Fort McCoy | Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner
The commander of Fort McCoy, a military base near Sparta, Wisconsin, has been suspended after a controversy over the base not displaying portraits of President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. In a statement, the U.S. Army said that Col. Sheyla Baez Ramirez had been suspended as garrison commander at Fort McCoy.
The statement said that the suspension “is not related to any misconduct,” though the base drew recent criticism for not displaying pictures of Trump and Hegseth, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. On X, formerly known as Twitter, the Department of Defense posted a picture showing Trump’s portrait missing from a leadership wall and Hegseth’s turned so only the back of the picture was visible. The post declared: “Regarding the Ft. McCoy Chain of Command wall controversy…. WE FIXED IT! Also, an investigation has begun to figure out exactly what happened.”
Spokespeople from the Department of Defense and Fort McCoy’s 88th Readiness Division declined to comment, but told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Ramirez has “not been relieved of command.” A subsequent statement on the U.S. Army’s website said that neither Ramirez nor anyone else on the fort’s leadership team had directed the removal of the portraits. After Ramirez was suspended, Hegseth shared a post on X mentioning the commander’s suspension.
The Milwaukee County Courthouse. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
The activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents around the Milwaukee County Courthouse continue to spur controversy. Late last week, ICE agents arrested Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican immigrant accused of misdemeanor battery. Flores-Ruiz appeared in Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan’s court on April 18, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
Now, the FBI is investigating whether Dugan helped an undocumented immigrant avoid arrest after that immigrant appeared in her courtroom. Although the immigrant hasn’t been identified, Flores-Ruiz, whose immigration status is unclear, “appears to match the description,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
On April 23, Dugan declined to comment on the investigation or possible legal proceedings. ICE officials referred questions to the FBI’s Milwaukee office, which also declined to comment. The Journal Sentinel reported that an email sent by Chief Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Carly Ashley said that ICE agents came to the Milwaukee County Courthouse on April 18 with an arrest warrant. Dugan wasn’t mentioned in Ashley’s communication, which went on to say that ICE agents arrived in the morning, identified themselves to security, and went to the sixth floor where Dugan’s courtroom is located.
Ashley said that the agents were asked to wait until court proceedings were over, and that their actions were consistent with draft policies. Dugan responded to the email, however, saying “a warrant was not presented in the hallway on the 6th floor,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Instead, unnamed sources in the story said that Dugan didn’t hide a defendant, but rather took the defendant and an attorney to a side door which led to a private hallway into a public area on the sixth floor.
It was the third time since March that ICE agents arrived at the courthouse to conduct arrests. Two arrests were made in March and April, with one of the individuals arrested after appearing in family court for a hearing on a domestic violence restraining order, which was ultimately dismissed.
Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) said that Dugan acted in “defense of due process by preventing ICE from shamefully using her courtroom as an ad hoc holding area for deportations.” Clancy added that “we cannot have a functional legal system if people are justifiably afraid to show up for legal proceedings, especially when ICE agents have already repeatedly grabbed people off the street in retaliation for speech and free association, without even obtaining proper warrants.”
While Clancy praised Dugan, Rep. Bob Donovan (R-Greenfield) said “I have never seen a more irresponsible act by an officer of the court, let alone a judge, if true.”
Lincoln Hills Photo (courtesy of the Department of Corrections)
The court-issued monitor for Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake released a report Friday on conditions at the notorious juvenile facilities. It was the monitor’s 22nd visit to the prisons, and revealed both signs of improvement and lingering or worsening problems for the two facilities. The monitor noted that the populations at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake were “significantly higher” compared to the last visit in October 2024. As of April 18, there are 78 boys at Lincoln Hills, 34 youth at Mendota, six girls at Copper Lake, and four at the Grow Academy, according to weekly population reports. The total on-grounds juvenile population is currently 122, up from the 95 who were in custody in early January.
Average staffing vacancies which typically hovered around 16%-40% were lower, and the monitor stressed the need to address youth on administrative confinement, particularly those waiting to be transferred to another facility.
Despite the issues, the report found that the Department of Corrections (DOC) is in substantial compliance with 45 (or 90%) of the 50 provisions identified in a court-ordered consent decree that resulted from a 2017 lawsuit over conditions at the youth prison. With the new monitoring report, four more provisions of the consent decree were brought into substantial compliance.
“This report showcases the hard work and commitment of our staff at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake,” said DOC secretary Jared Hoy in a statement. “Tremendous progress has been made over the past seven plus years and we are looking forward to realizing a new model for juvenile corrections in Wisconsin.” The Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center began accepting girls for the first time, allowing the population at Copper Lake to be cut in half. Transfer times for boys were also reduced, and treatment teams have helped youth understand the root causes for anti-social behavior.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
The report noted that physical improvements, such as replacing heat exchangers and deck upgrades to training facilities, were made since the last visit. Wifi strength has increased in the school and other living units, making it easier for youth to access recreation and learning programs.
Youth in confinement are provided with a special education teacher, as well as a general education teacher. New classrooms have been added to the Skills Development Programs, and teachers are attending youth growth team meetings and other activities. Some incarcerated youth did complain about teachers not being on the units most of the time, and only receiving paper packet work or chromebooks. A random viewing of video by the monitor showed teachers in the units. Youth also played kickball and were in the music lab during the monitoring visit. The facility still lacks a welding instructor, a program which youth appear to enjoy. The monitor was also concerned about vacancy rates in light of the growing population at Lincoln Hills.
Living units were clean, and youth interacted with the monitor respectfully. Some housing units weren’t visited because the youth were rambunctious, but all units appeared clean and organized. Youth were calm and talkative with monitoring team members and one another, according to the report. Some played cards, ate lunch, made phone calls or watched television. When interviewed by the monitor, the youth were largely positive. They said they enjoyed new menu items, the music lab, but complained about food portion sizes. They also wished there were more jobs for them to do around the facility, and wanted the kickball unit to be switched to basketball.
“Some youth stated that staff were abusive, and some youth really liked the staff and said they treated them well,” the monitor wrote. “Youth took pride in how clean their rooms and units were.” There were also complaints about restraints, including waist belts, that have been used when they are out of their rooms. Youth felt the use of restraints was unfair, and that sometimes they weren’t told when violations were received.
In 2022, DOC received funding to move forward with a state-run juvenile facility in Milwaukee County. Land was approved on West Clinton Avenue and the design has been finalized and work began in the summer of 2024. The 32-bed facility is scheduled to be completed in late 2026. Another Type 1 facility is being designed in Dane County. Opening the new facilities will be a major step towards the Legislature’s goal of closing Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake, which have had troubled reputations for abuse and violence against youth housed there as well as staff members.
A surveillance van or "critical response vehicle". (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin has issued a letter asking elected leaders in Milwaukee to temper the acquisition and use of surveillance technologies by the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD). On Thursday evening, the police department went before the Fire and Police Commission (FPC) to push for the use of facial recognition technology. This, along with the common council’s recent approval of drone usage by the MPD, has spurred the ACLU to call for a two-year pause on the adoption of new surveillance technologies, and craft frameworks to regulate the technology MPD already has “with meaningful opportunities for community input.”
Although it acknowledges that many on the council and within MPD “care deeply about the safety and well-being of our city,” the ACLU’s letter also warns that “history has shown time and again, authoritarianism does not always arrive with flashing lights and villainous speeches — it often comes wrapped in routine procedure, paperwork, and people ‘just doing their jobs.’”
“We are already seeing how surveillance technology is being weaponized in real time,” the ACLU continued, citing data-gathering, automatic license plate readers, artificial intelligence (AI), and other tools that are used to “target and detain individuals.”
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
The MPD has long denied that it uses facial recognition technology. As part of an investigation into surveillance technologies which the department obtained ahead of the 2020 Democratic National Convention (DNC), Wisconsin Examiner reviewed “investment justification” records from the state’s Homeland Security Council which suggested that the Southeastern Threat Analysis Center — a homeland security-focused aspect of the MPD’s intel-gathering Fusion Center — utilized Clear facial recognition technology. It was described as a “mobile device” that would allow police to “conduct timely identification of individuals in the field to prevent terrorist attack.”
By contrast, MPD PowerPoint presentations prepared for the April 17 FPC meeting openly advertise the use of facial recognition. The PowerPoint details two examples of arrests made using facial recognition software. One “case study” from March 2024 involved a fatal gun violence incident where the suspects fled. The PowerPoint said that they were later seen at a gas station, and that facial recognition software provided leads to both suspects. Noting that “facial recognition results are advisory in nature and are to be treated as investigative leads only,” the PowerPoint states that a Department of Corrections agent confirmed the software’s results, leading to arrests the next morning.
One of the PowerPoint slides shows in-custody photographs of the arrested men above pictures of them masked in a gas station. The slides showed that the facial recognition software had a “similarity” rating of 99.7% for one man, and 98.1% for another. Both men are waiting for a trial. The other case study focused on a sexual assault incident involving a gun. Like the other example, surveillance footage of the suspect from a gas station helped lead to the arrest. MPD sent out a facial recognition request to local agencies. It was answered by the Wauwatosa Police Department, which returned two pictures of the same individual. The pictures had similarity ratings of 99.1% and 98.9% respectively. The arrested man was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The PowerPoint presentation lists 14 cases from the North and South Sides of Milwaukee. It states that MPD “would be diligent in balancing the need for effective, accurate investigations and the need to respect the privacy of others,” and that facial recognition does not establish probable cause to arrest someone or obtain a warrant. “It may generate investigative leads through a combination of automated biometric comparisons and human analysis,” the PowerPoint states. “Corroborating information must be developed through additional investigation.”
A PowerPoint presentation detailing the Milwaukee PD’s plans for facial recognition software.
MPD has reviewed procedures for the technology’s use nationwide, and stated that “oversight of the system will consist of an audit report showing information requested, accessed, searched, or disseminated.” All requests for facial recognition must be approved by a supervisor, and the department will keep a log of each search and the type of crime involved. Biometrica is the chosen facial recognition vendor. The PowerPoint states that the company has worked with the NAACP and the ACLU to provide anti-bias training for users of the software.
The reassurances, however, do little to quell the concerns of privacy advocates. In their letter to the MPD and common council, the ACLU of Wisconsin highlighted ongoing immigrant roundups by the Trump administration, and the deportation of Milwaukee residents to a notorious maximum security terrorism prison in El Salvador. “It is being used to monitor and prosecute political protesters, people seeking reproductive health care, LGBTQ+ individuals, and doctors trying to provide care,” the letter states. “These are not projections — these are present-day realities carried out by bad actors within the federal government and local jurisdictions.”
The ACLU letter warns, “while we trust that our local leaders and police officers have good intentions, history reminds us how quickly larger systems can override those intentions.”
“Data collected in Milwaukee does not stay in Milwaukee,” the ACLU states. “Once it enters a federal pipeline, it can be accessed, shared, and used in ways we cannot predict — or stop. That’s why now, more than ever, we must choose restraint. The rule of law at the federal level is unraveling before our eyes.”
The Milwaukee Police Administration Building downtown. A surveillance van, or “critical response vehicle” is in the background. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
The same set of concerns came up during a March 20 FPC meeting, where commissioners discussed the MPD’s use of drones and facial recognition technology. Police officials claimed that complaints about law enforcement using drones lagged behind the rate of agencies acquiring the technology, suggesting that the public approves. Police officials said that MPD’s “Airborne Assessment Team,” which is attached to the department’s Specialized Patrol Division, would help increase situational awareness, de-escalate dangerous situations, aid search-and-rescue, help manage major events and offer unique opportunities to “positively engage” with the community. In protest situations, drones would allow MPD to monitor an area while not physically placing officers nearby, whose presence could trigger an escalation among the protest crowd.
MPD said that its drones do not have facial recognition capabilities. Still, the growth of MPD’s surveillance powers have worried some community members. Commissioner Bree Spencer said during the meeting that it would be nice for a community-based tech advisory board to be established to help review MPD’s surveillance requests. Spencer said that nationwide and historically, it’s not unheard-of for law enforcement surveillance programs to get out of hand.
“I get it for water rescue, I’m very worried about things like protests,” said Spencer. “I think for very good reason. Our federal government is doing some very funky things right now with protesters. So I get what you’re saying, and I see in the SOP that you’re like, ‘We’re not going to do that.’ I don’t know if that’s sufficient in terms of a protection, particularly for people who are skeptical about the use of these technologies.”
Police officials said that drones are a crowd management tool, and that during the Republican National Convention (RNC) they helped monitor protest movements to ensure opposing groups didn’t come into contact with one another. Spencer reiterated, “I think I just worry about the cost to individual civil rights and, like, how that’s going to just keep growing in our society…I wish the public had more input into whether or not the use of this type of technology is happening here. Talking to the community is not the same as letting them have a decision about whether or not they want drones in their city being run by police.”
MPD spokespeople said the department based its drone usage procedures on best practice guidance from the ACLU, and that the department is “very late” to the drone game. The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office, for example, officially announced its drone program in 2021.
The Milwaukee County Sheriff Offices drone in flight. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Ahead of the DNC nearly five years ago, the MPD acquired large white vans called “critical response vehicles”, which are also attached to the Specialized Patrol Division and came equipped with their own tethered aerial drones. Wisconsin Examiner found that the sheriff’s drones were used to monitor police accountability protests, with the number of flights dropping significantly once the protests subsided.
In its letter Thursday, the ACLU stressed that police abuse of surveillance “is not ancient history” but rather “it’s living memory for many in our city.” Some may remember the reign of police chief Harold Breier, who surveilled civil rights activists, LGBTQ+ communities, and Black Milwaukeeans. “And those who carried out that surveillance often believed they were ‘just doing their jobs.’” The ACLU’s letter questions what a personality like Chief Breier would do with today’s surveillance powers.
“We’re not calling for a ban,” the letter states. Instead, the ACLU calls for a two-year pause on acquiring new surveillance technologies, especially facial recognition technology, “while we assess the potential risks.” In the meantime, the letter urges city leaders to “pass a framework for regulating existing surveillance technology, such as adopting a Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) Ordinance to bring accountability to these decisions before it’s too late.”
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.
Supervisor Marcelia Nicholson (Courtesy of Milwaukee County page)
“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 Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
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.
The Milwaukee County Courthouse. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
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.”
Milwaukee Health Commissioner Dr. Mike Totoraitis. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Federal layoffs have hampered the city of Milwaukee’s ability to respond to growing concerns about lead contamination in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) denied the city’s requests for assistance after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cut the agency’s response team, which would have helped Milwaukee tackle lead contamination in its K-12 schools.
“This is a pretty unprecedented scenario to not have somebody to turn to at the CDC,” said Mike Totoraitis, commissioner of the Milwaukee Health Department (MHD), during a Monday press conference. Totoraitis learned of the development, which he said left him “quite shocked,” in an email as the Health Department was planning further responses to lead contamination in MPS. “To see that all of our partners at the CDC had been let go was pretty…pretty difficult,” he said.
Although a local network of partners will continue supporting MHD’s efforts, Totoraitis said that the department now has no CDC contacts to consult with on childhood lead poisoning. The commissioner called it “a pretty stark moment for us at the department to not have someone to reach out to federally.”
In February the Health Department began reaching out to the CDC as staff members realized the scale of the lead problem e in MPS buildings. Totoraitis said the department might have to assess the school district’s 68,000 students and over 100 school buildings.
The CDC initially connected the city to specialists at the National Center for Environmental Health’s childhood lead prevention program. City health officials had hoped national teams would help investigate potential lead exposure cases and help with evaluating which schools were likely to have the worst problems.
Totoraitis explained that while there are acute exposures to lead — such as ingesting paint chips — chronic exposure from dust was paint degrades over time is also a hazard.
With closer analysis, the health department would be able to learn more about how children in Milwaukee are getting exposed to lead, including whether they’re exposed at school or at home.
CDC was expected to send three to four people to Milwaukee for up to five weeks, he said, as well as provide technical assistance from individuals advising the department remotely from Atlanta.
“That’s why we engaged them right away,” said Totoraitis. He described the team as “the top experts in the field for lead exposure,” with experience dealing with lead hazards at a much wider scale than local experts in Milwaukee.
There was “no indication” that the CDC teams would be let go, said Totoraitis. “So that was pretty startling,” he added. Preparation to deploy the teams was underway when the CDC abruptly canceled “overnight” on April 1.
So far, nearly 250 MPS students have been tested for lead poisoning and several schools have been shut down as work crews undertake remediation efforts.
In early April, MPS announced that it was separating with its facilities director Sean Kane, who’d been with the district for 25 years. Officials said Kane had not allowed health department staff into Golda Meir School to do a full risk assessment and did not disclose that remediation work had been attempted after a student tested positive for lead contamination.
Childhood lead contamination has been linked to cognitive disorders including degraded impulse control, learning disabilities and violent behavior. About 85 MPS schools were built before 1970 and are therefore at high risks of lead contamination.
Totoraitis said that so far, there isn’t a timeline on when MPS schools that have been closed due to lead will reopen. Fernwood Montessori School, Starms Early Childhood Center and LaFollette School were closed, while four others that had been closed were re-opened.
Totoraitis said that remediation work is farthest along at Fernwood, which is beginning its fifth week of closure. Fernwood was “significantly worse off” than investigators anticipated and required extensive repair work, he said.
As the city works to respond to the lead issue, federal staff and the unpredictability of federal assistance will remain a challenge. Just a couple of weeks ago, the city lost $11 million in COVID-19 grants that were geared towards “recovery” rather than “response,” officials said.
“The part that’s really concerning for us is there hasn’t been any communication warning us of these changes and shifts in personnel,” said Totoraitis. “April 1 is a really stark moment for public health here across the country, and specifically here in Milwaukee, where now we don’t know who to call. We don’t know how to respond to some of the challenges that we’re dealing with right now because we don’t know if I’m reaching out to someone today, if they’re going to be there tomorrow.”
Totoraitis said the Health Department and its local partners stand ready to respond, but he questioned what could happen if the department encounters a complex challenge, such as a particularly complicated blood screening data.
“The CDC brings that expertise, that bigger picture, that we just don’t have eyes to because we’re here focused on an issue in Milwaukee,” said Totoraitis.
Richard Schaefer took part in a clinical trial of psilocybin as a treatment for addiction. (Photo courtesy of Richard Schaefer)
It was a day like any other when Richard Schaefer entered a Madison health care clinic to receive harm reduction supplies. Over 10 years, Schaefer had tried recovering from what began with dependence on a prescription for the pain killer Percocet and later spiraled into an all-consuming heroin addiction. As Schaefer waited for his supplies, he noticed an advertisement seeking volunteers for a study into whether therapy assisted by psilocybin – the active compound in psychedelic mushrooms – could unshackle people from addiction.
“I’ve tried all types of rehabs,” said Schaefer when he spoke recently with the Wisconsin Examiner. Schaefer is 42, off heroin and training to be a peer support specialist. But from rehab clinics in Oshkosh and Wauwatosa to a 30-day program in the Racine County Jail, old-school complete abstinence and medication-assisted treatment using suboxone, Schaefer had tried it all. “I don’t know if it was more of the timing of being ready to quit or just finding something that actually works for me,” he said. “Something different, an alternative route…This study really changed my life, to tell you the truth.”
Nasal Narcan, used to reverse an overdose, stock the inside of a harm reduction vending machine in Milwaukee County. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Although overdose deaths are down in every state and the District of Columbia for the first time since the fentanyl crisis began, millions of people continue to struggle with opioid use disorder nationwide. With demand for treatment still high, the University of Wisconsin Transdisciplinary Center for Research in Psychoactive Substances (TCRPS) is working on finding solutions. Using psilocybin, the team at UW-Madison is developing groundbreaking new therapies tailor-made for people like Schaefer. Advertisements for the study, which focuses on opioid and methamphetamine addiction, can be found in Madison health care clinics like the one Schaefer visited and even on signs on city buses.
“We already have seen evidence that psilocybin can do some remarkable things to improve the patients’ ability to gain and process important insights about their lives and experiences,” Paul Hutson, a professor and founding director of TCRPS, told UW News in 2023. “We’re excited to see what it can do along those same lines for patients struggling with substance abuse, many of whom have overlapping mental health conditions.”
A bipartisan bill that began circulating last session in the Wisconsin Legislature aimed to make psychedelic drug treatment available to veterans suffering from PTSD. Commenting on a psilocybin study at UW-Madison that aims to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in combat veterans, UW researcher and professor Dr. Cody Wenthur told Wisconsin Examiner that conducting trials with an inclusive cross-section of subjects is important.
Although funding cuts by the Trump Administration have undermined research efforts across the country, UW’s psilocybin study is not at risk, university officials say. A university spokesperson said that the study’s funding does not come from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and thus is “insulated” from cuts to NIH funding.
Nationwide millions of people struggle with an opioid use disorder of some kind. Wisconsin alone annually loses thousands of lives to drug overdoses, with a large portion of those deaths linked with variants of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. By 2038, Wisconsin is expected to receive over $780 million in settlement funding from lawsuits against the companies that seeded the overdose crisis by funneling large volumes of addictive medications into communities. That funding could be used to repair the lives of people and the health of their communities.
A mushroom light. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Before he started taking Percoset, Schaefer was a college-educated operations manager at a furniture company, who’d grown up in Racine County. A husband, father and homeowner, he was climbing the ladder in his company when he was prescribed the pain killers. “Everything just kind of quickly fell apart,” said Schaefer, “within about six months to a year I lost all that.”
During those six months his use of the medication became a recreational habit, then developed into a heroin addiction. Once needles came into the picture, “then it’s just no going back,” Schaefer said. “I ended up going down the drain. I lost my marriage, I lost custody of my kids on an overdose, and then I lost my job — my career I was at for 10 years. And then I lost my house to a foreclosure.” The degradation of his life was swift. He recalled being kicked out of two sober houses. Eventually, he said, “I ended up on the streets.”
The doors of perception
Schaefer was immediately intrigued when he saw an advertisement for the psilocybin study. He was already on a suboxone regimen in December 2023, which he said helped him get “on the other side of the wall” from his addiction. He entered the study the following month after contacting the research team. Numerous physical health assessments, phone calls, interviews and meetings followed.
Schaefer was connected with “two really great therapists,” Travis Fox, a doctor in psychology and Nikki Zellner, a licensed clinical social worker. Their compassion and patience formed the bedrock for his recovery. He had to meet them once a week for a month, in addition to meeting other requirements.
When you look at it as medicine rather than a drug, then we can have a different view on it.
– Richard Schaefer
“They really got to know me and really bring out, or work on, issues that I had suppressed in my life, going back to childhood.” Schaefer said. Fox and Zellner “helped me to learn to love myself again,” he added. It was an alternative approach to therapy that Schaefer hadn’t seen in other recovery programs. “They accepted me for who I am, and helped me to learn that it’s OK to be myself,” he said. “To find the freedom of making a choice, it wasn’t all about abstinence, which a lot of programs are.” Schaefer said that “somehow, with making it my choice, I’ve become a new person and really found a new freedom with that, and really blossomed and come a long ways.”
By April, Schaefer was ready to step into the experience of psilocybin-based therapy. Early in the morning he caught a cab to be dosed at the the UW School of Pharmacy. After one final physical check-up and conversation with doctors, Schaefer was led to a space which he called “the sacred room there.” In that comfortable room surrounded by artwork and with a couch and spaces for Schaefer and the therapists to sit, Schaefer took “the medicine” and his journey began.
“They didn’t tell me what to call it,” said Schaefer, speaking of the psilocybin he took. “When you look at it as medicine rather than a drug, then we can have a different view on it.”
Taking his shoes off as he entered the room, Schaefer lay back on the couch, took a tablet, donned a blindfold and waited as about 20 minutes passed.
“I remember the first session for me was kind of like a movie,” he said. “Like different scenes kept coming to me, you know? Different waves kept coming to me. And some of it was different scenes from life, some of it made sense, or some of it I’m still trying to make sense of what they were. But I realized a lot of things in that first session alone.”
“I think I was learning to find myself,” he said of the experience. A persistent sense of comfort, peace and acceptance stayed with Schaefer after that first session. His ego had been muted, “and I just had this new sense that things were OK,” he said. “I began to have a new outlook on life then.”
A cluster of mushrooms. (Art courtesy of Heather R.)
Sometimes participants in the psilocybin trials need a bathroom break or to pull out and communicate about what is happening. Zellner and Fox were never far away, and were open to talking to him while he was undergoing the journey. “It’s hard to put words on things while you’re having the medicine in you,” said Schaefer. “I go into it and would like to tell them all these things going on, and to be recorded, and jot down and stuff, but it’s like you can’t find the words to say it.”
“You’re kind of in another world,” he added, saying there may not actually be human language to describe some of the experience. The second dose was even more profound. The “scenes” returned with astonishing vividness. Schaefer recalled going through stages of what felt like collective “human sadness” as well as happiness and joy.
“There was like a buildup from down and dark to the absolute most bright light and loving energy that I’d ever experienced,” he said. It was in that peak moment “when I felt that I was in the presence of a higher power,” which manifested as a sort of “god” or “energy that was in front of me.” He said he felt a distinctly separate, intelligent presence throughout his sessions, “like things were being taught to me and shown to me.”
Whatever it was, the presence gave him “the most awesome comforting feeling I’ve ever felt in my life,” Schaefer recalled. The feeling melted away as Schaefer descended from that blissful state.
Integration
In many ways, the hard work begins after the psychedelic experience ends. With the help of their therapists, study participants must attempt to integrate and process what they learned during the sessions. “The integration was powerful because of the therapists being there, to immediately process things coming to your mind,” said Schaefer.
After each session, Schaefer was walked back to the hospital where he was given some alone time for the night. He never interacted with any other study participants. The next morning, Schaefer met with Fox and Zellner again for a clearer, deeper dive into the prior day’s session. Another follow up came about a week later. “And again, man, that has been such a life-changing experience having a psychedelic medicine with therapists,” Schaefer said, emphasizing that without proper integration and therapy after psychedelic experiences, “you’re lost.”
Today, Schaefer is clean from heroin and opioids and living a healthier life. Undergoing the psilocybin study at UW-Madison has inspired him to pursue a career as a certified peer support specialist, for which he’s currently finishing training. He aims to become an advocate for harm reduction medications and alternative psychedelic therapies for addiction recovery.
“I would say it’s not for everybody, but for some people who’ve tried different approaches and it hasn’t worked, and they’re serious about changing their life and having an open mind, then this could really be a profound experience to help them go in a new direction,” said Schaefer.
He hopes that both treatment providers and people struggling with addiction remember that recovery takes patience, compassion, and that it doesn’t have to rely on an abstinence-only philosophy. “It might take 20 times … trying different approaches,” he said.
Prisoners sit at the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, a mega-prison in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador, on April 4, 2025. The Trump administration has acknowledged mistakenly deporting a Maryland resident from El Salvador with protected status to the prison but is arguing against returning him to the U.S. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)
A disgraced former Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) officer was found to be linked to a high-profile deportation by the Trump Administration. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Charles Cross Jr. 62, signed a report that claimed Andry José Hernandez, 30, a gay Venezuelan citizen who worked as a make-up artist, was linked to the Tren de Aragua gang and cited his tattoos. Cross, now employed by the private prison company CoreCivic, left MPD under a cloud of conduct and credibility problems, which also landed him on the Brady list of untrustworthy officers maintained by the Milwaukee County district attorney’s office.
In 2012 when he held the rank of sergeant at MPD, Cross was fired after driving his car into a family’s home while he was intoxicated. Cross was allowed to resign after appealing the decision to the Fire and Police Commission (FPC). The Journal Sentinel also reports that Cross was being investigated for claiming overtime he allegedly hadn’t earned when he was fired from the department.
Prior to the crash, Cross had been placed on the Brady list after kicking in the door of an apartment shared with his girlfriend and threatening to kill himself with his service revolver. The incident, in 2007, cost him his job, but Cross was reinstated after appealing to the FPC. Four months after he separated from MPD in 2012, Cross was hired by CoreCivic, the Journal Sentinel reported.
According to court filings, Cross identified himself as an “investigator” in a form claiming Hernandez was part of Tren de Aragua, one of the gangs that the Trump administration says it is targeting through mass deportations and detentions of non-citizens. Hernandez had tattoos depicting crowns with the words “dad” and “mom.” Hernandez’s attorneys say the crowns are a reference to the “Three Kings” festival in his hometown of Capacho, Venezuela, and are not connected to Tren de Aragua, as Cross reportedly assumed.
Hernandez was one of more than 200 mostly Venezuelan migrants sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center. Authorities at the prison have been accused of human rights violations and torture.
Hernandez fled Venezuela fearing persecution for being a gay man, as well as for his political views. The Journal Sentinel reports that after entering the U.S. illegally, he was apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol agents and sent to Mexico, where he made an appointment and presented himself at a port of entry in San Diego. Hernandez was asked about his tattoos by federal agents, who named him as a “suspect,” but didn’t check any of the other categories on the questionnaire such as “intelligence information received from other agencies” or “group photos.” Since he was deported to El Salvador, Hernandez has not been able to reach his lawyers.
The developments have raised questions about the involvement of private contractors in immigration and deportation actions, as well as the ability of police officers with problematic histories to be hired by private companies like CoreCivic.
The Milwaukee County Courthouse. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office of Milwaukee released new information Tuesday regarding the arrests of two undocumented immigrants at the county courthouse.
A spokesperson wrote in an email statement that Edwin Bustamante-Sierre, 27, and Marco Cruz-Garcia, 24, were arrested by ICE at the courthouse. The statement said that Bustamante-Sierre, a citizen of Nicaragua, was arrested on April 3, and convicted in Fond du Lac County for reckless driving on Dec. 5, 2024. He is currently charged with endangering safety, reckless use of a firearm, use of a dangerous weapon and cocaine possession in Milwaukee County, the email statement read.
Mexican citizen Cruz-Garcia, the spokesperson wrote, was detained by ICE on March 20. The agency’s statement accuses Cruz-Garcia of being a known member of the “Sureños transnational criminal street gang” and states that he’d been arrested for “multiple criminal charges including breaking and entering, car theft, and assault.” The spokesperson wrote that an immigration judge ordered Cruz-Garcia to be deported to Mexico on Feb. 5, 2020.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
Wisconsin Examiner was unable to locate an online court record related to Bustamante-Sierre. For Cruz-Garcia, online court records show a case filed on Jan. 18 involving one count of misdemeanor battery with a domestic abuse modifier. The court record shows that on March 9, Cruz-Garcia was in custody and appeared in court via video, where it was noted that he was indigent. Cruz-Garcia’s case was assigned to another judge and he was turned over for supervison to Justice Point, a non-profit organization which provides a variety of evidence-based criminal justice programs.
All Cruz-Garcia’s prior court orders, including a no-contact order and no possession of firearms, remained in place, as he was required to attend all future court proceedings. On March 20, the day he was detained by ICE, Cruz-Garcia appeared in family court where a domestic violence restraining order was dismissed.
Days later in early April, there was a courtroom discussion about Cruz-Garcia having been deported to Mexico. Rather than dismissing the case, as defense attorneys asked, Circuit Court Judge Marshall Murray (serving as a reserve for Judge Rebecca Kiefer) granted a prosecutor’s request for a warrant to be issued, according to online court records. An order to review the dismissal of the case against Cruz-Garcia 60 days from April 2 was also issued.
Courthouses are not immune from the Trump administration’s deportation efforts. On Jan. 21, ICE was directed to conduct “civil immigration enforcement actions in or near courthouses when they have credible information that leads them to believe the targeted alien(s) is or will be present at a specific location, and where such action is not precluded by laws imposed by the jurisdiction in which the civil immigration enforcement action will take place.”
Agents are instructed to conduct enforcement actions “in non-public areas of the courthouse” in collaboration with court security staff, and to use “non-public entrances and exits.” Wherever possible, ICE agents should operate “discreetly to minimize their impact on court proceedings,” the directive states. The order also says ICE agents and officers should avoid actions in or near non-criminal courthouses, such as family or small claims court.
Last week, the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) said in a press statement that it did not participate in the arrests. Although MCSO was aware of the first arrest, the office was not given advance notice of the second arrest. The press release did not name the people who were arrested, and noted that it’s “not uncommon” for law enforcement agencies to search available databases for upcoming court hearings to find targeted individuals.
The Milwaukee County Courthouse. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
The courthouse arrests were widely condemned by community members. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said “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.” Senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin Tim Muth echoed concerns that the arrests would create an atmosphere of fear around the courthouse. “Research by the ACLU has shown that when ICE is known to be active in courthouses, members of the immigrant community are less likely to report crimes, less likely to cooperate with police and prosecutors and less likely to make their court appearances,” said Muth. “Our communities become less safe as a consequence.”
Activists from the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression also expressed concerns about database sharing between local and federal law enforcement, and called for the courthouse to be a safe space for people to come for legal support, services and to seek justice. Over the weekend, at a rally protesting policies by the Trump administration and Elon Musk, local immigration activists raised those same concerns. “People will be afraid to come to the courthouse if that is not a protected zone,” said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera during the protest. “And we know that these local fights are our frontline battles.”
Lincoln Hills Photo (courtesy of the Department of Corrections)
The court-issued monitor for Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake released a report Friday on conditions at the notorious juvenile facilities. It was the monitor’s 22nd visit to the prisons, and revealed both signs of improvement and lingering or worsening problems for the two facilities. The monitor noted that the populations at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake were “significantly higher” compared to the last visit in October 2024. As of April 18, there are 78 boys at Lincoln Hills, 34 youth at Mendota, six girls at Copper Lake, and four at the Grow Academy, according to weekly population reports. The total on-grounds juvenile population is currently 122, up from the 95 who were in custody in early January.
Average staffing vacancies which typically hovered around 16%-40% were lower, and the monitor stressed the need to address youth on administrative confinement, particularly those waiting to be transferred to another facility.
Despite the issues, the report found that the Department of Corrections (DOC) is in substantial compliance with 45 (or 90%) of the 50 provisions identified in a court-ordered consent decree that resulted from a 2017 lawsuit over conditions at the youth prison. With the new monitoring report, four more provisions of the consent decree were brought into substantial compliance.
“This report showcases the hard work and commitment of our staff at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake,” said DOC secretary Jared Hoy in a statement. “Tremendous progress has been made over the past seven plus years and we are looking forward to realizing a new model for juvenile corrections in Wisconsin.” The Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center began accepting girls for the first time, allowing the population at Copper Lake to be cut in half. Transfer times for boys were also reduced, and treatment teams have helped youth understand the root causes for anti-social behavior.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
The report noted that physical improvements, such as replacing heat exchangers and deck upgrades to training facilities, were made since the last visit. Wifi strength has increased in the school and other living units, making it easier for youth to access recreation and learning programs.
Youth in confinement are provided with a special education teacher, as well as a general education teacher. New classrooms have been added to the Skills Development Programs, and teachers are attending youth growth team meetings and other activities. Some incarcerated youth did complain about teachers not being on the units most of the time, and only receiving paper packet work or chromebooks. A random viewing of video by the monitor showed teachers in the units. Youth also played kickball and were in the music lab during the monitoring visit. The facility still lacks a welding instructor, a program which youth appear to enjoy. The monitor was also concerned about vacancy rates in light of the growing population at Lincoln Hills.
Living units were clean, and youth interacted with the monitor respectfully. Some housing units weren’t visited because the youth were rambunctious, but all units appeared clean and organized. Youth were calm and talkative with monitoring team members and one another, according to the report. Some played cards, ate lunch, made phone calls or watched television. When interviewed by the monitor, the youth were largely positive. They said they enjoyed new menu items, the music lab, but complained about food portion sizes. They also wished there were more jobs for them to do around the facility, and wanted the kickball unit to be switched to basketball.
“Some youth stated that staff were abusive, and some youth really liked the staff and said they treated them well,” the monitor wrote. “Youth took pride in how clean their rooms and units were.” There were also complaints about restraints, including waist belts, that have been used when they are out of their rooms. Youth felt the use of restraints was unfair, and that sometimes they weren’t told when violations were received.
In 2022, DOC received funding to move forward with a state-run juvenile facility in Milwaukee County. Land was approved on West Clinton Avenue and the design has been finalized and work began in the summer of 2024. The 32-bed facility is scheduled to be completed in late 2026. Another Type 1 facility is being designed in Dane County. Opening the new facilities will be a major step towards the Legislature’s goal of closing Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake, which have had troubled reputations for abuse and violence against youth housed there as well as staff members.
A surveillance van or "critical response vehicle". (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin has issued a letter asking elected leaders in Milwaukee to temper the acquisition and use of surveillance technologies by the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD). On Thursday evening, the police department went before the Fire and Police Commission (FPC) to push for the use of facial recognition technology. This, along with the common council’s recent approval of drone usage by the MPD, has spurred the ACLU to call for a two-year pause on the adoption of new surveillance technologies, and craft frameworks to regulate the technology MPD already has “with meaningful opportunities for community input.”
Although it acknowledges that many on the council and within MPD “care deeply about the safety and well-being of our city,” the ACLU’s letter also warns that “history has shown time and again, authoritarianism does not always arrive with flashing lights and villainous speeches — it often comes wrapped in routine procedure, paperwork, and people ‘just doing their jobs.’”
“We are already seeing how surveillance technology is being weaponized in real time,” the ACLU continued, citing data-gathering, automatic license plate readers, artificial intelligence (AI), and other tools that are used to “target and detain individuals.”
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
The MPD has long denied that it uses facial recognition technology. As part of an investigation into surveillance technologies which the department obtained ahead of the 2020 Democratic National Convention (DNC), Wisconsin Examiner reviewed “investment justification” records from the state’s Homeland Security Council which suggested that the Southeastern Threat Analysis Center — a homeland security-focused aspect of the MPD’s intel-gathering Fusion Center — utilized Clear facial recognition technology. It was described as a “mobile device” that would allow police to “conduct timely identification of individuals in the field to prevent terrorist attack.”
By contrast, MPD PowerPoint presentations prepared for the April 17 FPC meeting openly advertise the use of facial recognition. The PowerPoint details two examples of arrests made using facial recognition software. One “case study” from March 2024 involved a fatal gun violence incident where the suspects fled. The PowerPoint said that they were later seen at a gas station, and that facial recognition software provided leads to both suspects. Noting that “facial recognition results are advisory in nature and are to be treated as investigative leads only,” the PowerPoint states that a Department of Corrections agent confirmed the software’s results, leading to arrests the next morning.
One of the PowerPoint slides shows in-custody photographs of the arrested men above pictures of them masked in a gas station. The slides showed that the facial recognition software had a “similarity” rating of 99.7% for one man, and 98.1% for another. Both men are waiting for a trial. The other case study focused on a sexual assault incident involving a gun. Like the other example, surveillance footage of the suspect from a gas station helped lead to the arrest. MPD sent out a facial recognition request to local agencies. It was answered by the Wauwatosa Police Department, which returned two pictures of the same individual. The pictures had similarity ratings of 99.1% and 98.9% respectively. The arrested man was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The PowerPoint presentation lists 14 cases from the North and South Sides of Milwaukee. It states that MPD “would be diligent in balancing the need for effective, accurate investigations and the need to respect the privacy of others,” and that facial recognition does not establish probable cause to arrest someone or obtain a warrant. “It may generate investigative leads through a combination of automated biometric comparisons and human analysis,” the PowerPoint states. “Corroborating information must be developed through additional investigation.”
A PowerPoint presentation detailing the Milwaukee PD’s plans for facial recognition software.
MPD has reviewed procedures for the technology’s use nationwide, and stated that “oversight of the system will consist of an audit report showing information requested, accessed, searched, or disseminated.” All requests for facial recognition must be approved by a supervisor, and the department will keep a log of each search and the type of crime involved. Biometrica is the chosen facial recognition vendor. The PowerPoint states that the company has worked with the NAACP and the ACLU to provide anti-bias training for users of the software.
The reassurances, however, do little to quell the concerns of privacy advocates. In their letter to the MPD and common council, the ACLU of Wisconsin highlighted ongoing immigrant roundups by the Trump administration, and the deportation of Milwaukee residents to a notorious maximum security terrorism prison in El Salvador. “It is being used to monitor and prosecute political protesters, people seeking reproductive health care, LGBTQ+ individuals, and doctors trying to provide care,” the letter states. “These are not projections — these are present-day realities carried out by bad actors within the federal government and local jurisdictions.”
The ACLU letter warns, “while we trust that our local leaders and police officers have good intentions, history reminds us how quickly larger systems can override those intentions.”
“Data collected in Milwaukee does not stay in Milwaukee,” the ACLU states. “Once it enters a federal pipeline, it can be accessed, shared, and used in ways we cannot predict — or stop. That’s why now, more than ever, we must choose restraint. The rule of law at the federal level is unraveling before our eyes.”
The Milwaukee Police Administration Building downtown. A surveillance van, or “critical response vehicle” is in the background. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
The same set of concerns came up during a March 20 FPC meeting, where commissioners discussed the MPD’s use of drones and facial recognition technology. Police officials claimed that complaints about law enforcement using drones lagged behind the rate of agencies acquiring the technology, suggesting that the public approves. Police officials said that MPD’s “Airborne Assessment Team,” which is attached to the department’s Specialized Patrol Division, would help increase situational awareness, de-escalate dangerous situations, aid search-and-rescue, help manage major events and offer unique opportunities to “positively engage” with the community. In protest situations, drones would allow MPD to monitor an area while not physically placing officers nearby, whose presence could trigger an escalation among the protest crowd.
MPD said that its drones do not have facial recognition capabilities. Still, the growth of MPD’s surveillance powers have worried some community members. Commissioner Bree Spencer said during the meeting that it would be nice for a community-based tech advisory board to be established to help review MPD’s surveillance requests. Spencer said that nationwide and historically, it’s not unheard-of for law enforcement surveillance programs to get out of hand.
“I get it for water rescue, I’m very worried about things like protests,” said Spencer. “I think for very good reason. Our federal government is doing some very funky things right now with protesters. So I get what you’re saying, and I see in the SOP that you’re like, ‘We’re not going to do that.’ I don’t know if that’s sufficient in terms of a protection, particularly for people who are skeptical about the use of these technologies.”
Police officials said that drones are a crowd management tool, and that during the Republican National Convention (RNC) they helped monitor protest movements to ensure opposing groups didn’t come into contact with one another. Spencer reiterated, “I think I just worry about the cost to individual civil rights and, like, how that’s going to just keep growing in our society…I wish the public had more input into whether or not the use of this type of technology is happening here. Talking to the community is not the same as letting them have a decision about whether or not they want drones in their city being run by police.”
MPD spokespeople said the department based its drone usage procedures on best practice guidance from the ACLU, and that the department is “very late” to the drone game. The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office, for example, officially announced its drone program in 2021.
The Milwaukee County Sheriff Offices drone in flight. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Ahead of the DNC nearly five years ago, the MPD acquired large white vans called “critical response vehicles”, which are also attached to the Specialized Patrol Division and came equipped with their own tethered aerial drones. Wisconsin Examiner found that the sheriff’s drones were used to monitor police accountability protests, with the number of flights dropping significantly once the protests subsided.
In its letter Thursday, the ACLU stressed that police abuse of surveillance “is not ancient history” but rather “it’s living memory for many in our city.” Some may remember the reign of police chief Harold Breier, who surveilled civil rights activists, LGBTQ+ communities, and Black Milwaukeeans. “And those who carried out that surveillance often believed they were ‘just doing their jobs.’” The ACLU’s letter questions what a personality like Chief Breier would do with today’s surveillance powers.
“We’re not calling for a ban,” the letter states. Instead, the ACLU calls for a two-year pause on acquiring new surveillance technologies, especially facial recognition technology, “while we assess the potential risks.” In the meantime, the letter urges city leaders to “pass a framework for regulating existing surveillance technology, such as adopting a Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) Ordinance to bring accountability to these decisions before it’s too late.”
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.
Supervisor Marcelia Nicholson (Courtesy of Milwaukee County page)
“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 Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
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.
The Milwaukee County Courthouse. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
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.”
Milwaukee Health Commissioner Dr. Mike Totoraitis. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Federal layoffs have hampered the city of Milwaukee’s ability to respond to growing concerns about lead contamination in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) denied the city’s requests for assistance after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cut the agency’s response team, which would have helped Milwaukee tackle lead contamination in its K-12 schools.
“This is a pretty unprecedented scenario to not have somebody to turn to at the CDC,” said Mike Totoraitis, commissioner of the Milwaukee Health Department (MHD), during a Monday press conference. Totoraitis learned of the development, which he said left him “quite shocked,” in an email as the Health Department was planning further responses to lead contamination in MPS. “To see that all of our partners at the CDC had been let go was pretty…pretty difficult,” he said.
Although a local network of partners will continue supporting MHD’s efforts, Totoraitis said that the department now has no CDC contacts to consult with on childhood lead poisoning. The commissioner called it “a pretty stark moment for us at the department to not have someone to reach out to federally.”
In February the Health Department began reaching out to the CDC as staff members realized the scale of the lead problem e in MPS buildings. Totoraitis said the department might have to assess the school district’s 68,000 students and over 100 school buildings.
The CDC initially connected the city to specialists at the National Center for Environmental Health’s childhood lead prevention program. City health officials had hoped national teams would help investigate potential lead exposure cases and help with evaluating which schools were likely to have the worst problems.
Totoraitis explained that while there are acute exposures to lead — such as ingesting paint chips — chronic exposure from dust was paint degrades over time is also a hazard.
With closer analysis, the health department would be able to learn more about how children in Milwaukee are getting exposed to lead, including whether they’re exposed at school or at home.
CDC was expected to send three to four people to Milwaukee for up to five weeks, he said, as well as provide technical assistance from individuals advising the department remotely from Atlanta.
“That’s why we engaged them right away,” said Totoraitis. He described the team as “the top experts in the field for lead exposure,” with experience dealing with lead hazards at a much wider scale than local experts in Milwaukee.
There was “no indication” that the CDC teams would be let go, said Totoraitis. “So that was pretty startling,” he added. Preparation to deploy the teams was underway when the CDC abruptly canceled “overnight” on April 1.
So far, nearly 250 MPS students have been tested for lead poisoning and several schools have been shut down as work crews undertake remediation efforts.
In early April, MPS announced that it was separating with its facilities director Sean Kane, who’d been with the district for 25 years. Officials said Kane had not allowed health department staff into Golda Meir School to do a full risk assessment and did not disclose that remediation work had been attempted after a student tested positive for lead contamination.
Childhood lead contamination has been linked to cognitive disorders including degraded impulse control, learning disabilities and violent behavior. About 85 MPS schools were built before 1970 and are therefore at high risks of lead contamination.
Totoraitis said that so far, there isn’t a timeline on when MPS schools that have been closed due to lead will reopen. Fernwood Montessori School, Starms Early Childhood Center and LaFollette School were closed, while four others that had been closed were re-opened.
Totoraitis said that remediation work is farthest along at Fernwood, which is beginning its fifth week of closure. Fernwood was “significantly worse off” than investigators anticipated and required extensive repair work, he said.
As the city works to respond to the lead issue, federal staff and the unpredictability of federal assistance will remain a challenge. Just a couple of weeks ago, the city lost $11 million in COVID-19 grants that were geared towards “recovery” rather than “response,” officials said.
“The part that’s really concerning for us is there hasn’t been any communication warning us of these changes and shifts in personnel,” said Totoraitis. “April 1 is a really stark moment for public health here across the country, and specifically here in Milwaukee, where now we don’t know who to call. We don’t know how to respond to some of the challenges that we’re dealing with right now because we don’t know if I’m reaching out to someone today, if they’re going to be there tomorrow.”
Totoraitis said the Health Department and its local partners stand ready to respond, but he questioned what could happen if the department encounters a complex challenge, such as a particularly complicated blood screening data.
“The CDC brings that expertise, that bigger picture, that we just don’t have eyes to because we’re here focused on an issue in Milwaukee,” said Totoraitis.
Richard Schaefer took part in a clinical trial of psilocybin as a treatment for addiction. (Photo courtesy of Richard Schaefer)
It was a day like any other when Richard Schaefer entered a Madison health care clinic to receive harm reduction supplies. Over 10 years, Schaefer had tried recovering from what began with dependence on a prescription for the pain killer Percocet and later spiraled into an all-consuming heroin addiction. As Schaefer waited for his supplies, he noticed an advertisement seeking volunteers for a study into whether therapy assisted by psilocybin – the active compound in psychedelic mushrooms – could unshackle people from addiction.
“I’ve tried all types of rehabs,” said Schaefer when he spoke recently with the Wisconsin Examiner. Schaefer is 42, off heroin and training to be a peer support specialist. But from rehab clinics in Oshkosh and Wauwatosa to a 30-day program in the Racine County Jail, old-school complete abstinence and medication-assisted treatment using suboxone, Schaefer had tried it all. “I don’t know if it was more of the timing of being ready to quit or just finding something that actually works for me,” he said. “Something different, an alternative route…This study really changed my life, to tell you the truth.”
Nasal Narcan, used to reverse an overdose, stock the inside of a harm reduction vending machine in Milwaukee County. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Although overdose deaths are down in every state and the District of Columbia for the first time since the fentanyl crisis began, millions of people continue to struggle with opioid use disorder nationwide. With demand for treatment still high, the University of Wisconsin Transdisciplinary Center for Research in Psychoactive Substances (TCRPS) is working on finding solutions. Using psilocybin, the team at UW-Madison is developing groundbreaking new therapies tailor-made for people like Schaefer. Advertisements for the study, which focuses on opioid and methamphetamine addiction, can be found in Madison health care clinics like the one Schaefer visited and even on signs on city buses.
“We already have seen evidence that psilocybin can do some remarkable things to improve the patients’ ability to gain and process important insights about their lives and experiences,” Paul Hutson, a professor and founding director of TCRPS, told UW News in 2023. “We’re excited to see what it can do along those same lines for patients struggling with substance abuse, many of whom have overlapping mental health conditions.”
A bipartisan bill that began circulating last session in the Wisconsin Legislature aimed to make psychedelic drug treatment available to veterans suffering from PTSD. Commenting on a psilocybin study at UW-Madison that aims to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in combat veterans, UW researcher and professor Dr. Cody Wenthur told Wisconsin Examiner that conducting trials with an inclusive cross-section of subjects is important.
Although funding cuts by the Trump Administration have undermined research efforts across the country, UW’s psilocybin study is not at risk, university officials say. A university spokesperson said that the study’s funding does not come from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and thus is “insulated” from cuts to NIH funding.
Nationwide millions of people struggle with an opioid use disorder of some kind. Wisconsin alone annually loses thousands of lives to drug overdoses, with a large portion of those deaths linked with variants of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. By 2038, Wisconsin is expected to receive over $780 million in settlement funding from lawsuits against the companies that seeded the overdose crisis by funneling large volumes of addictive medications into communities. That funding could be used to repair the lives of people and the health of their communities.
A mushroom light. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Before he started taking Percoset, Schaefer was a college-educated operations manager at a furniture company, who’d grown up in Racine County. A husband, father and homeowner, he was climbing the ladder in his company when he was prescribed the pain killers. “Everything just kind of quickly fell apart,” said Schaefer, “within about six months to a year I lost all that.”
During those six months his use of the medication became a recreational habit, then developed into a heroin addiction. Once needles came into the picture, “then it’s just no going back,” Schaefer said. “I ended up going down the drain. I lost my marriage, I lost custody of my kids on an overdose, and then I lost my job — my career I was at for 10 years. And then I lost my house to a foreclosure.” The degradation of his life was swift. He recalled being kicked out of two sober houses. Eventually, he said, “I ended up on the streets.”
The doors of perception
Schaefer was immediately intrigued when he saw an advertisement for the psilocybin study. He was already on a suboxone regimen in December 2023, which he said helped him get “on the other side of the wall” from his addiction. He entered the study the following month after contacting the research team. Numerous physical health assessments, phone calls, interviews and meetings followed.
Schaefer was connected with “two really great therapists,” Travis Fox, a doctor in psychology and Nikki Zellner, a licensed clinical social worker. Their compassion and patience formed the bedrock for his recovery. He had to meet them once a week for a month, in addition to meeting other requirements.
When you look at it as medicine rather than a drug, then we can have a different view on it.
– Richard Schaefer
“They really got to know me and really bring out, or work on, issues that I had suppressed in my life, going back to childhood.” Schaefer said. Fox and Zellner “helped me to learn to love myself again,” he added. It was an alternative approach to therapy that Schaefer hadn’t seen in other recovery programs. “They accepted me for who I am, and helped me to learn that it’s OK to be myself,” he said. “To find the freedom of making a choice, it wasn’t all about abstinence, which a lot of programs are.” Schaefer said that “somehow, with making it my choice, I’ve become a new person and really found a new freedom with that, and really blossomed and come a long ways.”
By April, Schaefer was ready to step into the experience of psilocybin-based therapy. Early in the morning he caught a cab to be dosed at the the UW School of Pharmacy. After one final physical check-up and conversation with doctors, Schaefer was led to a space which he called “the sacred room there.” In that comfortable room surrounded by artwork and with a couch and spaces for Schaefer and the therapists to sit, Schaefer took “the medicine” and his journey began.
“They didn’t tell me what to call it,” said Schaefer, speaking of the psilocybin he took. “When you look at it as medicine rather than a drug, then we can have a different view on it.”
Taking his shoes off as he entered the room, Schaefer lay back on the couch, took a tablet, donned a blindfold and waited as about 20 minutes passed.
“I remember the first session for me was kind of like a movie,” he said. “Like different scenes kept coming to me, you know? Different waves kept coming to me. And some of it was different scenes from life, some of it made sense, or some of it I’m still trying to make sense of what they were. But I realized a lot of things in that first session alone.”
“I think I was learning to find myself,” he said of the experience. A persistent sense of comfort, peace and acceptance stayed with Schaefer after that first session. His ego had been muted, “and I just had this new sense that things were OK,” he said. “I began to have a new outlook on life then.”
A cluster of mushrooms. (Art courtesy of Heather R.)
Sometimes participants in the psilocybin trials need a bathroom break or to pull out and communicate about what is happening. Zellner and Fox were never far away, and were open to talking to him while he was undergoing the journey. “It’s hard to put words on things while you’re having the medicine in you,” said Schaefer. “I go into it and would like to tell them all these things going on, and to be recorded, and jot down and stuff, but it’s like you can’t find the words to say it.”
“You’re kind of in another world,” he added, saying there may not actually be human language to describe some of the experience. The second dose was even more profound. The “scenes” returned with astonishing vividness. Schaefer recalled going through stages of what felt like collective “human sadness” as well as happiness and joy.
“There was like a buildup from down and dark to the absolute most bright light and loving energy that I’d ever experienced,” he said. It was in that peak moment “when I felt that I was in the presence of a higher power,” which manifested as a sort of “god” or “energy that was in front of me.” He said he felt a distinctly separate, intelligent presence throughout his sessions, “like things were being taught to me and shown to me.”
Whatever it was, the presence gave him “the most awesome comforting feeling I’ve ever felt in my life,” Schaefer recalled. The feeling melted away as Schaefer descended from that blissful state.
Integration
In many ways, the hard work begins after the psychedelic experience ends. With the help of their therapists, study participants must attempt to integrate and process what they learned during the sessions. “The integration was powerful because of the therapists being there, to immediately process things coming to your mind,” said Schaefer.
After each session, Schaefer was walked back to the hospital where he was given some alone time for the night. He never interacted with any other study participants. The next morning, Schaefer met with Fox and Zellner again for a clearer, deeper dive into the prior day’s session. Another follow up came about a week later. “And again, man, that has been such a life-changing experience having a psychedelic medicine with therapists,” Schaefer said, emphasizing that without proper integration and therapy after psychedelic experiences, “you’re lost.”
Today, Schaefer is clean from heroin and opioids and living a healthier life. Undergoing the psilocybin study at UW-Madison has inspired him to pursue a career as a certified peer support specialist, for which he’s currently finishing training. He aims to become an advocate for harm reduction medications and alternative psychedelic therapies for addiction recovery.
“I would say it’s not for everybody, but for some people who’ve tried different approaches and it hasn’t worked, and they’re serious about changing their life and having an open mind, then this could really be a profound experience to help them go in a new direction,” said Schaefer.
He hopes that both treatment providers and people struggling with addiction remember that recovery takes patience, compassion, and that it doesn’t have to rely on an abstinence-only philosophy. “It might take 20 times … trying different approaches,” he said.
Prisoners sit at the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, a mega-prison in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador, on April 4, 2025. The Trump administration has acknowledged mistakenly deporting a Maryland resident from El Salvador with protected status to the prison but is arguing against returning him to the U.S. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)
A disgraced former Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) officer was found to be linked to a high-profile deportation by the Trump Administration. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Charles Cross Jr. 62, signed a report that claimed Andry José Hernandez, 30, a gay Venezuelan citizen who worked as a make-up artist, was linked to the Tren de Aragua gang and cited his tattoos. Cross, now employed by the private prison company CoreCivic, left MPD under a cloud of conduct and credibility problems, which also landed him on the Brady list of untrustworthy officers maintained by the Milwaukee County district attorney’s office.
In 2012 when he held the rank of sergeant at MPD, Cross was fired after driving his car into a family’s home while he was intoxicated. Cross was allowed to resign after appealing the decision to the Fire and Police Commission (FPC). The Journal Sentinel also reports that Cross was being investigated for claiming overtime he allegedly hadn’t earned when he was fired from the department.
Prior to the crash, Cross had been placed on the Brady list after kicking in the door of an apartment shared with his girlfriend and threatening to kill himself with his service revolver. The incident, in 2007, cost him his job, but Cross was reinstated after appealing to the FPC. Four months after he separated from MPD in 2012, Cross was hired by CoreCivic, the Journal Sentinel reported.
According to court filings, Cross identified himself as an “investigator” in a form claiming Hernandez was part of Tren de Aragua, one of the gangs that the Trump administration says it is targeting through mass deportations and detentions of non-citizens. Hernandez had tattoos depicting crowns with the words “dad” and “mom.” Hernandez’s attorneys say the crowns are a reference to the “Three Kings” festival in his hometown of Capacho, Venezuela, and are not connected to Tren de Aragua, as Cross reportedly assumed.
Hernandez was one of more than 200 mostly Venezuelan migrants sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center. Authorities at the prison have been accused of human rights violations and torture.
Hernandez fled Venezuela fearing persecution for being a gay man, as well as for his political views. The Journal Sentinel reports that after entering the U.S. illegally, he was apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol agents and sent to Mexico, where he made an appointment and presented himself at a port of entry in San Diego. Hernandez was asked about his tattoos by federal agents, who named him as a “suspect,” but didn’t check any of the other categories on the questionnaire such as “intelligence information received from other agencies” or “group photos.” Since he was deported to El Salvador, Hernandez has not been able to reach his lawyers.
The developments have raised questions about the involvement of private contractors in immigration and deportation actions, as well as the ability of police officers with problematic histories to be hired by private companies like CoreCivic.
The Milwaukee County Courthouse. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office of Milwaukee released new information Tuesday regarding the arrests of two undocumented immigrants at the county courthouse.
A spokesperson wrote in an email statement that Edwin Bustamante-Sierre, 27, and Marco Cruz-Garcia, 24, were arrested by ICE at the courthouse. The statement said that Bustamante-Sierre, a citizen of Nicaragua, was arrested on April 3, and convicted in Fond du Lac County for reckless driving on Dec. 5, 2024. He is currently charged with endangering safety, reckless use of a firearm, use of a dangerous weapon and cocaine possession in Milwaukee County, the email statement read.
Mexican citizen Cruz-Garcia, the spokesperson wrote, was detained by ICE on March 20. The agency’s statement accuses Cruz-Garcia of being a known member of the “Sureños transnational criminal street gang” and states that he’d been arrested for “multiple criminal charges including breaking and entering, car theft, and assault.” The spokesperson wrote that an immigration judge ordered Cruz-Garcia to be deported to Mexico on Feb. 5, 2020.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
Wisconsin Examiner was unable to locate an online court record related to Bustamante-Sierre. For Cruz-Garcia, online court records show a case filed on Jan. 18 involving one count of misdemeanor battery with a domestic abuse modifier. The court record shows that on March 9, Cruz-Garcia was in custody and appeared in court via video, where it was noted that he was indigent. Cruz-Garcia’s case was assigned to another judge and he was turned over for supervison to Justice Point, a non-profit organization which provides a variety of evidence-based criminal justice programs.
All Cruz-Garcia’s prior court orders, including a no-contact order and no possession of firearms, remained in place, as he was required to attend all future court proceedings. On March 20, the day he was detained by ICE, Cruz-Garcia appeared in family court where a domestic violence restraining order was dismissed.
Days later in early April, there was a courtroom discussion about Cruz-Garcia having been deported to Mexico. Rather than dismissing the case, as defense attorneys asked, Circuit Court Judge Marshall Murray (serving as a reserve for Judge Rebecca Kiefer) granted a prosecutor’s request for a warrant to be issued, according to online court records. An order to review the dismissal of the case against Cruz-Garcia 60 days from April 2 was also issued.
Courthouses are not immune from the Trump administration’s deportation efforts. On Jan. 21, ICE was directed to conduct “civil immigration enforcement actions in or near courthouses when they have credible information that leads them to believe the targeted alien(s) is or will be present at a specific location, and where such action is not precluded by laws imposed by the jurisdiction in which the civil immigration enforcement action will take place.”
Agents are instructed to conduct enforcement actions “in non-public areas of the courthouse” in collaboration with court security staff, and to use “non-public entrances and exits.” Wherever possible, ICE agents should operate “discreetly to minimize their impact on court proceedings,” the directive states. The order also says ICE agents and officers should avoid actions in or near non-criminal courthouses, such as family or small claims court.
Last week, the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) said in a press statement that it did not participate in the arrests. Although MCSO was aware of the first arrest, the office was not given advance notice of the second arrest. The press release did not name the people who were arrested, and noted that it’s “not uncommon” for law enforcement agencies to search available databases for upcoming court hearings to find targeted individuals.
The Milwaukee County Courthouse. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
The courthouse arrests were widely condemned by community members. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said “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.” Senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin Tim Muth echoed concerns that the arrests would create an atmosphere of fear around the courthouse. “Research by the ACLU has shown that when ICE is known to be active in courthouses, members of the immigrant community are less likely to report crimes, less likely to cooperate with police and prosecutors and less likely to make their court appearances,” said Muth. “Our communities become less safe as a consequence.”
Activists from the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression also expressed concerns about database sharing between local and federal law enforcement, and called for the courthouse to be a safe space for people to come for legal support, services and to seek justice. Over the weekend, at a rally protesting policies by the Trump administration and Elon Musk, local immigration activists raised those same concerns. “People will be afraid to come to the courthouse if that is not a protected zone,” said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera during the protest. “And we know that these local fights are our frontline battles.”
Madison Hands Off protest on April 5, 2025. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Thousands of Wisconsinites joined rallies in Madison, Milwaukee and Green Bay Saturday, taking part in a national day of action with simultaneous events in more than 1,200 cities across all 50 states, according to the organizers of the “Hands Off!” The protests targeted President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the Trump administration’s deep cuts to federal funding for health care, science, the Social Security administration, education and other public goods. Indivisible, one of more than 150 participating civil rights, labor, LGBTQ and other groups, put out a statement saying the rallies were an effort “to let Trump and Musk know they can’t intimidate us into submission.”
In Madison, a massive crowd filled the lawns, sidewalks and streets on the State Street corner of the Wisconsin State Capitol, then marched the one-mile stretch to Library Mall on the University of Wisconsin campus. Organizers estimated more than 10,000 people participated.
Madison resident Jason and Aubrey at the Madison Hands Off! protest on April 5, 2025. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Madison residents Jason and Aubrey, who declined to give their last names, said they were looking for a community with like-minded people. “We can be angry but it’s also fun to be out with people and it’s important to have joy in your life,” Aubrey said. She said she is concerned with rising income inequality and billionaires having control over social media and society.
“I’m scared for democracy and for the people I love who are going to be targeted by [Trump’s] immigration policies, his hatred of LGBTQ+ people. I felt kind of powerless and I think just being out here protesting, being in a really welcoming community — it’s what I can do right now,” Jason said.
“Our next few years will be tough,” Charlene Bechen, a leader with the Oregon Wisconsin Area Progressives said. “MAGA leaders will launch attack after attack, perpetuate outrage after outrage, commit injustice after injustice with the goal of keeping us disoriented, demoralized and demobilized. We cannot allow that.”
Madison Hands Off! protest on April 5, 2025. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
A ‘Forward’ band played several songs in the time leading up to the official start of the rally at noon. One of the band members — seen holding the megaphone — told rallygoers that they were there to “express our outrage at our current political situation.”
“We’ve got some songs for you. You know what helps sometimes when you’re scared and you’re angry — dancing,” he said.
Jim from Mazomanie at the Madison Hands Off! protest on April 5, 2025. He said the country should be taxing the rich instead of cutting everything. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Jim from Mazomanie said his chainsaw with “Hand Off” written on it was getting a little heavy, but it was fun to bring some smiles to faces. He said it represented “Elon Musk and his idiocy,” and said that Musk has “worn out his welcome in Wisconsin.”
“If we didn’t produce Tuesday,” Jim said, referring to the state Supreme Court election, in which liberal candidate Susan Crawford defeated Brad Schimel, whom Musk supported by pouring more than $25 million into the race, “[it] would be a whole different deal.”
Luis Velasquez, an organizer for Voces de la Frontera, highlighted the attacks against immigrants by the Trump administration and the issue of local law enforcement being pushed to assist with deportation efforts by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Velasquez told the crowd that he is a DACA recipient whose parents brought him to the U.S. as a child from El Salvador, but that no pathway to citizenship exists for him.
Luis Velasquez speaks at the Madison Hands Off! protest on April 5, 2025. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
“I’m proud of being an immigrant myself and we know that there are plenty of good stories… stories that have been ignored and abandoned that have been systematically discarded,” Velasquez said. “Here in this space today, we can say that migration is beautiful, and that here is our home for the millions of immigrants who have been here in the U.S.”
Milwaukee protest
In Milwaukee, organizers estimated 5,000 people gathered in front of the Federal Building as police blocked the road. Democratic U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore told the crowd “I feel like I’ve been born again,” and compared the protest to the civil rights marches of the 1960s. “We fought for voting rights back then. We fought for health care rights then. We fought for the right for our elders to live in decency. We fought for educational opportunity. And guess what y’all, when we fought, we won. And that’s one of the things that… that’s the good news. Right now we’re fighting, and we are winning.”
Congresswoman Gwen Moore speaks during the Hands Off! protest in Milwaukee. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Trump administration, Moore told the crowd, is “actively trying to dismantle Medicaid.” Next week, as the Republicans move to push through their budget reconciliation bill with steep cuts to programs, they need to hear from the public, she said.
Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of the immigrant workers’ rights group Voces de la Frontera, told the crowd, “This administration has made it clear from the beginning that they are taking a page from the fascist playbook, and treating immigrants as the scapegoat for the economic hardship that they are causing. They are trying to desensitize us to their cruelty, and to the humanity of others.”
Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, speaks during the Hands Off! protest in Milwaukee on April 5. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Neumann-Ortiz talked about recent ICE arrests inside the Milwaukee County Courthouse, and called on county leaders to make the courthouse a safe zone from ICE arrests. “People will be afraid to come to the courthouse if that is not a protected zone,” she said. “And we know that these local fights are our frontline battles.” This is “where we have the most power” she added, saying it is imperative to win local struggles.
Calling out Trump administration detentions of political activists and deportations without due process to a notorious prison in El Salvador, Neumann Ortiz said, “I know you’re as clear as I am that this is not just what they are doing to immigrants. They are paving a path, because that’s what they want to do to us.”
Cesar Hernandez of Voces spoke in support of unions and attacked Trump’s claim that undocumented immigrants are a drain on the U.S. economy. “In 2022 alone, undocumented folks contributed $2.2 trillion to our economy, not to mention paying $96.7 billion (with a ‘B’) in federal, state, and local taxes.”
Vaun Mayes speaks at the Hands Off! protest in Milwaukee (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Community activist Vaun Mayes told the crowd, “Right now food pantries for the poor and in need are losing funding in cities like this one right here, where food deserts are prominent.” Social Security and health care are being gutted “in front of our eyes,” he said. He denounced the erasure of Black history in schools and the rise of white supremacist ideology. “Fight back we will. Defend one another we shall,” Mayes declared. “… ‘cause we are the true patriots. And we seek a new day and a place for all Americans in this nation to thrive.”
Green Bay protest
Protesters in Green Bay, Wis. on April 5, 2025 | Photo by Jason Kerzinski for Wisconsin Examiner
In Green Bay an estimated 1,500 demonstrators gathered at Leicht Park with signs protesting tariffs, the stock market crash, and Trump administration downsizing of federal agencies, threats to Medicaid and cuts to education.
The Milwaukee County Courthouse. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Two people have been arrested at the Milwaukee County Courthouse by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, the sheriff’s office said Friday. Although the Milwaukee County Sheriffs Office (MCSO) was aware of the first arrest, the office states that it was not given advance notice of the second arrest. MCSO stressed in a statement that it did not participate in either arrest, and that it’s “not uncommon for local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to search available databases for upcoming court hearings of individuals they are seeking.”
MCSO has not responded to a request for more details. A spokesperson for ICE said the agency was unable to confirm the arrests without additional information about the specific targets. Fears of immigration operations have been heightened since President Donald Trump announced that the government would pursue mass deportations. ICE has made hundreds of arrests in recent months, including of people who were not convicted of any crime and activists who participated in protests on college campuses.
Local groups and officials are condemning the arrests at the courthouse. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said that the courthouse “stands as a cornerstone of justice where residents come to seek information, resources and fair participation in the legal process.” Crowley said 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.” Crowley called on local leaders to protect Milwaukee’s institutions, as well as due process for people in the judicial process.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
Tim Muth, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin, said in a statement that “such actions create fear among immigrant members of our community coming to the courthouse to seek justice as crime victims or witnesses.” Muth added, “Research by the ACLU has shown that when ICE is known to be active in courthouses, members of the immigrant community are less likely to report crimes, less likely to cooperate with police and prosecutors, and less likely to make their court appearances. Our communities become less safe as a consequence.”
In 2017, according to the ACLU’s “Freezing Out Justice” report, a survey sample of police officers reported that immigrants appeared less likely to report crimes after immigration operations conducted during Trump’s first term. Crime victims and witnesses were reluctant to assist police due to the fear of being deported. Legal service providers who worked with immigrant communities also reported encountering that victims chose to stay in abusive or dangerous situations rather than expose themselves to ICE operations.
Muth and the ACLU call on the Milwaukee County court system and sheriff’s office to prevent similar actions in the future. “The last thing we want is to interfere with the legal process or sow doubt in those summoned to the courthouse about whether or not they will receive fair, impartial justice,” said Crowley. “I will continue working with our partners across the county and state to maintain safety and justice for all.”
The Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression also condemned the arrests. “We take this to be a sign of heightened racist and political repression against immigrants,” the Alliance said in a statement. “Furthermore, we are concerned by the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office acceptance of these arrests, stating that it’s not uncommon practice for agencies to access databases of people scheduled to appear before court. There is already very little trust with the MCSO, and now people have to fear for their safety inside the courthouse?”
The activist group, which has called for civilian oversight of law enforcement in Milwaukee County, stressed that people use the courthouse for all sorts of reasons, most of which are not related to criminal activity. “With today’s arrests, there is a further stigma placed on immigrants who enter the courthouse, making them feel even more criminalized,” the Alliance said in a statement. “We need city and county officials like the Sheriff to take a clear stance against ICE operating in Milwaukee. Sheriff [Denita] Ball has the authority to not collaborate with ICE, but this is a sign that she may very well choose to do so.”
MPS Superintendent Brenda Cassellius. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Hundreds of students in the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) have been tested for lead poisoning as the district continues navigating controversy after several school closures due to lead contamination. City officials said during a Thursday morning press conference that 249 students and their siblings have been tested since January. Three schools remain closed including Fernwood Montessori School, Starms Early Childhood Center, and LaFollete School, while four other schools which were previously closed have been re-opened.
MPS also announced that its senior director of facilities director and management is leaving the district, effective immediately. The district is now looking for a new director to help address lead hazards in MPS schools. Sean Kane had been with MPS for 25 years. MPS Superintendent Brenda Cassellius thanked him for his service during the Thursday morning press conference at the MPS Administration Building.
“I will immediately begin a search for a permanent replacement to lead the district,” said Cassellius, adding that Michael Mannan, the Milwaukee Health Department’s director of home environmental health, and Mike Turza, a retired MPS employee who was re-hired in March after nine years of retirement are assisting during the transition. Turza was brought onto Cassellius’ transition team to help with an operational audit requested by the governor’s office.
Mayor Cavalier Johnson (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Kane has become a central figure in the MPS lead contamination controversy. While working as facilities director, Kane had failed to keep his architecture license current. In March, the state Department of Health Services issued a letter blasting lead remediation work done by MPS employees overnight at Fernwood Montessori. The letter said that 11 employees conducting the lead remediation may not have been trained to do so, and that students had been allowed back into classrooms which were still contaminated.
“We must move forward with a plan that everyone has confidence in, that everyone trusts, and that puts the wellbeing of our students and staff at the forefront,” said Cassellius. Mayor Cavalier Johnson was also in attendance, and praised the collaborative efforts between MPS, the health department and the state government, as well as MPS leaders’ care and attention to families. “There’s nothing, absolutely nothing more important than the health and wellbeing of kids in Milwaukee,” said Johnson. “We recognize that there are issues, and we are actively working to address those issues with keeping the health and again, the wellbeing, of kids at the forefront.”
This week, Kane was assessed $1,319 by the state Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS) for violating state law and misrepresenting himself as an architect since his license lapsed nearly five years ago. The fee was charged to cover the costs of the DSPS proceedings.
While his license was invalid, Kane was appointed facilities and management director in October 2021.
Cassellius wouldn’t comment on personnel matters involving Kane. During the Thursday press conference, however, Milwaukee Health Commissioner Dr. Mike Totoraitis said, “I never want to see anybody lose their job or their role, however I do think at this moment, it was warranted to help move us into this next step.”
Milwaukee Health Commissioner Dr. Mike Totoraitis. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Totoraitis also answered questions from media about emails showing that Kane did not allow health department staff into Golda Meir School to do a full lead risk assessment, and did not disclose that lead remediation work was ongoing after a student was found to have lead poisoning. “I was frustrated,” said Totoraitis. “Our team was also ready to send a staff of about eight individuals and lead risk assessors to go to the schools. We were ready to work that weekend.”
The health commissioner said that 249 students and their siblings have been tested for lead poisoning. Others have received routine screening at pediatric offices. Totoraitis also said “we have pivoted” from using dust swab samples inside buildings to using a checklist and visual inspection — which he said is outlined in state statute — “to ensure that we are quickly assessing the schools, as opposed to doing the dust wipe samples which usually take a week and a half to get processed.” In some cases, Totoraitis said that ceiling and floor tiling is being checked and sealed to prevent lead intruding into the schools.
A plan to tackle the lead contamination has been drafted and officials said it will eventually be released to the public. Testing and screening of students will continue, “because that’s the best way for us to determine if children have been poisoned or not,” said Totoraitis.
In late March, Totoraitits said that the city issued a formal request to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for additional assistance, and had received federal assistance in recent months. Mass layoffs in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and funding cuts by the Trump administration have put additional assistance in question.
On Thursday, Gov. Tony Evers highlighted a plan to tackle lead contamination in his weekly radio address. The plan includes over $300 million to fund initiatives aimed at removing lead service lines contaminating drinking water and supporting lead renovation programs. Childhood lead contamination has been linked to cognitive disorders including degraded impulse control, learning disabilities, and violent behavior. About 85 MPS schools were built before 1970 and are therefore at high risks of lead contamination.
This report has been updated to clarify that the money Kane paid DSPS was not a fine, but to repay the cost of the department’s disciplinary proceedings against him.
Members of SEIU and Voces de la Frontera arrive at the Capitol Tuesday | Wisconsin Examiner photo
Online rumors warning of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) patrols around polling places in Milwaukee and Madison appear to be unfounded. The reports circulated on social media claiming that there would be “more than 5,000 ICE agents patrolling the areas” in the two cities, as voters went to the polls to cast ballots in the April 1 election for candidates running for Wisconsin Supreme Court, state superintendent, and referendum questions focusing on voter ID.
Anxieties about ICE activities have been heightened under the Trump Administration. Recent weeks have seen videos showing plain-clothes, masked ICE agents detaining people on the street. Some of the detainees had been arrested after participating in activist activities, such as protests calling for an end to the war in Gaza. Fears of ICE raids have increased in Milwaukee and Madison, as in other cities.
Spokespersons for Milwaukee and Madison city government told Wisconsin Examiner that they have not heard any reports, complaints, or notifications about ICE agents at polling places. A spokesperson for the ICE office in Milwaukee said, “due to our operational tempo and the increased interest in our agency, we are not able to research and respond to rumors or specifics of routine daily operations for ICE.”
Meanwhile, turnout in Milwaukee has been so high that local news outlets are reporting that polling sites across the city have run out of ballots. The city’s Election’s Commission is arranging for fresh ballots to be sent to polling stations. In Tuesday’s election Republican-backed Supreme Court candidate and former Wisconsin attorney general Brad Schimel is facing off against Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, who has the backing of state Democrats. In the state superintendent’s race, incumbent Jill Underly is facing challenger Brittany y Kinser. Wisconsinites will also get to decide whether the state’s constitution should be amended to codify a voter ID requirement.
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