me and potentially remove me from this country?’” Droubi added, “That is significant, and I think it does chill the speech of immigrants and non-citizens in this country, and it should really terrify all of us.”

Taurel said that the cases of Sarsour, Mahmoud Khalil, and other Palestinian activists targeted for deportation underscore “the need for Congress to repeal the foreign policy ground of deportability.” Senator Peter Welch (D-Vermont); Senator Alex Padilla (D-California) introduced a bill titled  the Land of the Free Act to repeal the rarely-used Cold War provision of immigration law last year, saying the Trump administration had “weaponized” it to punish political speech.

Like many Palestinians born before or around the Six Day War between Israel and a group of Arab nations, Sarsour has travel documentation issued by Jordan but is not a citizen of that country. If he were deported, he would likely ultimately end up back in Israeli territory.

“We feared this outcome,” Taurel said of the judge’s decision. “But Salah is determined to keep speaking out.”

Update: This story was updated with a response from DHS on Thursday, Sept. 10 at 10:30 a.m.

Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) traveled to Leavenworth, Kansas, on Wednesday to visit an immigration detention facility where two Milwaukee women are being held, interview them and check on their welfare. Reyna Elizabeth Garcia and Estenderly Marte Polanco were both arrested during a surge of arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in early July. 

Their arrests were described as excessive and violent by advocates from Voces de la Frontera, who monitored the surge and who joined Moore on the Kansas visit. Moore said that the Leavenworth ICE facility currently holds 450 people but  is designed to hold more than 1,000. She said she saw signs of rapid expansion. Moore fears that the facility will quickly fill up with more people. “They are building so they can fill this thing up with twice as many detainees,” she said. 

Garcia and Polanco told Moore that they are being treated as human beings, Moore said. Detainees are allowed to leave their cells and be in a common area during the day, and the facility has plans for an area where detainees will be able to exercise and get access to sunlight. Moore observed various meals being prepared including kosher and vegetarian options, indicating that the facility is making an attempt to meet dietary needs, although  the food appeared to be  of  low quality. 

Most of the people held at Leavenworth are not criminals, Moore said. Still, she said, “it is a very depressive setting, it is definitely a prison, and they are aggressively building.”

Officials at the facility denied any medical neglect, Moore said, and the detention center has  doctors on call, but no full-time medical staff within the facility itself. 

“We had some hard questions for the ICE officials,” Moore said. “We were very curious to see where the murders and rapists were, and they were unable to show us that.” 

Garcia was arrested in late May along with her brother and fiance after ICE agents in unmarked vehicles followed them as they were leaving  a local grocery store in Milwaukee. Her fiance, Galo Suárez, was later released and told by ICE agents to walk away and to not look back or else he’d face consequences, he said during a Voces press conference after the arrest. Polanco was arrested the same weekend while driving with her 11-year-old son, who was in the back seat when ICE agents pulled her out of her car. During the arrest, agents split Polanco’s lip, threw her to the ground, and at one point placed her in a position where she couldn’t breathe, she said. In both arrests, agents were described by witnesses as mocking and insulting the people they were arresting. 

After her visit, Moore described Garcia as extremely depressed. Polanco checks on her, Moore said, adding that Polanco has a strong faith in the power of prayer and uses this to help lift Garcia’s spirits.

While Garcia’s fiance was released the same day he was arrested, Moore said that the family later learned that her brother had been deported. Polanco said that she told the agents that she was scared about what  would happen to her child, who was born prematurely. He remains  traumatized after witnessing her arrest, Moore said, and blames himself for his mother’s detention. 

Garcia told Moore that she left Nicaragua because “the politics put me in danger,” only to find herself in a similar situation in the U.S. 

Moore criticized the historic level of funding for ICE in recent budgets — more than $120 billion — and said her Democratic colleagues worked together to stop further allocations in the most recent budget reconciliation bill.  At Leavenworth, she said, she wondered where all the money was going. “I was looking for the sauna,” she joked. The privately run facility is operated by CoreCivic, which sold the facility to the federal government for $238.4 million — about $300,000 per bed. Moore said it is comparable to other prisons that don’t bring in  nearly as much money. 

In response to questions from the Examiner about Moore’s visit, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security called Moore’s criticisms of the facility “baseless and false.” 

“If she doesn’t like our country’s immigration laws, she should focus on changing them–not political theater,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

“Individuals in ICE detention continue to have access to on-site medical care, community emergency transport services, emergency room care, hospital admissions, and off-site specialty care,” the spokesperson added. 

“The men and women of ICE are entrusted with upholding the rule of law and are held to the highest standards of professionalism, integrity, and ethical conduct,” the spokesperson wrote. “They are trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve dangerous situations to prioritize the safety of the public and our officers. Officers are highly trained in de-escalation tactics and regularly receive ongoing use of force training.”

Stevens Point, Winnebago County, Fond du Lac County and Sheboygan are among the Wisconsin communities that have recently moved away from Flock license plate reader cameras. On Tuesday, city staff in Stevens Point began covering the cameras while local elected leaders determine whether they can cancel their Flock contract altogether. 

Meanwhile Sheboygan broke ties with Flock after the company reportedly attempted to sell the city back traffic data it was unaware the multi-billion dollar surveillance company was even collecting. Flock cameras capture images of vehicles and their license plates on the roadways. Law enforcement officers can search the data to see where a vehicle has traveled. 

Investigative reporting has shown that the cameras can also recognize human features. Over 5,000 agencies had Flock contracts in late 2025, creating a network of tens of thousands of cameras that can be queried simultaneously. Police often say that the technology has been invaluable in solving crimes including carjackings, kidnappings, homicide, drug trafficking and gun violence. The cameras are also used for less serious reasons such as for traffic enforcement and in policing evictions. 

“Reports are surfacing all over the country about the system being misused by municipal and state employees who have access to the data,” said Stevens Point Mayor Mike Wiza in a press release late last week. 

A few of those cases have played out in Wisconsin courts, police departments and sheriff’s offices. Four officers across Wisconsin have been charged with misconduct in public office and other offenses for misusing Flock cameras. 

Josue Ayala of the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) was given a year of probation and avoided jail time earlier this year after misusing Flock. Cristian Morales of the Menasha Police Department was sentenced to six months in jail and three years probation for a similar infraction. In Kenosha County, former sheriff’s deputy Frank McGrath was charged with misconduct in public office last month for misuse of the surveillance technology. In July, Milwaukee police detective Tehrangi Chapman — who worked the internal affairs investigation into Ayala’s Flock misuse — was charged with misusing the system to track someone he had been monitoring since 2019, years before Flock came to Milwaukee. Chapman and McGrath are still going through court proceedings. 

Ayala, Morales and McGrath all used Flock to monitor their current or former romantic partners. The exact relationship Chapman has to the people he allegedly monitored is not mentioned in available court records. McGrath used Flock and a squad car tracking system called Polaris to monitor his girlfriend, who was also a Kenosha County Sheriff’s deputy. Chapman allegedly employed both Flock cameras and car-mounted GPS trackers. McGrath was caught after a supervisor noticed some suspicious Flock searches in an audit, while Ayala and Chapman were both reported to police by the victims themselves. 

Numerous other officers have been investigated or charged with misusing Flock around the country. In Racine County, the district attorney admitted that a few unnamed officers have been investigated for their use of Flock cameras. 

The rash of misuse is not the only thing motivating local communities to drop Flock. When the city of Verona decided to cover its cameras in February, Mayor Diaz said that while the community trusted its police department, it no longer trusted Flock Safety. At that time the first cases of misconduct were beginning to emerge in Wisconsin, and many people had expressed fears about how the federal government — especially immigration enforcement — could leverage local Flock networks for its own priorities. Trust was also broken in Oshkosh months later, after the police chief learned that the cameras could create heatmaps of vehicle movements, contrary to what a company representative had said. 

The sheriffs and police departments in Fond du Lac County recently announced they will cancel their contracts because out of state agencies had used open records requests to obtain audit data the sheriff said was confidential and in some cases linked with ongoing investigations. Journalists and other citizens nationwide had begun requesting Flock audit data from local police departments to learn how the cameras were being used. 

In 2025, a Wisconsin Examiner analysis showed that at least 221 law enforcement agencies were using Flock in Wisconsin. Many of the searches used vague search terms such as “investigation,” “suspicious,” or non-law-enforcement terms such as “cooch,” or single characters such as “.” or “s”. Some of these vague search terms have appeared in confirmed misconduct cases. Officers in other parts of the country have also  used Flock for controversial reasons, such as tracking women suspected of traveling out of state to get an abortion. 

Flock Safety has struggled to adapt to canceled contracts and misconduct investigations. Although the company has released new features including requiring case numbers when searching the database, fixed options for search terms, and the ability to flag suspicious searches, it has also worked to hide information in the audit data such as officers’ names. Flock Safety has claimed that people have used the audit data to identify undercover officers. However, the information which Flock is making harder to view is also the very information that allowed citizens and journalists to detect instances of misconduct.

Winnebago County, Neenah, Menasha, and Chetek have each canceled a Flock contract, are considering it or have covered up their cameras. In Chetek, the police chief responded to public criticism of Flock cameras by threatening to run background checks on citizens who disagreed with his use of the cameras. Other Wisconsin communities including Kaukauna, Sturgeon Bay, Appleton, Dane County, Stoughton and Manitowoc which have also canceled their Flock contracts. 

Other communities have chosen to heighten oversight of their Flock cameras In Milwaukee, County Executive David Crowley asked that all Flock operations on county property be paused until new transparency and oversight measures could be developed.

Milwaukee County Sup. Justin Bielinski, who is also chairman of the Committee on Judiciary, Law Enforcement, and General Services, has also called on the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office to disable its Flock network. “Residents should not have to wait for another disclosure before we act,” said Bielinksi. “Even if you have confidence in the Sheriff’s Department’s use of Flock, the question remains: do we trust Flock itself with this information?”

The Milwaukee Police Department has restricted its Flock network from other local agencies, limited access to the system to supervisors only, and launched a new Flock transparency portal. The portal notes that data captured by Flock cameras in Milwaukee is only retained for seven days, and that there were 983 “search sessions” over the last 30 days. It also keeps track of the number of “hot list hits” over the last 30 days. Hot lists are lists of vehicles which law enforcement have flagged in the system. When a camera sees the flagged vehicle, a notification goes out to police in the area. The Milwaukee police transparency portal  does not track the number of vehicles detected, unlike a transparency portal released by the Green Bay Police Department.

“This effort underscores the commitments MPD has made in partnership with the Mayor to establish appropriate guardrails for the use of this technology while providing greater public understanding of how Flock [Automatic License Plate Reader] technology is used to support public safety,” the Milwaukee department said in a press release. “MPD remains committed to transparency, accountability, and the responsible use of technology. Through this new resource, MPD is continuing its efforts to provide the public with meaningful information about the tools we use to support the safety of the Milwaukee community.”

People in the community continue to push back against the cameras. Last Thursday, dozens of residents filled a Fire and Police Commission meeting to capacity in Milwaukee. An overflow room was opened to accommodate all the people who showed up to testify, unanimously rejecting Flock and calling for the city to cancel its contract. Speakers argued that Flock is a form of indiscriminate mass surveillance which can and has been used in abusive ways by police. Many of the speakers expressed deep frustration with the commission, city government and police, saying that they’d called for an end to Flock for months only to see some of their fears realized. 

Napoleon Jones, 32, was one of those people. Although Jones is from Sussex, he came to the Milwaukee FPC meeting to describe his  experience of Flock surveillance. Jones, a Navy veteran, was stopped by a Waukesha County Sheriff’s deputy after filming a traffic stop. Jones was arrested and taken to jail, only to be released without charges. When he filed a complaint about the deputy’s conduct, according to a federal lawsuit, Jones became the target of a  Flock search by that deputy, who was  directed by his supervisor to conduct the searches. 

“When I first found out I was just super surprised,” Jones told the Examiner. “I never thought it would happen to me. And when I found out and I got the records and seen how many different searches there were, I was at a loss of words because it’s hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of searches and the network is so big on these Flock cameras.” Jones added that “I drive all around. If this guy really wanted to put together a timeline of where I’m at, or who I know, or whose house I’m at, he could have done it.”

He added, “I drive past these things all the time. Everyone does.”