Former Wauwatosa police officer Joseph Mensah, who killed three people in the line of duty before joining the Waukesha County Sheriff's Department, is leaving law enforcement.
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In an aerial view from a helicopter, the migrant detention center dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz" by Florida Republicans is seen at the site of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport on July 4, 2025 in Ochopee, Florida. (Photo by Alon Skuy/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Former top immigration officials from the Biden administration warned Tuesday that billions for immigration enforcement signed into law earlier this month will escalate the rapid detention and deportations of immigrants.
During a virtual press conference with the immigration advocacy group America’s Voice, the former Department of Homeland Security officials said they expect to see a trend toward states building “soft” temporary detention centers similar to Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz,” the name given by Florida Republicans to an Everglades detention center.
Funding for those initiatives will come from President Donald Trump’s tax break and spending cut bill signed into law earlier this month that provides roughly $170 billion for immigration enforcement, the former officials said.
Trump’s massive tax and spending cut bill provides $30 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, making it the nation’s highest-funded law enforcement agency, to hire 10,000 new agents and carry out deportations. Another $45 billion will go to ICE for the detention of immigrants and $450 million in grants to states to partake in border enforcement.
Billions more are provided for border security and for the military to partake in border-related enforcement.
Andrea Flores, who directed border management for the National Security Council under former President Joe Biden said she expects to see states running their own immigration detention centers similar to the “Alligator Alcatraz” center that state officials quickly erected to hold immigrants. That state-run facility in the Florida Everglades is expected to house up to 5,000 immigrants.
Jason Houser, who served as ICE chief of staff in the Biden administration, said the quickly built detention centers will likely create an unsafe environment for immigrants brought there. The lack of experience and training for employees running those centers will also put migrants at risk, he said.
“People are gonna get hurt,” he said. “They’re gonna die.”
He added that with the arrest quotas that immigration officials have been given, roughly 3,000 arrests a day, “ICE is going to focus on those (immigrants) that are easily reachable, those who have been complying and checking in,” either with immigration officials or appearing in immigration court.
“Hitting quotas is not in the national security interest,” Houser said.
Houser said with the rapid arrest and detention of immigrants, the need for detention centers will likely lead to states building the “soft sided” detention centers in “some of the most rural parts of the country where they cannot be properly staffed and resourced.”
Flores said if states work to build their own centers like the one in Florida, there will likely be a lack of oversight because DHS has significantly fired federal employees that ran the watchdog that conducted oversight of ICE — the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
Flores currently serves as the vice president of immigration policy at FWD.us, which focuses on immigration policy and reform.
Royce Murray, a former DHS assistant secretary for border and immigration policy and a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official during the Biden administration, said she is concerned that the Trump administration will now be able to ramp up third-country removals with the increase in funding.
Any removals to a third country “have to be to a country that is safe,” she said.
If an immigrant has a final order of removal but their home country will not accept their deportation, then the United States typically looks for another country that will accept the removal — a third country.
The Trump administration has tried to secure agreements with countries to take deportees, such as Mexico and South Sudan, which recently ended a civil war, but is still experiencing violence. The State Department warns against travel to South Sudan, but the Trump administration won a case before the Supreme Court seeking to use the East African country for third-country removals.
Murray said that the Trump administration is using third-country removals to “create a climate of fear” and get immigrants to self-deport.
She said if third-country removals are going to take place, they “need to be a place where people can successfully integrate.”
Congresswoman Gwen Moore speaks during the protest against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk on April 5, 2025. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore joined U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) in issuing a letter calling on the heads of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to reinstate directives protecting crime victims who are seeking T or U visas from immigration enforcement.
Moore and Jayapal called for the Trump Administration to reinstate ICE Directive 11005.3, which offered protections for immigrant crime victims, and for people currently in ICE custody who have applied for a T or U visa to be released within 60 days of the letter.
“Congress created victim-based immigration benefits to encourage noncitizen victims to seek assistance and report crimes committed against them despite their undocumented status,” Moore and Jayapal wrote.
The Biden-era directive posited that, rather than hindering law enforcement, “when victims have access to humanitarian protections, regardless of their immigration status, and can feel safe in coming forward, it strengthens the ability of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, including ICE, to detect, investigate, and prosecute crimes.”
In their letter, Moore and Jayapal highlighted the directive’s ties to the Violence Against Women Act, stressing that, “T and U visas were designed to strengthen the relationship and build trust between victims of crime and law enforcement.” Prosecutors often rely on T and U visa holders for “critical eyewitness testimony” the letter states. “These visa programs make everyone in our communities safer. Without them, undocumented victims and witnesses might be too scared to come forward to report crimes to the detriment of all.”
Under ICE Directive 1105.3, the agency was instructed to “exercise prosecutorial discretion to facilitate access to justice and victim-based immigration benefits by noncitizen crime victims.” Agents were directed to “refrain from taking civil immigration enforcement action against known beneficiaries of victim-based immigration benefits and those known to have a pending application for such benefits.” ICE officers were also directed to “look for indicia or evidence that suggests a noncitizen is a victim of a crime, such as being the beneficiary of an order of protection or being the recipient of an eligibility letter from the Office of Trafficking in Persons.”
The Trump administration’s broad crackdown on immigrants who lack permanent legal status has targeted crime victims who hold or are applying for T or U visas. In June Ramone Morales Reyes, a Milwaukee man who had lived in the United States for decades and was actively cooperating in a U-Visa investigation, was arrested and detained by ICE. After arresting Morales Reyes, DHS Sec. Noem issued a press release claiming that Morales Reyes had penned a letter threatening to assassinate President Donald Trump. The letter, however, had been written in perfect English with only a few misspellings. Morales Reyes’ family, as well as immigration advocates and attorneys, said that it was impossible for him to have written the letter as he could not speak English and was not proficient in reading or writing in Spanish. When ICE arrested Morales Reyes, local law enforcement were already investigating the possibility that someone was attempting to frame him.
In early June, Morales Reyes was released from ICE detention on bond, and a man who’d been arrested for attempting to rob him months earlier admitted to forging the letter to trigger a deportation, and prevent Morales Reyes from testifying against him. Moore and U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan sought to visit Morales Reyes while he was in custody, and called on Noem to retract her statement accusing him of threatening Trump.
Rather than retracting the accusations, however, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin issued a statement after Morales Reyes was released on bond calling him a “criminal illegal alien” and claiming that, while he is no longer under investigation for threats against Trump, “he is in the country illegally” and has committed previous crimes. The statement asserted that “DHS will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of illegal aliens who have no right to be in this country.”
ICE also worked to deport Yessenia Ruano, a Milwaukee teacher’s aid. Ruano had been a victim of human trafficking, and was applying for a T-Visa. In mid-June, Ruano opted to return to El Salvador with her two daughters, who were born in the United States.
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A 2024 provision under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protects reproductive health information from disclosure to law enforcement when care was legally obtained, such as in another state with abortion access. (Photo by Dave Whitney/Getty Images)
Two pending lawsuits over a 2024 federal rule protecting certain reproductive health information from disclosure are on hold while the Trump administration decides whether to appeal a Texas judge’s June decision that declared the rule unlawful and void.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk issued an opinion nullifying the federal rule that shielded reproductive health information from law enforcement when care was legally obtained, such as in another state with abortion access. In this case, Dr. Carmen Purl argued that the U.S. Health and Human Services rule conflicted with the laws requiring her to report child abuse. Purl said in court documents she believes abortion and gender-affirming care fall under the definitions of child abuse.
Purl lives in the judicial district where Kacsmaryk — who has taken anti-abortion stances in the past — is the only judge. His ruling applied nationwide and took effect immediately.
Without the rule, law enforcement officials in states with abortion bans may issue subpoenas for records related to reproductive health care obtained legally in another state, as some have already recently tried to do. According to health policy nonprofit KFF, 22 states and the District of Columbia have laws limiting what reproductive health information can be obtained, but others with legal abortion access do not, such as New Hampshire and Virginia.
Abortion-rights advocates say it’s largely an intimidation tactic meant to sow fear in patients and providers. Since the Dobbs decision in 2022, anti-abortion attorney Jonathan Mitchell filed nine petitions in Texas seeking to legally question abortion funds, providers and researchers, and two individual women who sought abortions in other states, according to the Texas Tribune.
Carmel Shachar, a Harvard law professor who has extensively researched data privacy and health policy, said it’s possible for a patient to travel to a state with legal access and have that information stored in their medical records that is shared with their providers back home.
“Without the reproductive privacy rule, the concern will be, ‘OK, will some of these states that have taken a very strong stance against abortion be able to pinpoint where residents of their states travel to receive abortion care?’” Shachar said.
Two lawsuits challenging the legality of the rule are frozen at least until the government’s Aug. 18 deadline to appeal. One case is in Missouri, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the other. Paxton’s office had also challenged the legality of the underlying privacy rule or HIPAA established in 2000, which could have opened more avenues for state investigations if a judge agreed to throw it out. But according to recent court filings, the state is no longer asking the court to do that.
A Tennessee lawsuit includes 17 other states that heavily restrict or ban abortion as plaintiffs. Their attorneys general asked the court to find the 2024 rule unlawful because they said it impedes their right to investigate cases of waste, fraud and abuse. In the most recent court brief, attorneys for Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said the case can still be decided by U.S. District Judge Katherine Crytzer, an appointee of Republican President Donald Trump.
Until judgment is affirmed on appeal and no further appellate review is available or the deadline to appeal passes, “the plaintiff states’ claims remain live and ready for this court to resolve,” the brief said.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) allows law enforcement to obtain health information for investigation purposes. But the addition of the 2024 provision under former Democratic President Joe Biden prohibited disclosure of protected health information in investigations against any person for the mere act of seeking, obtaining, or facilitating reproductive health care, to impose criminal or civil liabilities for that conduct, or to identify the person involved in seeking or obtaining that care. It also applied to gender-affirming care.
The U.S. Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment. Whether it appeals Kacsmaryk’s ruling is in question, as the Justice Department under Trump did not address whether it thought the 2024 rule was proper and lawful prior to Kacsmaryk’s decision. Attorneys instead said they were reviewing the rule but had no other updates. In the Missouri and Tennessee cases, DOJ attorneys have argued for dismissal for other legal reasons, but also have not defended the 2024 rule itself.
In March, the DOJ dropped the case that argued the federal law mandating stabilizing emergency care should apply to those who need emergency abortion care. And in early June, U.S. Health and Human Services rescinded guidance that said that care should be required in emergencies.
Attorneys for Democracy Forward, a nonprofit legal organization, are representing Doctors for America and the cities of Columbus, Ohio, and Madison, Wisconsin, and attempted to intervene in the case because they did not expect the government to defend the rule. If they were allowed to intervene, they could appeal Kacsmaryk’s opinion striking down the rule regardless of the Trump administration’s decision.
Kacsmaryk denied their motion, while a decision in the other three cases is pending. Carrie Flaxman, senior legal adviser for Democracy Forward, said they have appealed that denial to a higher court. Given that the Department of Justice attorneys chose not to defend the rule on the merits in court proceedings, Flaxman said, she thinks they have a good argument for appeal.
Repealing the rule was a directive in Project 2025, the blueprint document for the next presidential administration published by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Several prominent anti-abortion organizations were part of the panel that drafted Project 2025, and many of the individuals involved in writing the 900-page document now work for the Trump administration.
Protesters gather outside of the Milwaukee FBI office to speak out against the arrest of Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
A federal magistrate judge recommended on Monday that the criminal case against Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan proceed. Dugan has been indicted on charges that she helped an immigrant without legal status who came to her courtroom for a hearing on a misdemeanor charge evade federal immigration authorities.
Dugan was arrested in April and indicted in May. She’s pleaded not guilty to charges of concealing an individual to prevent arrest and obstruction.
The case has become an example of the Trump administration’s effort to punish judicial interference with its escalation of immigration enforcement. In April, 31-year-old Eduardo Flores-Ruiz was in Dugan’s courtroom when federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Agency and FBI arrived at the Milwaukee County Courthouse to arrest him.
Prosecutors say Dugan helped Flores-Ruiz out a side doorway to avoid arrest but the doorway Dugan led Flores-Ruiz and his attorney use led to the same hallway in which the agents were waiting and one took the elevator down with them. Flores-Ruiz was arrested on the street outside.
In May, Dugan had filed a motion to dismiss the charges against her, arguing she is immune from prosecution because she was acting in her official capacity as a judge and that the arrest violated Wisconsin’s sovereignty as a state by disrupting a state court hearing and prosecuting a state judge.
On Monday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Nancy Joseph recommended that the motion to dismiss be denied. The final decision on dismissal is up to U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman, who does not need to follow Joseph’s recommendation.
“We are disappointed in the magistrate judge’s non-binding recommendation, and we will appeal it,” Dugan attorney Steven Biskupic, a former federal prosecutor, said in a statement. “This is only one step in what we expect will be a long journey to preserve the independence and integrity of our courts.”
In her recommendation, Joseph wrote that judicial immunity applies when a judge is being sued for civil damages, not criminal charges.
“A judge’s actions, even when done in her official capacity, does not bar criminal prosecution if the actions were done in violation of the criminal law,” she wrote.
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Federal authorities detain a man after attending a court hearing at immigration court at the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building on July 1, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending cut bill cleared Thursday has as its centerpiece $170 billion for the administration’s immigration crackdown, helping fulfill the president’s 2024 campaign promise of mass deportations of people without permanent legal status.
The measure, passed by the House 218-214, would fulfill several of Trump’s key immigration priorities, such as bolstering border security, increasing immigration detention capacity and adding fees to legal pathways for immigration, among other things. Thousands more Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are slated to be hired.
While most of the immigration-related provisions in the massive bill would vastly expand immigration enforcement, it also aims to limit benefits currently extended to some immigrants with legal status.
Immigrants with a lawful status, including asylum, under the bill would be ineligible to receive food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Immigrants without legal status or authorization to be in the country are already ineligible for SNAP benefits, which roughly 42 million people rely on.
The bill could also cut off tax benefits from mixed-status families, in which family members have different immigration statuses.
For example, while Republicans would raise the child tax credit to $2,200 per eligible child, the bill would exclude that benefit to U.S. citizen children who are born to immigrant parents without legal status. The proposal would require that the parent applying for the child tax credit also have a Social Security number.
The 870-page megabill was passed by the Senate 51-50 on Tuesday, with Vice President JD Vance casting a tie-breaking vote.
Here’s an overview of what else the bill will do:
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement would be the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the country, at nearly $30 billion through September 2029.
Those funds would go toward hiring 10,000 ICE officers within five years. The money would also pay for retention bonuses, transportation of immigrants, upgrades of ICE facilities, detainment of families, and the hiring of ICE immigration lawyers for enforcement and removal proceedings in immigration court.
An ICE signing bonus would be given to those hired after the bill is signed into law, and as a retention bonus if an ICE agent has five years of service specifically dealing with immigration enforcement. The bill does not specify how much a signing bonus or retention bonus should be.
The Senate’s version provides ICE with added flexibility in which areas to allocate the nearly $30 billion.
Separately from ICE, the bill would include $1 billion for the Department of Defense to deploy military personnel for border-related operations, construction and temporary detention on military installations.
Trump in April directed several agencies to start militarizing a stretch of the southern border as he continues to intertwine the U.S. military with his administration’s immigration crackdown.
Created was a military buffer zone along the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, California and New Mexico. It means that any migrant crossing into the United States would be trespassing on a military base, and therefore allows active-duty troops to hold them until U.S. Border Patrol agents arrive.
National and military experts have raised concerns that militarizing that strip of land could violate the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 law that generally prohibits the military from being used in domestic law enforcement.
Additionally, the Trump administration last month deployed 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines to Los Angeles, amid major protests that arose after immigration agents began targeting day laborers at Home Depots for immigration enforcement.
The bill sets aside $45 billion for building new centers to detain immigrants, from single individuals to families. It’s a more than 300% increase from ICE’s fiscal year 2024 budget for detaining immigrants, which was about $9 billion.
Building new detention centers takes time, so private prison companies such as CoreCivic and GEO Group are likely to enter into more contracts with ICE.
Those companies have begun expanding detention capacity. CoreCivic last month acquired a 736-bed facility in Virginia and GEO this month purchased a 770-bed facility in western California.
The bill would allocate $46.6 billion for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to construct a wall along the U.S. Mexico border, as well as make any repairs. That would be more than three times what the first Trump administration spent on barriers at the southern border, at roughly $15 billion.
Some of the technology that would be added on the border includes cameras, lights, sensors, and other detection improvements. The funds would be used beginning in fiscal year 2025 until Sept. 30, 2029.
Another $4.1 billion would go toward hiring CBP personnel, until the end of September 2029. Another $2 billion would go toward retention and bonuses for CBP personnel.
The bill would also set aside $855 million for the repair of vehicles that CBP officers use. Republicans included $5 billion for upgrades and repairs at CBP facilities.
Additionally, $6.1 billion would go toward buying nonintrusive equipment to detect illicit narcotics at ports of entry along the southwest, northern and maritime borders.
Also, any immigrant without legal authorization and who is apprehended at a port of entry would be subject to a $5,000 fine.
There is currently a civil fine ranging from $50 to $250. Asylum-seekers typically surrender themselves at ports of entry.
The bill would give the Department of Justice roughly $3.3 billion for the Executive Office for Immigration Review to prosecute immigration matters, such as noncitizen voting – something that is extremely rare – and violations of the Alien Registration Act.
In April, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced that immigrants in the country without legal authorization were required to register with the agency or face jail time and a fine of up to $5,000.
The bill would also provide funding for the hiring of immigration judges, but will cap the number of judges at 800. There are roughly 700 now, amid a 3.5 million case backlog in immigration court, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC.
The bill would also overhaul immigration fees and application fees for immigrants seeking legal pathways, both permanent and temporary.
For the first time, there would be a fee to apply for asylum, set at $100. There are no fee waivers for nearly every new fee set or increased by the bill, except for applications dealing with unaccompanied minors. All fees would also be subject to adjustment for inflation.
Asylum-seekers who want to apply for initial work permits would also have to pay another fee of $550, something that is currently free.
For an asylum applicant wanting to renew work permits, the bill would lower the cost to $275, where it is currently $470 to renew online and $520 to mail in the paperwork.
For immigrants on Temporary Protected Status, meaning the DHS secretary has deemed the immigrant’s home country too dangerous to return to, the fee to apply would be $500. It’s currently $50.
The fee to apply for humanitarian relief would increase to $1,000, where it is currently $630.
The bill would slightly increase the initial work application fee for TPS holders and those with humanitarian status to $550, up from a $470 fee for submitting online and $520 to mail in the paperwork.
To renew those work permits, the bill would lower the cost to $275, down from $470 for online and $520 for mail.
The nonimmigrant visa, which is currently free and handled by the State Department, would now cost $250 under the bill. This visa is typically used for international students, agricultural workers and other special skilled immigrant labor.
Some of the $2 billion in funding for DHS would go toward removing unaccompanied children under certain circumstances. That includes if the child is found by a port of entry, is not a victim of human trafficking, and does not fear returning to their home country.
The bill would also provide a $300 million fund for the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which handles unaccompanied children, to conduct background checks and home studies on any potential sponsor of an unaccompanied child.
There would also be funding to check children in ORR custody for their potential criminal and gang history. Those 12 and older would be subject to examinations “for gang-related tattoos and other gang-related markings,” according to the bill.
The special juvenile immigrant visa, which is for immigrant children who are either abandoned or abused by a parent, and allows them to apply for lawful permanent resident status, would now cost $250 under the bill, but the fee could be waived. It’s currently free.
The bill would also give some states $450 million for the Operation Stonegarden Grant Program, which gives funding to states and local governments that participate in border enforcement.
The bill would help states that are hosting major sporting events such as the World Cup in 2026 and the Olympics in 2028.
The bill allocates $625 million for security and other costs related to the FIFA World Cup and $1 billion for security and planning costs for the Olympics, which Los Angeles is hosting in 2028.
Thousands of protesters marched up State Street and past the Wisconsin Forward statue at the state Capitol on Saturday. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
It was an encouraging week in Wisconsin. The state Supreme Court finally invalidated a cruel 1849 abortion ban, and Gov. Tony Evers declared victory after he and state legislative leaders reached a deal on the state budget he signed in the early morning hours on Thursday that adds back some badly needed support for schools and child care. The budget deal is not what a lot of Democrats and advocates wanted, but it’s better than the brutal austerity Republicans in the Legislature have imposed in the last several budget cycles. Most encouragingly, the end of gerrymandering forced Republicans to negotiate, since they needed Democratic votes in the Senate to get the budget passed.
Some Democrats still refused to vote ‘yes” on the budget. They pointed out that, while it includes a significant boost for special education, it leaves schools struggling with zero general state aid. A majority of school districts will see revenue go down, and most will have to beg local property owners to raise their own taxes. To make matters worse, the Trump administration is freezing billions in promised aid to K-12 schools.
Child care advocates who fought for desperately needed state support got about one-quarter of the aid Evers had originally proposed. Some were relieved, but others told Examiner Deputy Editor Erik Gunn that it’s just not enough to save centers from going out of business and parents from losing access to care.
The health care outlook is also bleak. With the feds poised to make Medicaid cuts that could cause 60,000 Wisconsinites to lose health care, the state budget fails to expand Medicaid and won’t even cover postpartum care — making us one of only two states to refuse health care to low-income mothers of newborns.
The worrisome backdrop to all of this is the federal budget plan President Donald Trump and Republicans are pushing through Congress that simultaneously runs up giant deficits and takes an ax to safety net programs on a scale we’ve never before experienced.
The massive bill that passed the U.S. Senate this week slashes health care and nutrition assistance and will lead to the closure of rural hospitals, decimate green infrastructure projects that have been a boon to Wisconsin and will make life harder and more expensive for most people — all to funnel millions of dollars in tax cuts to the richest Americans and to fund a chilling escalation of a militarized immigration police force.
Our own U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson threatened to vote against the House version of the bill, which was projected to increase the deficit by $2.4 trillion, because, he said, the deficits it created were “mortgaging our children’s future.” But Johnson then voted for the Senate version, which ratchets up the deficit even more, to $3.3 trillion. So much for the self-described “numbers guy.” Kowtowing to Trump and making permanent the tax cuts Johnson personally benefits from was more important to him than his alleged concern about deficits.
It makes sense that much of the news about the Republican budget deal has centered around the devastating health care cuts and the ballooning federal deficit. But the $170 billion in the budget for immigration enforcement is sure to change the landscape of the United States — escalating raids, deportations without due process and a massive new system of private detention centers on the model of the detention camp in a Florida swamp that apparently thrilled Trump when he visited it during congressional budget deliberations.
Brace yourself for the impact of the supercharged ICE budget. Unlike Texas — where terrorized immigrant workers are staying home after raids, causing farmers to fear they’ll go under as their labor force disappears — we haven’t experienced big workplace raids in Wisconsin. If ICE has a lot more manpower, that could change.
I spoke this week with a dairy farmer in the Western part of the state who reported that, despite the terrifying videos circulating online of violent arrests by masked immigration agents, his employees are carrying on as usual, coming to work, going out, not changing their plans. “We haven’t had any raids on dairy farms in Wisconsin,” he pointed out.
It’s eerie how normal life continues to be in rural Wisconsin, where 70% of the labor on dairy farms is performed by immigrant workers, almost all of whom lack legal documents to live and work in this country, because Congress has never created a visa for year-round, low-skilled farmwork. The farmer I spoke with said he had just returned from watching a soccer match among immigrant workers and everyone was in a good mood.
He added that officials in Trump’s agriculture and labor departments have repeatedly reassured an industry group he’s part of that the administration understands how dependent employers are on their immigrant workers and that they don’t want mass deportation to harm them.
Wisconsin dairy farmers and other employers are hoping Trump continues to be influenced by the people in his administration who tell him he shouldn’t destroy the U.S. agriculture, construction and hospitality industries. They felt encouraged by Trump’s recent statement that “we’re going to take care of our farmers and hotel workers,” and his claim that he’s working on deportation exemptions for whole classes of immigrant workers who don’t have authorization, but on whom U.S. industries rely.
But the Stephen Miller wing of the administration doesn’t care about any of that.
The whole narrative promoted by Miller, Trump’s anti-immigrant deputy chief of staff, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Trump himself, that the U.S. is suffering an “invasion” by a large number of immigrants who commit violent crimes is nonsense. Immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than U.S. born citizens. They are an absolutely essential part of the U.S. economy. And they are loved and valued members of our communities. Most of the people the Trump administration has been rounding up have never been convicted of any crime, let alone violent crime. They are landscapers, roofers, farmworkers, students, parents driving home from work — just like the people Trump claims he is going to protect. As the administration ramps up its program to incarcerate and deport them, with a militarized push on a scale our country has never seen, Trump is trying to have it both ways — reassuring employers that he won’t target the “good” immigrants who work for them, while peddling the lie that there are tons of “bad” immigrants who deserve to be kept in cages in an alligator-infested swamp.
The idyllic, peaceful atmosphere in Wisconsin, where we feel far away from violent kidnappings by unidentified, masked federal agents, could change in a dramatically dark fashion once the ICE receives the tens of billions of new dollars in the Republicans’ federal budget plan. We saw the showy arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan and immigrants who, trusting the legal system, showed up for their court dates in Milwaukee. We saw the needlessly cruel forced departure of Milwaukee teacher’s aide Yessenia Ruano and her U.S.-born little girls back to El Salvador — the country Ruano fled after her brother was murdered there by gang members and where she felt her life was threatened.
With tens of billions of dollars in new money to spend and quotas to meet for its mass deportation program, ICE could begin rounding up the hardworking immigrants who keep our dairy industry going, in parts of the state that overwhelmingly vote for Republicans.
That spectacle, along with the hideous cuts to health care, education, food assistance and other programs that make life livable in Wisconsin, will surely provoke a backlash against the politicians who enabled it. Let’s hope it’s not too late.
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A six-year veteran of the Milwaukee Police Department has died three days after being shot in an alleyway while responding to reports of a man firing a weapon on the city's west side. Officer Kendell Corder was 32-years-old.
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A protester holds a photo of Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia as demonstrators gather to protest against the deportation of immigrants to El Salvador outside the Permanent Mission of El Salvador to the United Nations on April 24, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice in an unusual move has filed a lawsuit against all the judges in the federal court in Maryland, in an attempt to block the court’s two-day pause on deporting immigrants who challenge their detention in the state.
The action by the Trump administration represents the DOJ’s latest clash with the judicial branch, and one that may be repeated in other states. Holds on deportations have slowed the administration’s aggressive plans for mass deportation of people without permanent legal status, on the grounds of due process.
“Every unlawful order entered by the district courts robs the Executive Branch of its most scarce resource: time to put its policies into effect,” according to the complaint. “In the process, such orders diminish the votes of the citizens who elected the head of the Executive Branch.”
The complaint by DOJ argued that a standing order from Chief Judge George Russell of the District Court of Maryland is “nothing more than a particularly egregious example of judicial overreach interfering with Executive Branch prerogatives—and thus undermining the democratic process.”
In late May, Russell signed a standing order to halt deportations for two days in an effort to accommodate the sudden high volume of habeas corpus claims filed outside of normal court business hours. A habeas corpus claim allows immigrants to challenge their detention.
The Trump administration argues that the order stymies federal immigration enforcement and acts as a preliminary injunction or temporary restraining order without meeting the threshold and is therefore unlawful.
“Inconvenience to the Court is not a basis to enter an injunction, and filings outside normal business hours, scheduling difficulties, and the possibility of hurried and frustrating hearings are not irreparable harms,” according to the complaint.
The Department of Justice has also asked that the judges recuse themselves from the case, and that either the 4th Circuit hear the case or a judge randomly selected from another district.
The Maryland court in Greenbelt has halted several immigration-related moves by the Trump administration, with the most high-profile case handled by Judge Paula Xinis, who ordered the return of the wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia who was sent to a prison in El Salvador.
The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled the Trump administration must facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia. The Maryland man was brought back earlier this month, but to face federal charges on human smuggling that were filed after he was wrongfully deported and courts ordered his return.
The Maryland case is still ongoing, as Xinis is allowing discovery to determine if the Trump administration refused to comply with her order to return Abrego Garcia.
Another judge, Theodore David Chuang, in February partly granted a request from Quakers and other religious groups to limit the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s authority to conduct immigration enforcement in houses of worship.
Immigration officials questioned and detained contractors working on apartment buildings in Tallahassee, Fla., on May 29. Construction employs more immigrant laborers, many likely living here illegally, than any other industry, and the industry is starting to draw more attention — even in conservative states — as the Trump administration pushes for more deportations. (Photo by Jay Waagmeester/Florida Phoenix)
As President Donald Trump sends mixed messages about immigration enforcement, ordering new raids on farms and hotels just days after saying he wouldn’t target those industries, he has hardly mentioned the industry that employs the most immigrant laborers: construction.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration is going after construction workers without legal status to meet its mass deportation goals — even as the country has a housing shortage and needs new homes built. A shortage of workers has delayed or prevented construction, causing billions of dollars in economic damage, according to a June report from the Home Builders Institute.
Almost a quarter of all immigrants without a college degree work in construction, a total of 2.2 million workers as of last month, before work site raids began in earnest. That’s more than the next three industries combined: restaurants (1.1 million), janitorial and other cleaning services (526,000) and landscaping (454,000), according to a Stateline analysis of federal Current Population Survey data provided by ipums.org at the University of Minnesota.
Within the construction industry, immigrant workers are now a majority of painters and roofers (both 53%) and comprise more than two-thirds of plasterers and stucco masons. U.S. citizens in construction are more likely to work as managers and as skilled workers, such as carpenters.
Many immigrant workers are likely living here illegally, although there are some working legally as refugees or parolees, and others are asylum-seekers waiting for court dates. There’s also a small number of legal visas for temporary farmworkers, construction workers and others.
The pool of immigrant workers Stateline analyzed were employed noncitizens ages 18-65 without a college degree, screening out temporary workers with high-skill visas.
About half of the immigrant laborers in construction are working in Southern states, including conservative-leaning Florida, North Carolina and Texas, where there is more building going on, according to the Stateline analysis. Another 584,000, or one-quarter, are in Western states, including Arizona, California and Nevada.
In recent months, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE, has conducted construction worksite raids in Florida in Tallahassee and near Ocala, and in South Texas and New Orleans, as well as more immigrant-friendly California and Pennsylvania.
Roofers are right out there where you can see them.
– Sergio Barajas, executive director of the National Hispanic Construction Alliance
Roofers may have been the first targeted by new workplace raids because of their visibility, said Sergio Barajas, executive director of the National Hispanic Construction Alliance, a California-based advocacy group with chapters in five other states.
“That’s the first place we heard about it. Roofers are right out there where you can see them,” Barajas said. He added that all segments of construction work have been targeted for ICE raids, and that even some legal workers are not showing up for work out of fear.
“Six or eight weeks ago, I would have said we weren’t affected at all. Now we are. There’s a substantial reduction in the number of workers who are showing up, so crews are 30%, 40% smaller than they used to be,” Barajas said.
In residential construction, a system of contractors and subcontractors opens the door to abuses, said Enrique Lopezlira, director of the Low-Wage Work Program at the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center. Lopezlira said contractors hire workers, often immigrant laborers, for low-wage jobs and pay them in cash, to save money on benefits and make the lowest possible bid for projects.
“It becomes a blame game. The developers can say, ‘I hired this contractor and I thought he was above board and paying people a decent wage.’ And the contractors can say, ‘I rely on subcontractors,’” said Lopezlira. “It becomes a race to the bottom.”
In many places, residential construction draws more immigrant labor because of looser state and local regulations and lower pay. But in some states with weaker unions and rules that are less strict, such as Texas, the commercial construction industry also employs many immigrants who are here illegally.
Commercial construction labor costs are 40% lower in Texas than they are in large Northeastern cities where unions are more powerful, said David Kelly, a lecturer in civil and environmental engineering at the University of Michigan.
“The large difference [in cost] suggests workers and their employers in some regions are not paying for income taxes, overtime, Social Security or unemployment insurance,” Kelly said in an email. “Since undocumented workers have limited employment options they may be more willing than others to accept these conditions.”
Despite political claims that Democratic policies result in immigrants taking jobs others need, noncitizen immigrant laborers were about 7% of jobholders nationally as of May — about the same as 2015, according to the Stateline analysis.
That share has hardly budged over the past 10 years, including in 2019 under the first Trump administration, dipping to 6% only in 2020 and 2021.
In construction, however, the share of jobs held by immigrant laborers has increased from 19% in 2015 to 22% in 2024, according to the analysis. Immigrant laborers have gotten more than a third of the 1.5 million jobs added between 2015 and 2024, as home construction reached historic levels.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with the full name of the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center and to clarify David Kelly’s remarks on regional labor costs. Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.
Essential immigrant workers and their families gather in front of the Federal Building in Milwaukee for the Day Without Immigrants call to action. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)
People who believe the call to action, Black Lives Matter, to be controversial and provocative should buckle up.
What we’ve been witnessing these last weeks has been a new call to action: Immigrant Lives Matter.
Yes, even undocumented immigrant lives matter.
Black Lives Matter stirred passionate backlash unlike anything I’ve seen since the 1960s.
Immigrant Lives Matter is now a cry to recognize the humanity of people who are suffering violent attacks after being demonized as “aliens.”
I’ve written on immigration as a reporter, columnist and editorial writer for decades. The most invective I’ve had directed my way has been about who I am as the son of immigrants.
“Go back to Mexico” was a common retort to things I wrote. Each time I’d chuckle to myself: “Hard to do since I’m from California.”
Yup, I’m not from Mexico. But my parents were. And they lived in this country without legal status until I was in grade school.
I’m quite familiar with immigrant life, although, thanks to the 14th Amendment (also under attack by the Trump administration), I’m a citizen.
I’ve seen up close what being afraid of deportation looks like. The fear that a family would be torn apart, loss of livelihood and loss of the country you chose to work in, pay taxes for, build a family in and the only one your children know. And, in my case as with many other immigrants and children of immigrants, the country in whose military you chose to serve.
That experience and those decades of writing on immigration taught me that among the hottest buttons around are those dealing with the border, particularly when people cross it who don’t look and talk like you.
Standard disclaimer: You don’t have to be a racist to be concerned about immigration and immigrants, but using terms such as invasion, infestation, vermin, criminals and threat to American identity and values is a big tell.
As is calling out the military to combat a non-existent foreign invasion.
Black Lives Matter speaks to the current plight of people whose ancestors were unwilling immigrants, packed into slave ships and brought here by force. Dehumanizing racism and the shocking mistreatment of Black citizens by police has dogged our nation from the beginning.
But even that call to action, after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, was roundly disparaged.
Wrap your head around that. Americans who have been around since the country’s founding and over whose slavery a country fought a bitter civil war are still not considered American enough to insist on being treated as Americans.
All that immigrants and those who stand in solidarity with them are asking is that the basic precepts of fairness, humanity and, importantly, due process extend to them as well.
Immigrants are in a vulnerable position. Demagoguing about invasion and infestation is just too tempting for nativists and opportunists who prey on prejudices for political gain.
Los Angeles has been in the news because of protests that the Trump administration has been trying very hard to depict as a violent conflagration. But the protests have been mostly peaceful by people reasonably objecting to ICE raids. The ICE targets are people who have worked here for years, raising U.S. citizen children and doing the work Americans won’t do.
Despite footage of “violent“ protesters cast as “invaders” faced by brave military troops, California’s governor and many others have noted that there was no widespread, destructive civil unrest, much less the foreign invasion that the demagogues claim justifies military involvement.
Be afraid. We need to stop underestimating the appeal of nativism. It’s real in this country.
But something happened after President Trump’s unwarranted use of the military in Los Angeles and in reaction to his military parade in Washington D.C. (lightly attended, to the president’s dismay).
The “No Kings” protests.
I saw them as solidarity with Immigrant Lives Matter.
Black lives will always matter. After the phrase was coined, some people insisted that it meant other lives mattered less.
Nonsense, then and now.
Immigrant lives matter, as with Black lives, as much as your life does. And if we don’t protect the lives of the people in the crosshairs now, we all could be next.
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Lambeau Field in Green Bay | Photo by Jason Kerzinski for Wisconsin Examiner
Gov. Tony Evers announced Wednesday that he’s awarding $1.8 million to the city of Green Bay to cover the public safety costs associated with hosting the NFL draft in April.
The event drew more than 600,000 visitors to the city which, with a population of about 105,000, is the smallest NFL city in the country. Initial estimates say the draft generated $94 million in economic activity across the state and $20 million for the Green Bay area specifically.
Prior to the draft, a pair of Republican lawmakers had requested that the Republicans in control of the budget writing Joint Finance Committee include $1.25 million in the next state budget to help cover public safety costs. That request has not yet been addressed as Republicans continue to work on delivering a state budget to Evers.
The money Evers awarded is being disbursed from the Opportunity Attraction and Promotion Fund, a program proposed by Evers in his last state budget proposal to help the state recruit and host large-scale events. The 2023-25 budget included $10 million for the program and Evers had proposed an additional $5 million in his latest budget proposal.
“The 2025 NFL Draft was a booming success, and I’ve said all along that nobody could have pulled it off other than the Green Bay Packers and the good folks in Green Bay and across the region,” Evers said in a statement. “So, it was critically important to me that Green Bay and our local partners received the support they need to cover public safety costs, and I’m glad we were able to get this done.”
According to a news release, the grant will also help the village of Ashwaubenon and Brown County cover their costs associated with the event. Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich said the money will keep the burden of the event off city taxpayers.
“We’re incredibly grateful to Gov. Evers and WEDC for their critical support in covering public safety expenses related to the NFL Draft,” Genrich said. “This was a historic event that brought enormous economic benefits to our community and the entire state of Wisconsin. The allocation of this funding recognizes that positive statewide economic effect and protects our local taxpayers from bearing the costs—a win-win for our state’s and our city’s residents.”
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Workers moving equipment and road signs on a highway. (Getty Images)
A Rhode Island federal judge seemed likely Wednesday to block the U.S. Department of Transportation’s move to yank billions in congressional funding for bridges, roads and airport projects if Democrat-led states do not partake in federal immigration enforcement.
U.S. District Judge John James McConnell Jr. during a hearing pressed acting U.S. Attorney Sara Miron Bloom on how the Transportation Department could have power over funding that was approved by Congress, saying federal agencies “only have appropriations power given by Congress.”
“That’s how the Constitution works,” he said. “Where does the secretary get the power and authority to impose immigration conditions on transportation funding?”
The suit brought by 20 Democratic state attorneys general challenges an April directive from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, a former House member from Wisconsin, that requires states to cooperate in federal immigration enforcement in order to receive federal grants already approved by Congress.
“Defendents seek to hold hostage tens of billions of dollars of critical transportation funding in order to force the plaintiff states to become mere arms of the federal government’s immigration enforcement policies,” Delbert Tran of the California Department of Justice, who argued on behalf of the states, said.
Arguing on behalf of the Trump administration, Bloom said that Duffy’s letter simply directs the states to follow federal immigration law.
McConnell, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama in 2011, said that while the states could interpret it that way, the Trump administration has gone after so-called sanctuary cities and targeted them for not taking the same aggressive immigration enforcement as the administration.
The judge said Bloom’s argument expressed a “very different” interpretation of the directive than how the administration has described it publicly. He also noted President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have “railed on … the issues that arise from sanctuary cities.”
Trump this week directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to target Chicago, Los Angeles and New York — three major Democrat-led cities that have policies to not aid in immigration enforcement.
McConnell said he would make a decision whether to issue a preliminary injunction before Friday. The preliminary injunction would be tailored to the states that brought the suit and would not have a nationwide effect.
The states that brought the suit are California, Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Maryland, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.
Tran said the Department of Transportation’s directive is not only arbitrary and capricious, but undermines congressional authority because Congress appropriated more than $100 billion for transportation projects to the states.
Cutting off funding would have disastrous consequences, the states have argued.
“More cars, planes, and trains will crash, and more people will die as a result, if Defendants cut off federal funding to Plaintiff States,” according to the brief from the states.
Bloom defended Duffy’s letter, saying it listed actions that would impede federal law enforcement and justified withholding of funds because “such actions compromise the safety and security of the transportation systems supported by DOT financial assistance.”
McConnell said that didn’t answer his question about the secretary’s authority to withhold congressionally appropriated funding.
“It seems to me that the secretary is saying that a failure to comply with immigration conditions is relevant to the safety and security of the transportation system,” Bloom said.
McConnell seemed skeptical of that argument.
“Under that rationale, does the secretary of the Department of Transportation have the authority to impose a condition on federal highway funds that prohibit a state that has legalized abortion from seeking a federal grant?” he asked.
Bloom said that question was beyond her directive from the Department of Transportation to address in her arguments to the court.
“I understand your question,” she said. “All I think I can say is that here the secretary has, in his statement, set out a rationale for why this is relevant to DOT funding.”
Tran said that the “crux of this case is” that the Trump administration is trying “to enforce other laws that do not apply to these grants,” by requiring states to partake in immigration enforcement.
“It’s beyond their statutory authority,” he argued.
Yessenia Ruano as she prepares to self-deport to El Salvador (Photo courtesy of Voces de la Frontera)
A Milwaukee teacher’s aide has decided to self-deport back to El Salvador, following moves by the Trump administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to remove her from the country. Yessenia Ruano, who worked at the Academia de Lenguaje y Bellas Artes bilingual school in Milwaukee, is the mother of 10-year-old twin girls. Although the girls were born in the United States, Ruano took her daughters with her back to El Salvador on Tuesday, choosing to self-deport and keep her family intact rather than being forcibly removed by ICE.
On Friday, federal immigration officials denied Ruano’s request for an emergency stay, which would have halted the government’s attempts to remove her while her visa application was considered, WPR reported. Ruano’s attorney Marc Chirstopher said that ICE gave a one-sentence rationale for denying the stay.
Christopher said that ICE officials claimed that Ruano “did not warrant a favorable exercise of discretion.”
“Quite frankly, if she doesn’t warrant it, I don’t know who does.” Christopher said. Ruano did not have a criminal record. She crossed the southern border in 2011 to escape gang violence after local gang members murdered her brother. Christopher added that “she’s very involved in the community,” as a teacher’s aide for kindergarten teachers, owns her own house and pays taxes into a safety net system she is not eligible to access.
“I am extremely disappointed in ICE’s decision to deny an emergency stay for my constituent Yessenia Ruano,” U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) said in a statement. “It is outright cruel to force a human trafficking victim to return to the place she was fleeing from.” Ruano was applying for a T-visa, which confers legal status on victims of human trafficking. “T-visas are meant for people like Yessenia, but sadly, she wasn’t even given the chance to have her case heard,” said Moore. “Yessenia is a wonderful person and her and [her] children’s removal from Milwaukee will be a loss to our community.”
Ruano received a letter telling her to self-deport on June 3, spurring condemnation from Milwaukee residents, immigrant rights advocates and elected leaders. At the time, Ruano’s attorneys said that it appeared that ICE was abandoning policies of waiting for T and U visas — which protect victims of trafficking and crime victims who are cooperating with law enforcement— to be processed.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley wrote on the social media website X that “deporting valued members of our community who are raising and educating our kids, assisting law enforcement in their important work, and giving back to our neighborhoods should alarm us all. It is wrong and unjust.” Crowley added that “these individuals are victims of a broken immigration system. The Trump Administration told the country they were only going after ‘the worst of the worst’. But time and time again, we see them targeting the very people who contribute the most — our neighbors, coworkers, our friends.” The county executive warned that “I am deeply alarmed that our country continues to turn its back on our most vulnerable. By not standing up and protecting our neighbors, we’re not just failing them — we’re failing our entire community. Due process is under attack, and that should concern all of us in Wisconsin and across the country.”
During a May 30 hearing, ICE officials told Ruano to self-deport by June 3. During that hearing her attorneys filed for an emergency stay, beginning a wait-period of several weeks until a decision was finally made, WPR reported. Attorney Christopher said that few emergency stays are being granted under the second Trump administration.
Earlier this month, the Milwaukee Common Council released a statement opposing Ruano’s impending deportation, and held 14 minutes of silence to honor her 14 years in the United States. “Yessenia has developed roots here,” the council stated. “She is a wife with two Milwaukee-born daughters. She is an educator. She is a volunteer. She is a contributing member of our society. All of us should be outraged by this decision and what it means for Yessenia and her family, and other immigrants who could be facing similar fates.”
“If there is one thing this case has made crystal clear,” the statement continued, “it’s that the immigration laws and systems in our country are broken, and the administration at the federal level is more concerned with scapegoating hard working immigrants than fixing the process so it is fair and works for everyone.”
Before Christopher took on Ruano as a client about two months ago, Ruano had paid over $14,000 in legal fees to file the T-visa application to a different team of Ohio-based attorneys.
“From what I’ve been seeing consistently through other cases and hearing from other attorneys, they’re not granting hardly any stays for anyone really,” said Christopher. “I am more than positive that she would have been able to remain in the U.S. while the T-visa was pending…under previous administrations.”
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U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, speaks on the Senate floor on June 17, 2025, about how he was forcibly removed from a press conference with the secretary of Homeland Security. (Screenshot from Senate webcast)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat who was forcibly removed from a press conference with the secretary of Homeland Security, said Tuesday that his home state is the testing ground for President Donald Trump’s push to deploy the military within the United States.
Trump is using immigrants in the country without legal status as scapegoats to send in troops, said Padilla, who in a speech on the Senate floor choked up as he related how he was wrestled to the ground by law enforcement officials. “I refuse to let immigrants be political pawns on his path toward fascism,” Padilla said.
It’s the first floor speech the senior senator from California has given since the highly publicized incident in Los Angeles last week. The Secret Service handcuffed Padilla after he tried to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was defending to reporters Trump’s decision to send 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines to LA.
Trump sent in the troops following multi-day protests over Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and against California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wishes. An appeals court Tuesday is hearing arguments on a suit by California contending that the president unlawfully took control of the state National Guard.
“He wants the spectacle,” Padilla said of the president. “To justify his undemocratic crackdown and his authoritarian power grab.”
The LA protests were sparked after ICE targeted Home Depots, places where undocumented day laborers typically search for work, for immigration raids.
The Padilla incident, widely captured on video, was a stark escalation of the tensions between Democratic lawmakers and the administration over Trump’s drive to enact mass deportations.
A Democratic House member from New Jersey is facing federal charges on allegations that she shoved immigration officials while protesting the opening of an immigrant detention center in Newark. And on Tuesday, in New York City, ICE officers arrested city comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander while he was escorting an immigrant to their hearing in immigration court, according to The Associated Press.
In a statement to States Newsroom, DHS Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said Lander “was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer.”
“No one is above the law, and if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences,” McLaughlin said.
The president late Sunday directed ICE to conduct immigration raids in New York, LA and Chicago, the nation’s three most populous cities, all led by elected Democrats in heavily Democratic states.
“We will follow the President’s direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America’s streets,” McLaughlin said.
Padilla in his Senate remarks gave an account of the events that led to him being handcuffed and detained last week.
On June 12, he had a meeting scheduled with General Gregory M. Guillot, commander of the U.S. Northern Command, to discuss the military presence in LA.
Padilla, the top Democrat on a Judiciary panel that oversees DHS and immigration policy, said his meeting with the general was delayed because of a press briefing across the hall with Noem.
Padilla said he has tried to speak with DHS because for weeks LA has “seen a disturbing pattern of increasingly extreme and cruel immigration enforcement operations targeting non-violent people at places of worship, at schools, in courthouses.”
So Padilla said he asked to attend the press conference, and a National Guard member and an FBI agent escorted him inside.
“They opened the door for me,” he said.
As he listened, he said a comment from Noem compelled him to ask a question.
“We are not going away,” Noem, the former governor of South Dakota, told the press. “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”
Padilla said her remarks struck him as “an un-American mission statement.”
“That cannot be the mission of federal law enforcement and the United States military,” he said. “Are we truly prepared to live in a country where the president can deploy the armed forces to decide which duly elected governors and mayors should be allowed to lead their constituents?”
Padilla said before he could finish his question, he was physically removed and the National Guard member and FBI agent who escorted him in the room “stood by silently, knowing full well who I was.”
As he recounted being handcuffed, Padilla paused, getting emotional.
“I was forced to the ground, first on my knees, and then flat on my chest,” he said.
Padilla said a flurry of questions went through his head as he was marched down a hallway, and as he kept asking why he was being detained: Where are they taking me? What will a city, already on the edge from being militarized, think when they see their U.S. senator being handcuffed just for trying to ask a question? What will my wife think? What will our boys think?
“I also remember asking myself, if this aggressive escalation is the result of someone speaking up about the abuse and overreach of the Trump administration, was it really worth it?” Padilla asked. “If a United States senator becomes too afraid to speak up, how can we expect any other American to do the same?”
In a statement, DHS, said that the Secret Service did not know Padilla was a U.S. senator, although video of the incident shows that Padilla stated that he was a member of the Senate.
“I’m Sen. Alex Padilla and I have questions for the secretary,” he said as four federal law enforcement officers grabbed him and shoved him to the ground.
Noem met with Padilla after he was handcuffed, his office told States Newsroom.
“He raised concerns with the deployment of military forces and the needless escalation over the last week, among other issues,” according to his office. “And he voiced his frustration with the continued lack of response from this administration. It was a civil, brief meeting, but the Secretary did not provide any meaningful answers. The Senator was simply trying to do his job and seek answers for the people he represents in California.”
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson has suggested that the Senate take action against Padilla, such as a censure. Johnson criticized the senator’s actions and accused him of charging at Noem, which Padilla is not seen doing in the multiple videos of the incident.
“I’m not in that chamber, but I do think that it merits immediate attention by other colleagues over there,” the Louisiana Republican said. “I think that behavior, at a minimum, rises to the level of censure. I think there needs to be a message sent by the body as a whole.”
Senate Democrats have coalesced their support around Padilla. During a Tuesday press conference, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer praised Padilla for his speech on the Senate floor.
“It was basically a strong plea for America to regain the gyroscope of democracy, which has led us forward for so many years and now we’re losing it,” the New York Democrat said. “It’s a wake-up call to all Americans.”
Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.
A police officer forced out of a suburban Milwaukee department for appearing to skip a lot of work and claiming many questionable comp days is now working for a small-town department in Waukesha County.
Amanda Lang resigned from the Glendale Police Department in 2021 after an internal investigation found she had more than 230 paid hours unaccounted for between 2019 and 2021. At her wage of $40 an hour, those hours added up to $9,300, the investigation noted.
“Based on the discovery of leaving early, along with the substantial number of full shifts not accounted for, one can only wonder how many other times she has left significantly early without documentation,” then-Captain Rhett Fugman wrote in his investigation, which The Badger Project obtained in a records request.
The captain recommended Lang be fired, and she resigned in April of 2021.
She worked for Glendale in the Milwaukee suburbs for more than 13 years, rising to the level of sergeant, before her resignation.
“As a sergeant, additional responsibility and trust was provided to Sgt. Lang,” Fugman wrote. “Her actions and inactions displayed regarding leaving early and posting off time over the last two plus years have displayed a lack of integrity, honesty and trustworthiness.”
“These characteristics are the foundation of what we are as police officers,” he continued.
Lang was hired by the Lannon Police Department later in 2021 and has worked there since.
Lannon Police Chief Daniel Bell said his department “follows rigorous background checks and screening procedures for all new hires to ensure they align with the standards and integrity expected of our officers,” including for Lang.
“During the interview process, we were satisfied with her explanation of the situation,” Bell said of her resignation.
Lang is “consistently demonstrating professionalism, dedication and a strong commitment to community policing,” he added.
She has been promoted to lieutenant, the second in command of the 12-officer department.
Another officer employed by the Lannon Police Department, Nathaniel Schweitzer, was forced out of the police department in the town of Waterford in Racine County late last year. Like Lang, he “resigned prior to the completion of an internal investigation,” according to the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s database on officers who left a law enforcement position under negative circumstances.
The total number of law enforcement officers in Wisconsin has dropped for years and now sits at near record lows as chiefs and sheriffs say they struggle to fill positions in an industry less attractive to people than it once was.
Unsurprisingly, the number of wandering officers, those who were fired or forced out from a previous job in law enforcement, continues to rise. Nearly 400 officers in Wisconsin currently employed were fired or forced out of previous jobs in law enforcement in the state, almost double the amount from 2021. And that doesn’t include officers who were pushed out of law enforcement jobs outside of the state and who came to Wisconsin to work.
Chiefs and sheriffs can be incentivized to hire wandering officers, experts say. Hiring someone new to law enforcement means the police department or sheriff’s office has to pay for recruits’ academy training and then wait for them to finish before they can start putting new hires on the schedule.
A wandering officer already has certification and can start working immediately.
Nearly 2,400 officers in the state have been flagged by their former law enforcement employers as having a “negative separation” since the state DOJ launched its database in 2017.
Most are simply young officers who did not succeed in a new job during their probationary period, when the bar to fire them is very low, experts say. But some have more serious reasons for being pushed out.
Law enforcement agencies can look up job applicants in that database to get more insight into their work history. And a law enacted in 2021 in Wisconsin bans law enforcement officers from sealing their personnel files and work histories, a previously common tactic for officers with a black mark on their record.
About 13,400 law enforcement officers are currently employed in Wisconsin, excluding those who primarily work in a corrections facility, according to the Wisconsin Department of Justice. Wandering officers make up nearly 3% of the total.
At least one major study published in the Yale Law Journal has found that wandering officers are more likely to receive a complaint for a moral character violation, compared to new officers and veterans who haven’t been fired or forced out from a previous position in law enforcement.
Sammie Garrity contributed to this report.
This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.
Milwaukee-area cop quit last police job after appearing to miss 200+ work hours is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Left to right, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul are sworn in before the start of a hearing with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at the U.S. Capitol on June 12, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Three Democratic governors from states that leave immigration enforcement to the federal government said Thursday they oppose President Donald Trump’s decision to send more than 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines into Los Angeles without the consent of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The lengthy and tense U.S. House hearing where the trio appeared — highlighted by a shouting match among members and accusations of Nazi tactics — came as the nation’s capital prepared for a major military parade and Trump’s birthday Saturday, along with thousands of “No Kings” protests across the country.
In Los Angeles, a U.S. senator was tackled and removed from an immigration press conference by federal law enforcement agents accompanying Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
The governors, whose states have submitted an amicus brief to a lawsuit by Newsom challenging Trump, said the decisions to bring in the military should be made by local officials.
“It’s wrong to deploy the National Guard and active-duty Marines into an American city over the objection of local law enforcement, just to inflame a situation and create a crisis, just as it’s wrong to tear children away from their homes and their mothers and fathers, who have spent decades living and working in our communities, raising their families,” Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois told members of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee.
The hearing with Govs. Pritzker, Tim Walz of Minnesota and Kathy Hochul of New York marked the second time House Republicans have called in leaders in blue states that have policies of non-cooperation with federal immigration officials in enforcement efforts. Those policies do not bar immigration enforcement from occurring.
Republicans brought in the mayors of Boston, Chicago and Denver in March.
The eight-hour hearing came after multi-day protests in Los Angeles sparked when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers began widespread immigration raids at Home Depots in their communities in an effort to carry out the president’s mass deportation efforts.
The governors stressed that the president’s decision to send in the National Guard set a dangerous precedent and posed a threat to democracy.
Republicans on the committee defended the president’s actions and instead accused the governors of violating federal law because of their state policies, dubbed as “sanctuary cities.” Immigration policy is handled by the federal government and states and localities are not required to coordinate with officials.
More than four hours into the hearing, video circulated of California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla being forcibly removed and handcuffed by Secret Service agents while trying to ask a question of Noem during a press conference in LA.
Democrats on the panel, such as Arizona Democratic Rep. Yassamin Ansari, slammed the video and raised concerns that a “sitting senator was shoved to the ground.”
It led to a shouting match, with Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost asking the chair of the panel, James Comer of Kentucky, if the committee would subpoena Noem.
Comer said Frost was out of order and tried to move on.
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was next in line for questioning, heckled Frost and said that Democrats “can’t follow the rules.” Comer eventually told Frost to “shut up.”
Pritzker said that he could not “believe the disrespect that was shown to a United States senator” who was trying to ask Noem a question.
“That seems completely irrational,” Pritzker said.
Democrats on the panel such as Illinois Rep. Delia Ramirez and Dan Goldman of New York called for Noem to appear before the committee.
“Anyone with two eyes that can see, can see that was authoritarian, lawless behavior that no person in America, much less a senator conducting congressional oversight, should receive,” Goldman said.
The Democratic governors defended their immigration policies and criticized the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown, pointing to ICE officers wearing face coverings to arrest immigrants.
“People are living in fear in the shadows,” Hochul said. “People can’t go to school, they can’t worship, they can’t go get health care. They can’t go to their senior center. What is happening has been traumatic.”
Several Republicans including Reps. Comer, Tom Emmer of Minnesota and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, took issue with comments by Walz at a commencement speech in May, in which he accused the president of turning ICE agents into a modern-day Gestapo, the official secret police of Nazi Germany.
Republican Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri said that Walz should apologize.
Walz said that as a former history teacher, he was making an observation about ICE tactics — such as wearing a face covering to arrest people — that were similar to those used by secret police.
The top Democrat on the panel, Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts, defended Walz’s statement, and said that ICE is operating like a modern-day Gestapo.
Lynch pointed to the video of the international Tufts University student who was approached by masked men on the street and taken into a van for writing an op-ed in defense of Palestinian human rights.
“ICE agents wearing masks and hoodies detained Rümeysa Öztürk and those of you who watched that, that abduction, when you compare the old films of the Gestapo grabbing people off the streets of Poland, and you compare them to those nondescript thugs who grabbed that student, that graduate student, it does look like a Gestapo operation,” Lynch said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testifies before the House Appropriations Committee's Defense Subcommittee at the U.S. Capitol on June 10, 2025 in Washington, D.C. Tuesday was the first time Hegseth testified before Congress since his confirmation hearings in January. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The Trump administration’s deployment of National Guard troops and U.S. Marines to protests over immigration raids in Los Angeles will cost the federal government about $134 million, a Pentagon budget official said Tuesday, as the response to the protests further divided officials in California and Washington, D.C.
The situation in the country’s second-largest city captured the attention of lawmakers in the nation’s capital, even as the Republican-led Congress charted a path forward for the Trump-backed tax and spending cut bill.
Democrats in Congress on Tuesday warned the administration’s actions bordered on authoritarianism, while President Donald Trump said his intervention saved the city from destruction.
“If we didn’t send in the National Guard quickly, right now, Los Angeles would be burning to the ground,” Trump said in the Oval Office Tuesday.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, meanwhile, sought a restraining order blocking the 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 U.S. Marines deployed to Los Angeles from assisting with domestic law enforcement. Trump ordered the troops to the city over Newsom’s and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ objections.
Democrats on Capitol Hill criticized the administration over several aspects of the deployment, saying Trump was instigating violence, overstepping his authority and wasting taxpayer money.
At a previously scheduled Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing, Democratic Reps. Betty McCollum of Minnesota and Pete Aguillar of California asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth the financial cost of placing 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines in Los Angeles.
Hegseth, who is originally from Minnesota, declined to answer McCollum’s question directly, instead invoking the riots in Minneapolis following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020 and saying Trump sought to avoid similar chaos in Los Angeles.
“President Trump recognizes a situation like that, improperly handled by a governor, like it was by Gov. (Tim) Walz, if it gets out of control, it’s a bad situation for the citizens of any location,” he said.
When Aguillar asked a similar question about cost, Hegseth deferred to acting Pentagon comptroller Bryn MacDonnell, who estimated the current cost at $134 million, mainly for housing, travel and food. That money came out of existing operations and maintenance accounts, she said.
Hegseth told the panel the deployment was authorized for 60 days.
Just 2 miles away at the White House, though, Trump implied the decision could be more open-ended, saying during the Oval Office event that troops would stay in Los Angeles “until there’s no danger.”
“When there’s no danger, they’ll leave,” he said.
California’s federal lawsuit challenging the deployment, which state leaders filed Monday, includes a request for the court to issue a restraining order by 1 p.m. Pacific time Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer did not issue such an order by that deadline.
The administration intended to use the military personnel “to accompany federal immigration enforcement officers on raids throughout Los Angeles,” the request for a restraining order said.
“These unlawful deployments have already proven to be a deeply inflammatory and unnecessary provocation, anathema to our laws limiting the use (of) federal forces for law enforcement, rather than a means of restoring calm,” the state said.
“Federal antagonization, through the presence of soldiers in the streets, has already caused real and irreparable damage to the City of Los Angeles, the people who live there, and the State of California. They must be stopped, immediately.”
Democrats in California’s congressional delegation and members of the congressional caucuses for Black, Hispanic and Asian and Pacific Islander Democrats also blasted the administration’s role in inflaming the standoff between protesters and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who’d conducted recent raids on workplaces in the area.
“President Trump’s unlawful decision to deploy the National Guard onto the streets of Los Angeles is a reckless and inflammatory escalation, one designed not to restore calm, but to provoke chaos,” Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette D. Clarke said at a press conference.
“Let’s be clear about how this began: with peaceful protests sparked by the unlawful and inhumane targeting, detention and deportation of our immigrant neighbors.”
Clarke, a New York Democrat, said in response to a reporter’s question that she believed the sending in of troops constituted an impeachable act by Trump.
“I definitely believe it is, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” she said.
Other Democrats on Capitol Hill have said Monday and Tuesday that Trump engineered the conflict to distract from unpopular provisions of Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” and other issues.
“Donald Trump, cornered by his own failures – from pushing a heartless bill that would rip health care away from 16 million Americans, to raising costs from his reckless tariffs, to waging war with Elon Musk – Trump is desperately seeking a distraction,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said on the floor Tuesday.
“His order to deploy the National Guard and Marines – our own troops – on Americans is not just outrageous and provocative, it’s a dangerous authoritarian overreach that threatens the very fabric of our democracy.”
Rep. Jimmy Gomez led a press conference of California’s U.S. House Democrats Tuesday where he warned that the militarization in Los Angeles could happen elsewhere.
“If it can happen in Los Angeles, it can happen in any state in the union,” he said.
Later, at the Oval Office, Trump said protesters at his military parade on Saturday would be “met with very strong force.”
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Trump acted responsibly to protect Southern Californians and blamed Newsom for “failed leadership” that he said led to the clash this weekend.
Asked if, as Trump and White House border czar Tom Homan have suggested, Newsom should be arrested for interfering with immigration enforcement, Johnson initially demurred before suggesting an 18th-century punishment.
“I’m not going to give you legal analysis on whether Gavin Newsom should be arrested,” the Louisiana Republican said.
“But he ought to be tarred and feathered… He’s standing in the way of the administration and the carrying out of federal law. Right? He is applauding the bad guys and standing in the way of the good guys. He is trying to — he’s a participant, an accomplice — in our federal law enforcement agents being not just disrespected but assaulted.”
Johnson said House Republicans were fully behind Trump’s actions and deflected a question about if there was a point at which he would oppose the administration’s efforts.
“He is fully within his authority right now to do what he is doing,” Johnson said. “We have to maintain order.”
Protesters gather outside of the Milwaukee FBI office to speak out against the arrest of Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Prosecutors for the Trump administration filed a brief Monday requesting that a federal judge not dismiss the government’s indictment against Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan.
Dugan faces criminal charges after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, along with agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency and FBI, arrived in the Milwaukee County Courthouse April 18 to arrest 31-year-old Eduardo Flores-Ruiz for being in the country illegally.
Flores-Ruiz was set to appear in Dugan’s courtroom that day for a status hearing on misdemeanor charges against him. When Dugan learned that the agents were outside her courtroom, she confronted them and learned they only had an administrative warrant, which was issued by an agency official and not a judge. An administrative warrant doesn’t allow agents to enter private spaces in the courthouse such as Dugan’s courtroom.
Later, while the agents were waiting for Flores-Ruiz in the hallway outside the main courtroom door, Dugan sent him and his attorney out a side door into the hallway. One of the agents rode down the elevator with Flores-Ruiz and he was later arrested on the street.
Dugan was charged with concealing an individual to prevent arrest, a misdemeanor, and obstruction, which is a felony. Last month, Dugan’s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the case against her, arguing she was acting in her official capacity as a judge and therefore immune from prosecution for her actions and that the federal government is impinging on the state of Wisconsin’s authority to operate its court system.
The case drew national attention, with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and FBI Director Kash Patel both making public statements about Dugan’s arrest before she’d even been indicted. Legal experts have questioned the strength of the federal government’s case and accused Trump officials of grandstanding to make a political point.
In the Monday filing, federal prosecutors argued that dismissing the case would ignore previously established law that allows judges to face criminal charges.
“Such a ruling would give state court judges carte blanche to interfere with valid law enforcement actions by federal agents in public hallways of a courthouse, and perhaps even beyond,” the prosecutors argued. “Dugan’s desired ruling would, in essence, say that judges are ‘above the law,’ and uniquely entitled to interfere with federal law enforcement.”
Dugan is set to appear for trial on July 21.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
A bus contractor for Boston Public Schools (BPS) is being sued after one of its school driver allegedly caused a crash that injured an 8-year-old student with autism, reported WCVB 5.
The incident reportedly occurred last year, when a school bus veered onto a sidewalk at the Curley School in Jamaica Plain and struck the child, who was walking with a school aide.
According to the article, the lawsuit, filed this month by the child’s family, alleges gross negligence by contractor Transdev and its employees, citing inadequate supervision, failure to ensure alert and competent staff, and systemic safety failures.
The crash was captured by a dashboard camera in the school bus. Footage reportedly shows the bus driver and bus safety monitor, who were not identified, napping in their seats just moments before the driver awoke, started the bus, and swerved into pedestrians standing on the sidewalk.
The injured child’s guardian said the incident almost took her child’s life and that Transdev must be held accountable to protect children and prevent this from ever happening again.
Following the crash, police stated said the bus driver made multiple false claims, including that the bus experienced a “mechanical issue (steering).” But the investigating officer found that all existing mechanical issues on the bus were a result of the crash.
The bus driver also claimed that as he was pulling the bus forward, a vehicle cut in front of him, and that in attempt to avoid the vehicle he turned the steering wheel in the opposite direction but pressed the gas pedal instead of the brake pedal by mistake.
According to the news report, the child sustained a broken femur, which resulted in surgery and months of impatient hospital care and treatment.
The lawsuit follows an independent investigation into school transportation safety by Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and BPS, launched after a 5-year-old was struck and killed by a bus in the city’s Hyde Park April 28. The BPS bus driver, identified as Jean Charles, was driving on an expired school bus certificate, which he had been notified about.
Natashia Tidwell, a former federal prosecutor and police officer who specializes in external investigations, will lead the independent review of safety policies and performance under contracts with Transdev, the transportation company that has been contracting with BPS since 2013 to hire, train and manage the district’s approximately 750 school bus drivers.
The case is ongoing.
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The post Massachusetts School Bus Contractor Sued After Driver Accused of Striking Pedestrians appeared first on School Transportation News.
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