The E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in Washington, D.C., home of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, pictured on July 14, 2025. (Photo by Jacob Fischler/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — A federal judge Thursday barred the Trump administration from deporting unaccompanied children to Guatemala, finding that the administration’s claim of reuniting the children with their parents there “crumbled like a house of cards.”
District of Columbia Judge Timothy Kelly issued a preliminary injunction to extend last month’s temporary block to prevent the rapid removal of hundreds of Guatemalan children, who were woken in the middle of the night and rushed onto deportation planes over Labor Day weekend.
Kelly, whom President Donald Trump appointed in 2017, rejected the Trump administration’s argument that the move was to reunite the children at the request of their parents, a claim that Department of Justice attorneys walked back during last week’s hearing.
“But that explanation crumbled like a house of cards about a week later,” he wrote in his opinion. “There is no evidence before the Court that the parents of these children sought their return.”
Advocates and immigration attorneys for the children rushed to file an emergency block in the middle of the night of Labor Day weekend, which narrowly prevented the removal of 10 Guatemalan children, ages 10 to 17. But hundreds of Guatemalan children would have been removed if not for the temporary restraining order.
600 children identified for removal
Attorneys from the The National Immigration Law Center, which brought the suit, tried to include the class certification to also apply to children from Honduras, but Kelly narrowed the class to only apply to children from Guatemala.
The Trump administration has identified up to 600 Guatemalan children in the Office of Refugee Resettlement custody and foster care to be removed, according to the court filings.
Separately, a federal judge in Arizona issued a temporary restraining order until Sept. 26 to bar the Trump administration from removing Honduran and Guatemalan children in federal custody and foster care from being removed from the United States.
The National Immigration Law Center’s Efrén C. Olivares, lead attorney on the District of Columbia case, said in a statement that it’s a relief that “hundreds of children … are now safe from the Trump administration’s unlawful attempt to expel them from the United States.”
“This decision should send a clear message to the administration that they have no legal authority to circumvent the law to expel unaccompanied children without due process,” he said.
A DOJ record ‘barren of evidence’
Kelly criticized the Trump administration for its claim that the parents of the Guatemalan children had requested they be returned to their home country.
“In any event, the record here is barren of evidence that any child in the proposed class wants to return to Guatemala, even if their parents can be found,” he wrote.
“While Defendants plunged ahead in the middle of the night with their “reunification” plan and then represented to a judge that a parent or guardian had requested each child’s return, that turned out not to be true,” Kelly wrote. “Such a rushed, seemingly error-laden operation to send unaccompanied alien children back to their home countries is one of the things that the TVPRA’s process prevents.”
In court declarations, many of the parents said they were unaware their children were being returned. One parent, referred to as B.M.R.P., asked for her daughter to remain in the U.S. for her safety.
“I think she is in danger if she does return to Guatemala,” B.M.R.P. said. “All I ask is that you help my daughter stay safe – help her stay safe by not returning her to Guatemala.”
Attorneys for the children argued that if they were returned to Guatemala, they could face violence and the Trump administration’s move to deport them violated immigration procedures for unaccompanied minors.
Congress has carved out special legal protections for immigrant children, such as the 2008 TVPRA law that requires minors be placed in immigration proceedings and have access to legal counsel.
American flags hang alongside the official agency flag at the U.S. Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C., in August. The Justice Department is sharing state voter roll data with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
(Photo by Jonathan Shorman/Stateline)
The U.S. Department of Justice is sharing state voter roll information with the Department of Homeland Security in a search for noncitizens, the Trump administration confirmed.
The data sharing comes after Justice Department attorneys this summer demanded that election officials in nearly two dozen states turn over their voter lists, alarming some Democratic state secretaries of state and election experts. They have voiced fears about how the Trump administration planned to use the data. Even some Republican secretaries of state have declined to provide their full voter lists.
Homeland Security in an unsigned statement to Stateline called information sharing essential to “scrub aliens from voter rolls” and said the federal government was “finally doing what it should have all along — sharing information to solve problems.”
“This collaboration with the DOJ will lawfully and critically enable DHS to prevent illegal aliens from corrupting our republic’s democratic process and further ensure the integrity of our elections nationwide. Elections exist for the American people to choose their leaders, not illegal aliens,” the statement reads.
The Justice Department said in its own statement that state voter roll data provided in response to requests from the department’s Civil Rights Division is “being screened for ineligible voter entries.”
Noncitizen voting is extremely rare. One study of the 2016 election placed the prevalence of noncitizen voting at 0.0001% of votes cast.
The data sharing marks a next step in President Donald Trump’s efforts to exert more federal influence over state-administered elections. Trump signed an executive order earlier this year that sought to require individuals to provide proof-of-citizenship documents to register to vote, a rule quickly blocked in federal court. He has also threatened to sign another executive order attempting to restrict mail ballots.
At least 10 states have either provided publicly available data or given the department directions on how to request public data. On Friday, Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales, a Republican, confirmed to reporters that he had provided the Justice Department with all voter information requested, including driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers — making Indiana the first known state to have supplied personally sensitive data.
While the administration didn’t describe how Homeland Security will use the voter rolls to search for noncitizens, the agency operates a powerful program, Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, that can identify the immigration or citizenship status of an individual.
SAVE was originally intended to help state and local officials verify the immigration status of individual noncitizens seeking government benefits. But U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is part of Homeland Security, this spring refashioned it into a platform that can scan states’ voter rolls if officials upload the data.
In the past, SAVE could only search one name at a time. Now it can conduct bulk searches, allowing officials to potentially feed into it information on millions of registered voters. SAVE checks that information against a series of federal databases and reports back whether it can verify someone’s immigration status.
Since May, it also can draw upon Social Security data, transforming the program into a tool that can confirm U.S. citizenship because Social Security records for many, but not all, Americans include the information.
As the Justice Department has sought state voter rolls this summer, letters from the department’s attorneys to state officials in many instances have demanded full lists of registered voters that include sensitive personal information such as driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. At least 22 states were asked for some data, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, which is tracking the requests.
Some states have turned over publicly available voter files or offered directions on how to request them. Others have flat-out refused the requests.
“The Department of Justice hasn’t shown any good reason for its fishing expedition for sensitive voter information on every American,” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, said in a news release Monday announcing that her office had rejected the Justice Department’s second request for her state’s voter data.
Justin Levitt, who served as senior policy adviser for democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House and is now a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, said that he has no confidence that Homeland Security would act carefully with any data received.
Levitt, speaking with Stateline on Wednesday before the data sharing was confirmed, voiced concern that the Justice Department was “serving as a stalking horse” for other entities within the government.
“The fact that they’re having to sneak through the back door rather than knocking on the front door tells you that there’s improper procedures going on,” Levitt said.
This story was updated to add information from Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales confirming his state shared voter roll information with the U.S. Department of Justice.
Indiana Capital Chronicle’s Whitney Downard contributed reporting. Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
A jail lieutenant for a northern Wisconsin sheriff’s office resigned in 2022 after an internal investigation found he sent sexually explicit messages and photos to female subordinates. He now works as a police officer in a neighboring county.
Jeffrey Johnson worked at the Sawyer County Sheriff’s Office for 10 years, rising to administrator of the county jail, before he “resigned in lieu of termination,” according to a Wisconsin Department of Justice database that tracks law enforcement officers who leave a position under negative circumstances. Johnson started working for the Minong Police Department in Washburn County a little over a year later, according to the same database.
His resignation came after he admitted to sending “text messages of a sexual nature to a subordinate jail deputy, including pictures of your genitals,” according to a document from the sheriff’s office The Badger Project obtained in a records request. “When confronted about these text messages, you did not deny sending them and noted you could not recall the messages, given you were likely intoxicated when they were sent.”
Sawyer County refused to release the full investigation report to The Badger Project, citing client-attorney privilege, but one of the documents it did release notes that Johnson interacted similarly with “a number of other female deputies.”
Sawyer County Sheriff Doug Mrotek said in an interview that scrutiny on Johnson was greater because he was a leader and oversaw the jail’s staff of about 17 people. But he was not on duty when he sent the messages and the interactions didn’t constitute harassment, Mrotek said.
“We all make mistakes,” Mrotek said. “We all can have a bad day. It’s tough for me not to have a lot of respect for his integrity and character. Now make no mistake, I’m not saying that I condone his wrong action … but he made a mistake. And that mistake cost him his position as a leader.”
Mrotek said if Johnson had been a patrol deputy and not a jail lieutenant at the time, he would probably still be working for the Sawyer County Sheriff’s Office.
“It’s a leader-subordinate issue,” Mrotek said. But “he’s not going to make the same mistake twice.”
Johnson used Mrotek as a reference when he applied to his current job, where he works as a patrol officer and not in a supervisory role.
Johnson did not respond to requests for comment.
Minong Police Department Chief Lucas Shepard wrote in an email that Johnson was recommended for the position by the command staff at Sawyer County Sheriff’s Office.
Shepard also said Johnson was unanimously approved for the position at his department by himself and four citizen representatives. The chief and Johnson are Minong’s only full-time police officers.
Shepard said his department’s own background check revealed that the allegations of misconduct against Johnson involved consensual behavior that happened off duty.
“Beyond his resignation from that department, Officer Johnson offered the Minong Police Department years of valuable knowledge, training, and experience in law enforcement,” Shepard wrote. He “exemplifies what community-based policing strives for and if he has one definite characteristic as an officer, it is the care that he has for the people that he is policing.”
Wandering officers increasing in Wisconsin during cop crunch
This cop crunch has been a problem for years across the country, experts say.
Statewide, 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 came to Wisconsin to work.
Despite their work histories, wandering officers can be attractive to hire for law enforcement agencies, as they already have their certification, have experience and can start working immediately.
Law enforcement agencies can look up job applicants in the state DOJ’s database to get more insight into officers’ work history. And a law enacted in 2021 in Wisconsin bans law enforcement agencies from sealing the personnel files and work histories of former officers, previously a common tactic for cops 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 state DOJ. Wandering officers make up about 2.5% 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.
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.
A couple hundred people rallied Aug. 25 in support of Kilmar Abrego Garcia outside the the George H. Fallon Federal Building, where the ICE detention facility is located in Baltimore. (Photo by William J. Ford/Maryland Matters)
WASHINGTON — Maryland federal Judge Paula Xinis barred the Trump administration Wednesday from re-deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was unlawfully removed earlier this year, until she makes a decision in an evidentiary hearing set for October.
Separately, Abrego Garcia filed a claim for asylum, a longshot bid to gain legal status as the Trump administration aims to expel him to Uganda after unlawfully deporting him to a notorious prison in El Salvador in March. Xinis has no jurisdiction over the asylum case, which will be handled by an immigration judge.
Xinis said at a Wednesday hearing that she would issue a temporary restraining order blocking immigration authorities from removing Abrego Garcia until she issues a decision following a hearing scheduled for Oct. 6 in the U.S. District Court of Maryland.
That hearing is on Abrego Garcia’s habeas corpus claim challenging his detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials this week.
Xinis said she would rule on the claim within 30 days of the early October hearing.
Xinis said she would include in her temporary restraining order that Abrego Garcia must be detained within 200 miles of the district courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Attorneys for Abrego Garcia are also challenging the administration’s efforts to expel Abrego Garcia to the East African nation of Uganda and are pushing for a credible fear interview, in an effort to stop his removal to a country where he could face harm.
Immigrants who are deported to a country that is not their home, known as a third country, are allowed to challenge their removal if they believe they will experience harm in that country.
Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign said during Wednesday’s hearing that he expects the credible fear process to take two weeks.
Ensign said that while the Department of Justice objects to Xinis’ temporary restraining order, the federal government is “committed” to keeping Abrego Garcia in the United States until she makes her decision on the habeas corpus claim.
Uganda or Costa Rica
Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported to El Salvador despite deportation protections granted in 2019, was brought back to the U.S. in June to face criminal charges lodged against him by the Department of Justice in May amid several court orders, including from the Supreme Court, that required the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.
His case has brought a spotlight to President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown. Abrego Garcia has detailed the physical and psychological torture he experienced at the El Salvador megaprison.
Last week, attorneys for Abrego Garcia in his criminal case in Nashville, Tennessee, said in court filings that the Trump administration is trying to force Abrego Garcia to plead guilty to human smuggling charges by promising to remove him to Costa Rica if he does so, and threatening to deport him to Uganda if he refuses.
Costa Rica’s government has stated it will grant Abrego Garcia refugee status.
Abrego Garcia’s attorney in his Maryland case, Simon Y. Sandoval-Moshenberg, said Abrego Garcia is willing to be removed to Costa Rica but will not plead guilty to the charges in Tennessee.
Those charges stem from a traffic stop in 2022 in which Abrego Garcia was in a car with several people. No charges were filed at the time.
The Department of Justice has alleged that Abrego Garcia took part in a long-running conspiracy to smuggle immigrants without legal status across the United States. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges.
Trump and other top officials such as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have accused Abrego Garcia of being a MS-13 gang leader, but no allegations have been proven in court.
Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. without legal authorization from his home country of El Salvador in 2011 at the age of 16. He applied for asylum in 2019, but authorities denied the claim because he did not apply for asylum within his first year in the U.S., which is the legal deadline for such claims.
Instead, an immigration judge gave him deportation protections, known as a withholding in place, because it was likely he would face gang violence if returned to his home country of El Salvador.
Federal immigration officials at the time didn’t object to the deportation protections and declined to find a third country of removal that would accept him and where he would not experience harm.
Community organizations such as DAIS in Dane County could see further cuts if the Trump Administration is allowed to withhold VOCA funds. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul has joined a multi-state lawsuit against the Trump Administration’s demand that states participate in federal immigration enforcement efforts or risk losing access to federal money available through the Victims of Crime Act.
If the conditions are allowed to go through, Wisconsin could lose up to $24 million meant to help compensate victims of crime as well as fund local advocates, counselors and crisis response centers, according to a state Department of Justice news release
“VOCA funding is intended to be used to help victims of crime,” Kaul said in a statement. “It is appalling that the Trump administration is weaponizing this funding.”
Wisconsin is joined in the lawsuit, which was filed in a Rhode Island federal district court, by New Jersey, California, Delaware, Illinois, Rhode Island, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia.
VOCA takes fees, fines and penalties collected in federal court proceedings and disburses those funds to the states to use on victim services — which can include the operations of community-based organizations such as domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers and the work of victim-witness offices within county district attorneys’ offices.
While individual law enforcement agencies have agreed to help immigration authorities in various capacities through efforts such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s 287(g) program, the lawsuit argues that civil immigration enforcement is strictly a federal responsibility. Requiring that states participate in such actions violates the constitution’s tenets of separation of powers and federalism, the suit argues.
A handful of communities across the state have enacted policies to prevent local law enforcement from aiding ICE enforcement. Milwaukee Police Department policy states that immigration enforcement is the authority of the federal government and local cops getting involved in the enforcement of immigration law could harm the department’s relationship with immigrant communities.
“With a policing philosophy that is community-based, problem-oriented, and data-driven, we are committed to ridding the city’s streets of violent offenders regardless of whether such offenders are in the United States legally or illegally,” the policy states. “We are also committed to facilitating safe, sustainable communities where individuals are encouraged to report crime and provide the police with useful information and intelligence. However, proactive immigration enforcement by local police can be detrimental to our mission and policing philosophy when doing so deters some individuals from participating in their civic obligation to assist the police.”
The Trump Administration’s threat to withhold VOCA funds comes as the program has already seen massive cuts. Last year, Wisconsin’s portion of federal VOCA grants dropped from $40 million annually to $13 million.
Because of those previous cuts, shelters across Wisconsin have been struggling to make ends meet and retain the services available for victims of crime.
“Victim services is not just about one person gets hurt and experiences trauma, and then they’re helped and they go on with their lives,” Shira Phelps, executive director of DOJ’s Office of Crime Victim Services, told the Wisconsin Examiner last year. “This is really about sort of taking away a foundation for communities that help in every other aspect. Housing, education, all of those different fields are going to feel this really deep impact.”
Don Millis and Ann Jacob, the former and current chairs of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, testify Tuesday, Feb. 4, at an Assembly hearing on a commission rule for election observers. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
Wisconsin was one of several states included in the U.S. Department of Justice’s request for statewide voter registration data — files that include data on millions of Americans. However, after WEC pointed DOJ to state law that would require the Department to pay $12,500 for the data, it has not followed up on the request, according to a Wisconsin Elections Commission spokesperson.
The DOJ requests for voter data from at least nine states have raised concerns about what the Trump Administration plans to do with the information as President Donald Trump has remained fixated on disproven conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Through the spring and early summer, DOJ officials have requested information from state election authorities based on allegations that states have violated federal election laws. The June 17 letter sent to Wisconsin alleges that Wisconsin has not complied with the Help America Vote Act, a 2002 law meant to streamline and modernize the election process.
The letter requested that WEC give DOJ Wisconsin’s statewide voter registration list, provide information on how the state manages the files of voters who become inactive by moving elsewhere or dying and how it verifies voter citizenship. Most of the questions surround topics that have been common complaints among purveyors of election conspiracy theories over the past half decade.
On July 2, WEC’s chief legal counsel Jim Witecha sent a letter in response to DOJ on behalf of the six election commissioners. The letter gives detailed answers to many of the questions while asserting that state law prevents the commission from simply handing over the voter data.
State law requires that the elections commission charge a fee for obtaining voter registration data and the price for obtaining the full list is set at $12,500.
“Wisconsin law requires the Commission to charge a fee for access to voter registration data and makes no exceptions for elected officials, government agencies, journalists, non-profits, academics, or any other group,” the letter states.
More than two weeks later, the DOJ has not yet filed a request to purchase Wisconsin’s voter rolls, according to WEC spokesperson Emilee Miklas.
Information about DOJ’s request to WEC is located on the state agency’s FAQ webpage, along with answers to questions that have been repeatedly raised by election deniers in the state.
Wisconsin has joined a lawsuit against the Trump administration's action to withhold $6.8 billion for education progams supporting English language learners, migrants, low-income children, adult learners and others. (Photo by Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images)
Federal fallout
As federal funding and systems dwindle, states are left to decide how and
whether to make up the difference. Read the latest >
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul joined 23 states and the District of Columbia Monday in suing the Trump administration for withholding $6.8 billion meant for six U.S. Department of Education programs, which help support English language learners, migrants, low-income children, adult learners and others.
The funds, approved in the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act 2025 and signed into law on March 15, are typically distributed to states by July 1. However, the Department of Education notified the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction as well as other state education agencies on June 30 that they would be withholding the funds.
“Depriving our schools of critical resources is bad for our schools, bad for students, and bad for Wisconsin,” Attorney General Josh Kaul said in a statement. “This unlawful funding freeze should be stopped.”
The Wisconsin DPI said in a statement that the federal agency gave no specific explanation for the action. Instead, the U.S. Department of Education said that “decisions have not yet been made concerning submissions and awards for this upcoming academic year” and “accordingly, the Department will not be issuing Grant Award Notifications obligating funds for these programs on July 1 prior to completing that review. The Department remains committed to ensuring taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the President’s priorities and the Department’s statutory responsibilities.”
The withholding of funds comes as the Trump administration continues to pursue closing the Department of Education with a plan to lay off more than 1,000 agency employees and resume drastically cutting the agency after getting the greenlight from the U.S. Supreme Court Monday. The Trump administration has also withheld other funds this year, including for grants for mental health in schools. A spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement about the review of education funding that “initial findings have shown that many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda.”
The multi-state lawsuit argues that the freeze of the $6.8 billion violates federal laws and regulations that authorize and fund the programs, federal laws, including the Antideficiency Act and Impoundment Control Act, that govern the federal budgeting process and the constitutional separation of powers doctrine and the Presentment Clause.
The coalition of states is requesting that the court provide declaratory relief by finding the freeze is unlawful and offer injunctive relief by requiring the release of the funds.
Over $72 million is being withheld from Wisconsin. Without the funding, school districts face funding shortfalls for programs that have already been planned, DPI may have to lay off 20 employees and programs at Wisconsin’s technical colleges are in trouble with $7.5 million in adult education grants being withheld.
State Superintendent Jill Underly said in a statement that Wisconsin schools depend on the federal funding distributed through an array of programs to support students. There are five programs affected: Title I-C, which supports migrant education, Title II-A, which goes towards teacher training and retention, Title III-A, which supports education of English language learners, Title IV-A, which is for student enrichment and after-school programs and Title IV-B, which supports community learning centers.
“Make no mistake, stopping this money has had and will continue to harm our families and communities,” Underly said.
Wisconsin schools have received funding through these federal programs for decades to help carry out related programs. According to DPI, federal funding makes up about 8% of funding for Wisconsin schools with nearly $850 million coming into the state.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin alongside 31 other U.S. senators penned a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and Education Secretary Linda McMahon, calling on them to release the money.
“This delay not only undermines effective state and local planning for using these funds to address student needs consistent with federal education law, which often takes place months before these funds become available, but also flies in the face of the nation’s education laws which confers state and local educational agency discretion on permissible uses of federal formula grant funds,” the senators wrote. “We are shocked by the continued lack of respect for states and local schools evidenced by this latest action by the administration.”
“It is unacceptable that the administration is picking and choosing what parts of the appropriations law to follow, and you must immediately implement the entire law as Congress intended and as the oaths you swore require you to do,” the lawmakers said.
The lawmakers also said the “review” being undertaken by the administration appears to be intentional to delay the funding and will result in budget cuts for schools. They said it is happening “with no public information about what the review entails, what data the administration is examining or a timeline for such review.”
The Joint Finance Committee convened at 10:17 p.m. Friday — over 12 hours after it was originally scheduled. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Joint Finance Committee convened at 10:17 p.m. Friday — over 12 hours after it was originally scheduled — to vote on a fraction of the budget areas it had originally planned and to release part of the literacy funding that is set to expire next week.
Legislative leaders have been working behind closed doors over the last week to negotiate with Gov. Tony Evers and work out the details of the state budget as the end of the fiscal year approaches next week.
Areas of the budget still left to take up are at the center of negotiations including the University of Wisconsin system, where Republicans have considered cuts, and the Department of Children and Families, which is responsible for the state’s Child Care Counts program. Evers has said he would veto a budget without funding for the program, which will run out of federal money soon. The committee also still needs to take up the Department of Health Services, the Department of Transportation, the capital budget and more.
The committee co-chairs did not take questions from reporters ahead of the meeting, but as the meeting started Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said the other agencies “will be taken up at a later date.” He didn’t specify when that would be.
The budget committee did approve the budget for several state agencies including the Department of Natural Resources, part of the Department of Justice, the Higher Education Aids Board, the Department of Administration and the Tourism Department. Each action the committee did take passed along partisan lines.
Portion of $50 million for literacy released
The committee voted unanimously to release $9 million of the nearly $50 million left in funding for literacy initiatives that was first allocated in the 2023-25 state budget. The majority of the money has been withheld by lawmakers since 2023 and is slated to lapse back into the state’s general fund if not released by the end of the fiscal year on June 30.
Lawmakers said action on the other $40 million will be taken soon.
“This has taken a long time to get here. One of the things that this bill was originally about was to make it so that kids could read. We want to help kids read. We want to give schools the tools to be able to do that,” Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha) said. “Unfortunately, it’s taken this Legislature a tremendous amount of time to allocate the funds for that, and ultimately, that’s simply not acceptable.”
Born said he is glad lawmakers were releasing part of the money Friday and would have further motions on it in the future. He also said the delay on the funding was Evers’ fault. Lawmakers were holding the funding back due to a partial veto Evers exercised on a bill related to the literacy funding. The Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Wednesday that partial veto was unconstitutional and restored the original language of the law.
“We’re glad that justice has been done, and we’re here now with the proper accounts and able to do these two separate motions here in the next couple of days in the committee to get this program that was a bipartisan program moving along,” Born said.
Certain projects funded in DNR budget, Knowles-Nelson not
Noticeably missing from the Republicans’ Department of Natural Resource motion was funding for the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program, which allows the agency to fund the purchase of public land and upkeep of recreational areas.
Rep. Deb Andraca (D-Whitefish Bay) said lawmakers were missing an opportunity by not funding the program in the budget.
“There’s a lot of individual pet projects in here that seem to be of interest to individual legislators, but there aren’t a lot of park projects that are of interest to Wisconsinites, particularly Knowles-Nelson,” Andraca said.
The committee approved funding in the budget for an array of projects including $42 million to help with modernization of the Rothschild Dam, $500,000 to go towards the repair of a retaining wall for the Wisconsin Rapids Riverbank project, $2.2 million environmental remediation and redevelopment of Lake Vista Park in Oak Creek, $70,000 for a dredging project in Manitowoc River in the Town of Brillion, $1.75 million for dredging the Deerskin River and $100,000 for assistance with highway flooding in the Town of Norway in Racine County.
Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc), who is the author of a bill to keep the program going, said lawmakers are working to ensure it handles the program in the best way, which is part of why the funding is not in the budget as of now.
“We actually have until 30th of June of 2026 to work on this. It’s something that Sen. [Patrick] Testin and I have been working on along with our staff over the last six months. It’s something that is a bipartisan effort. We’ve met with so many different stakeholders, so many different groups, so many fellow legislators on getting this done,” Kurtz said. “We are committed to get it done.”
Kurtz said that the hearing on the bill was “good” and there will be “a lot more coming up in the future” when it comes to Knowles-Nelson.
The committee also approved raising nonresident vehicle admission sticker fees, nonresident campsite fees and campsite electricity fees.
Office of School Safety, VOCA grants get state funding
The Department of Justice’s Office of School Safety will get 13 permanent staff positions and $1.57 million to continue its work. That’s about $700,000 less than what the agency had requested, but is about what Evers had proposed for the office.
The office serves as a resource for K-12 schools — helping them improve security measures by providing training on crisis prevention and response, grants for safety enhancements, threat assessment training and mental health training. It also operates the Speak Up, Speak Out tipline where students can anonymously report safety concerns.
The Wisconsin DOJ will also get help filling funding gaps for Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) grants left by federal funding cuts.
Wisconsin’s federal allocation for VOCA grants has been cut from $40 million to $13 million. Domestic violence shelters and victim services organizations along with the state DOJ have been navigating the limited funding for over a year. The organizations that receive VOCA grants help people who are the victims of a crime by assisting them with finding housing, providing transportation to and from court appearances and navigating the criminal justice system.
The Republican-approved motion will provide $20 million to cover the federal funding loss. It will also provide $163,500 for two staff positions, which will expire in July 2027. The Wisconsin DOJ had requested an additional $66 million in the budget to make up for the funding gap.
McGuire noted the funding would be significantly less than what the state agency had requested and would essentially create a two-year program rather than an ongoing one.
“[This] maintains the Legislature’s level of input, but it doesn’t actually maintain the same level of service because of the declining revenues as a result of the federal government,” McGuire said. “While we can’t fix all the things that are the result of what the federal government is doing wrong … this is something that will have an impact on communities across the state. It’s going to have an impact on people who’ve had the worst day and the worst week in the worst month of their life. It’s gonna have an impact on people who have been harmed by violence who have been in toxic, abusive relationships. It’s going to have an impact on people who desperately need services through no fault of their own. These are really vulnerable people and they should receive our support.
Wisconsin Grants to get slight infusion, UW budget postponed
The committee did not take up the budget for the University of Wisconsin system. It’s been one of the key issues for debate as Republican lawmakers have considered cuts, while Evers and UW leaders have said the university system needs $855 million in additional funding. Evers has said that in negotiations he and lawmakers were discussing a “positive number.”
The committee did take up the Higher Educational Aids Board, which is the agency responsible for overseeing Wisconsin’s student financial aid system, investing in the Wisconsin Grant Program. The program provides grants to undergraduate Wisconsin residents enrolled at least half-time in degree or certificate programs.
The Wisconsin Grants program would receive an additional $5.6 million in 2025-26 and $11.9 million in 2026-27 under the proposal approved Friday. The UW system, private nonprofit colleges and Wisconsin Technical College System would receive equal dollar increases. It also includes a $75,000 increase for tribal college students.
Evers had proposed 20% increases for the Wisconsin Grants for the state’s public universities, private nonprofit colleges and technical colleges — a total $57.7 million investment.
The Wisconsin Technical Colleges System had requested $10.8 million in each year of the biennium, saying there has been a waitlist for the grants for the first time in 10 years and that list is projected to grow.
The committee also approved $3.5 million in 2026-27 in a supplemental appropriation for emergency medical services training costs to reimburse training and materials costs.
“Recruiting volunteer EMS personnel is a challenge all over the state of Wisconsin — certainly is in my Senate district,” Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) said. “We believe that this will remove one barrier to recruitment of volunteers in our EMS units all across the state.”
Other portions of the budget approved Friday evening include:
$30 million to the Tourism Department for general marketing, and an additional $1 million in the second year of the budget, as well as about $113,000 for state arts organizations and two staff positions and funding for the Office of Outdoor Recreation. The motion includes $5 million for Taliesin Preservation Inc. for restoration projects at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin home located in Spring Green supporting private fundraising for an education center, the restoration of visitor amenities and the stabilization of some buildings.
$193,700 to the Wisconsin Elections Commission with over $150,000 of that going toward information technology costs and the remaining going towards costs for the Electronic Registration Information Center.
$20.9 million and 147 positions for 12 months of personnel related costs for a Milwaukee Type 1 facility, which is meant to serve as a portion of the replacement of youth prisons Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake, which the state had been working to close for years. The 32-bed facility in Milwaukee has a planned completion date in October 2026.
The WisconsinEye endowment received $10 million to continue video coverage of the Legislature.
The committee also approved $11 million for grants to nine of Wisconsin’s 11 federally-recognized tribes. The committee has been excluding two tribes — the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa — from the grant funding for several years due to disputes over roads. The exclusion “strikes me as inappropriate,” McGuire said. He added that it’s “an insult to those people.”
Guns for sale at Caso’s Gun-A-Rama in Jersey City, New Jersey, which has been open since 1967. (Photo by Aristide Economopoulos/New Jersey Monitor)
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration’s decision to restore 10 convicts’ ability to legally purchase firearms and explosives violated the law, according to a letter six high-ranking congressional Democrats released Friday.
The Justice Department publication of an interim final rule moving the authority to restore some convicts’ gun rights from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to the attorney general also violated the separation of powers and a decades-old provision in the department’s annual funding bill, according to the 12-page letter.
The Democrats wrote that while Congress did delegate the authority to “oversee restoration of federal firearm privileges applications” to the ATF several decades ago, lawmakers have included language in nearly every government funding bill since 1993 barring the ATF from spending any money to process those applications.
The prohibition followed then-President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, trying to move the authority from the ATF to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“Given the pervasiveness of gun violence in our nation, this Administration should not be circumventing Congress’ authority to prioritize restoring firearm privileges to individuals convicted of serious or violent crimes,” the Democrats wrote.
The letter was signed by House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn.; Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash.; House Judiciary ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md.; Senate Judiciary ranking member Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee ranking member Grace Meng, D-N.Y.; and Senate Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee ranking member Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.
The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment from States Newsroom.
Mel Gibson case
The DOJ under President Donald Trump has so far restored 10 individuals’ ability to legally purchase firearms, including the actor Mel Gibson, who “pleaded no contest to a charge of domestic violence” in 2011, according to Reuters.
Federal law bars several types of people from legally buying firearms, including anyone sentenced to more than one year in prison, which typically coincides with felonies, and those who commit domestic violence.
The six Democrats wrote that the “intersection between firearms and domestic violence remains a key concern, demonstrating the need to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers.
“Research has shown that the presence of firearms significantly increases the risk of death or serious injury for victims of domestic or dating violence. The Supreme Court has recognized that the danger of a domestic abuser with a gun serves as a limitation on the Second Amendment.”
The Democrats wrote that for decades Congress has prevented the ATF from restoring prohibited people’s ability to legally purchase firearms. The annual DOJ appropriations bill also bars moving the ability to approve those applications away from ATF to any other federal agency.
“The concerns that originally led to these provisions — recidivist crime, limited investigative resources, and difficulty in assessing applicants — remain unchanged,” they wrote. “Congress made an explicit policy choice to prioritize investigating crime, rather than to waste funds on evaluating whether to restore firearm rights to previously convicted felons.”
Study cited
The letter says a study from the Violence Policy Center that looked at restorations during the late 1980s is one of many reasons Congress prohibited the ATF from restoring some felons’ ability to legally purchase firearms.
The study, which reviewed 100 ATF case files obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, showed the federal government had restored the ability of “terrorists, murderers, rapists, drug dealers, gun traffickers, and child molesters” to legally purchase firearms and explosives.
“The FOIA-obtained records also showed that of those granted relief between 1985 and 1989, 47 individuals were later re-arrested for serious offenses such as attempted murder, first-degree sexual assault, kidnapping, child molestation, illegal possession of a machine gun, trafficking in cocaine, LSD, and PCP, and illegal firearms possession or carrying,” they wrote.
The letter ends with Democrats calling on the DOJ to withdraw the interim final rule and “vacate the wrongfully granted restoration of federal firearms privileges to the 10 individuals.”
Attorney General Josh Kaul speaks with reporters outside the Wisconsin Supreme Court in February 2023. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision Tuesday that the Legislature’s Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee (JFC) doesn’t have the authority to approve settlement agreements made by the state Department of Justice (DOJ) in certain types of cases.
The Legislature gave itself that authority as part of the lame duck laws it passed when Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul were elected in 2018, taking powers away from the executive branch offices once they were no longer held by Republicans. A previous challenge to the law giving JFC authority over settlements failed because the Court found there are some cases when the committee does have the authority to control how settlement money is spent.
In a statement, Kaul said the decision will allow the DOJ to more efficiently do its job.
“This unanimous ruling finally puts an end to the legislature’s unconstitutional involvement in the resolution of key categories of cases,” he said. “As a result, the Wisconsin Department of Justice will be able to more efficiently resolve the cases that are impacted by this decision, including civil actions enforcing our consumer protection laws and civil actions enforcing our environmental protection laws.”
This second challenge to the law was filed by Evers and Kaul, arguing that it is unconstitutional for the Legislature to give itself the authority to weigh in on settlements in civil enforcement actions and actions that state agencies request DOJ to pursue. The case was initially brought in Dane County Circuit Court, where a judge sided with Evers and Kaul. The Court of Appeals overturned that ruling and the Supreme Court has reversed the appellate decision.
These types of cases include the enforcement of environmental, consumer protection, financial regulation and medical assistance laws and lawsuits over the breach of a contract with the state or damage to state property.
In Tuesday’s decision, authored by Justice Brian Hagedorn, the Supreme Court ruled that these types of cases are “core” executive powers and while the Legislature can pass laws giving the attorney general and DOJ guardrails over how to apply the law, it can’t intervene in the settlement process.
“Thus, DOJ’s litigation in these categories of cases is, rather straightforwardly, the execution of laws enacted by the Legislature,” Hagedorn wrote. “Just as the pursuit of these claims is unequivocally an executive function, so is the settlement of them. When the Legislature gives authority to the Attorney General to pursue these claims, it necessarily confers discretion on how to pursue the claims to completion, through settlement or otherwise.”
The Legislature had argued that because the state’s Constitution requires it to account for all “sources of income” to the state so it can determine tax levels, it must have the authority to determine the amount of money awarded to the state in the settlement of a lawsuit.
Hagedorn wrote that the Legislature has given the attorney general the authority to bring these lawsuits and resolve them as he sees fit, including the amount of money in a settlement.
“The Legislature’s argument seems to rest on the notion that the Legislature must be able to account ahead of time for how much money will come into the state’s coffers in the upcoming year, and therefore be allowed veto power over settlement agreements in the event its math may be off,” he wrote. “This doesn’t make sense. While undoubtedly the Legislature would be wise to account for all sources of income when determining the amount to tax in the coming year, it does not follow that the Legislature has a constitutional interest in controlling every executive function involving the collection of revenue, or even taxes.”
“We fail to understand why the power and duty to levy taxes allows the Legislature to control the execution of the law,” he continued. “If the Legislature wishes to know the amount of any settlements, it may prescribe that by law. If it wishes to establish more specific direction regarding settlement revenues, it may do so by law, and it already has in some areas. The Legislature simply has not connected the dots for why the taxing power gives it a constitutional role in litigation involving the receipt of monies into state coffers.”
Hagedorn added that by this logic the Legislature could insert itself into basically any executive branch function involving money.
“If the Legislature has a constitutional interest in the execution of the laws every time an executive action involves money, there would be virtually no area where the Legislature could not insert itself into the execution of the law,” he wrote. “The constitution cannot and does not mean that.”
The Legislature also argued that provisions in the settlement of a given lawsuit could have policy implications and, as the law-making branch of government, it should have the authority to determine those aspects of a settlement agreement. But Hagedorn wrote that the executive branch’s duty to enforce the laws the Legislature passes inherently requires the exercise of some discretion and that discretion will undoubtedly have policy impacts.
“In executing the law, executive branch officials must decide how to effectuate the law’s policies, and those decisions will necessarily have policy implications,” Hagedorn wrote. “The Legislature’s argument that it can step into the shoes of the executive when executive action impacts policy would eviscerate the separation of powers.”
Exercising the discretion given to the executive branch will have a policy impact, he wrote, and “it is the Legislature that has given this authority and discretion in the first place, including any limitations on how settlements are to be spent. When the Attorney General, therefore, decides where settlement proceeds are to be directed, he is acting within the scope of the authority the Legislature gave him. If the Legislature is dissatisfied with the discretion it left to the Attorney General, it may amend the laws accordingly.”
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.
Amanda Lang worked for the Glendale Police Department for more than 13 years before an investigation into her work hours led to an internal investigation and her resignation. (Photo obtained through 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.
Number of wandering officers in Wisconsin continues to rise
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.
The Eau Claire County Jail | Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner
Silver O. Jenkins
Silver O. Jenkins, 29, who was found unresponsive in the Eau Claire County Jail on the morning of March 12, 2023, had by choice eaten very little in the 27 days leading up to her death. She appeared ”emaciated,” raising concerns among jail and medical staff. Still, no interventions were taken to save her life because the sheriff’s office didn’t believe it had the authority for drastic measures and instead continued to offer her food and water and monitor her condition.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
The Eau Claire County in-custody death investigation report on Jenkins, prepared by the St. Croix Sheriff’s Office, was released Monday June 9.
St. Croix County Sheriff Scott Knudson had told the Wisconsin Examiner back in July 2024 that the death investigation had been completed in August 2023, but the report was not available through a records request pending a review by the Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ).
On Monday, Eau Claire County Sheriff Dave Riewstahl issued a press release saying that the DOJ had “declined to bring charges.”
The investigation included interviews with the sheriff, the jail’s security services captain Travis Holbrook, four shift sergeants, 17 correctional officers, Christ Hill with the Eau Claire County Department of Health Services and five employees of Wellpath, an agency providing medical and mental health services to the jail.
“The Wisconsin Department of Justice concluded criminal charges were not appropriate in this matter,” said Riewestahl.
Jenkins was booked into jail on February 9, 2023, for criminal trespass and held on a $500 cash bond. By Feb. 18, Jenkins had refused 22 meals.
On Feb. 19, 2023, due to difficulty breathing, Jenkins was transferred to the Mayo Clinic, where she received two liters of IV fluids and was returned to jail on Feb. 20, 2023.
On February 28, 2023, Jenkins again requested to go to the hospital due to chest pains, but the request was denied.
On March 3, Jenkins was moved to a special needs cell at the suggestion of a clinical social worker, where there are better facilities for showering.
On March 5, Jenkins asked to see a nurse and go to a hospital, and again her request was denied.
The nurse attending Jenkins on March 5 said it was challenging to obtain heart rate and blood pressure because Jenkins would not sit still.
On March 8, Jenkins made a court appearance via a laptop held by correctional officer Craig Berg, who told the investigators on that date Jenkins looked malnourished. Berg later told Sgt. Phil Field, the day-shift sergeant, that he didn’t think Jenkins would be physically able to make a court appearance the following week.
On March 8, Field sent out an email that states, “I witnessed her in her cell a few moments ago and observed that she is very emaciated from the last time I personally saw her. It appears that most of her hair is gone and her overall physical appearance does not look well. Her log indicates that she did eat some the past 2 days but mostly refused for many days before.”
The investigation revealed that Holbrook, who was in charge of the jail, took no action because he thought the situation was under control and the medical staff was monitoring her condition.
Riewestahl said he had asked Hill whether his office could use a Chapter 51 mental health detainment to address the feeding issue with Jenkins.
Hill told the investigators that Chapter 51 emergency detentions cannot be used for medical conditions, although it was Riewestahl’s opinion that Jenkins was also experiencing mental health issues.
Jenkins’ cell | Photo from St. Croix Sheriff investigators’ report
Correctional officer Ryan Addis had the 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift starting March 11. He said he passed by Jenkins’ cell in the early morning hours of March 12, between 1-2 a.m., and Jenkins was lying on the ground naked but moving. He didn’t enter the cell because in a previous situation, he did try to help her, and she lunged at him and he noted she had previously slept on the floor naked.
Addis said he noticed Jenkins was breathing and moving. He could also see her skeletal structure and what he observed concerned him, prompting Addis to send an email to the nursing staff asking what was being done for Jenkins.
Addis said he talked to his morning replacement, Byran Dachel, and they both thought Jenkins was dying.
Addis said he went home and told his wife that Jenkins would be dead within a week or a couple of days, and he determined, when he saw Jenkins again, to intervene and offer her some juice or “something.”
But later that Sunday morning, March 12, Jenkins was found in her cell by medical personnel not breathing, and her body was cold.
Jenkins’ cell | Photo from St. Croix Sheriff investigators’ report
The autopsy findings, reported by Kristin E. Howell, M.D. Assistant Medical Examiner, attributed Jenkins’ death to “dehydration due to voluntary restriction of food and liquids.”
Day shift Sgt. Kevin Otto said in his interview that he didn’t believe Jenkins’ death was inevitable.
“I mean, all the players that were involved, something should have happened, and it always seemed to just get dumped back on us as a staff.”
He added, “I just think the staff was, were frustrated, we don’t know what to do with her. We’re not capable of doing it in our roles, and it seemed like the people that could weren’t doing it.”
Several of the jail staff said they felt frustrated in that all they were being asked to do was monitor and document Jenkins’ condition, but nothing was being done to ameliorate it other than offering her food and water.
Sheriff and jail captain
Since 2019, Jenkins had spent 205 days in the Eau Claire County jail for various charges.
Sheriff Riewstahl said that often when Jenkins was released, she would ask to be taken to a local hospital and then refuse to leave the hospital’s premises, resulting in a complaint and Jenkins returning to jail.
Riewstahl, Holbrook and others interviewed also noted that Jenkins from previous stints in the jail would often not eat the food offered to her and even ask for bottled water instead of using water from the jail sink.
Hill said she believes Jenkins didn’t have a food disorder, but that refusing to eat gave her one thing she could control in her otherwise chaotic life.
“Silver has severe mental health issues, and our jail is the largest mental health facility here in Eau Claire County,” said Riewestahl. “Jails have been turned into the answer for mental health.”
He added, “we are technically a jail but the people that come to us have more mental health crisis needs at a different level than a Chapter 51 [a person who is involuntarily committed for mental health reasons].”
Investigator Dustin Geisness asked Riewestahl if he was aware of any concerns being expressed by the jail or medical staff regarding Jenkins.
“Ultimately, the hunger strike was a concern, and it was a concern every time she’s been here,” he said.
Holbrook also told investigators there was concern every time Jenkins returned to jail
“Obviously we know Silver as often as she’s here,” he said. “We know she‘s a problematic inmate, not cooperative, whatever. We knew that something potentially could happen someday.”
He added, “She was a non-cooperative inmate. She was offered food, medical services. A lot of times or sometimes she would refuse that, sometimes she wouldn’t. You never knew what she was going to do.”
He said Jenkins was never on a full hunger strike and occasionally would eat small amounts of food offered.
He was asked about March 12 when she was naked on the floor and noted that was normal behavior for Jenkins and that she was often naked.
Holbrook also said the local hospitals didn’t want to see Jenkins unless it was an emergency because she had been disruptive there during previous visits. He said because everyone was aware the hospitals were reluctant to see Jenkins that may have played a part in not sending her to a hospital again before her death.
“Most of the hospitals don’t want nothing to do with her here, so even when we’d bring her there for something, we’d get a lot of heat from the hospital,” he said.
Holbrook was asked by the investigator after Feb. 19, when Jenkins returned from the hospital, if anything different was done for Jenkins besides documenting her condition and food intake.
“They’re just still documenting, documenting, documenting and in my opinion that sounds like the definition of insanity,” said investigator Geisness. Holbrook concurred, saying, “Over and over.”
Holbrook was also asked, “Who is ultimately responsible for this jail?” and he responded, “Ultimately, ultimately, yeah, that’s exactly. That’s the problem.”
Holbrook also said there was a “leadership issue,” but he didn’t specifically place responsibility for the issue on himself or staff or the sheriff.
Investigator Capt. Tim Kufus asked a similar question of the sheriff: “But while she’s here, whose responsibility is she?”
The Wisconsin Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the Social Development Commission on Friday to secure back pay for former employees.
At the same time, three state legislators are asking the agency, also known as the SDC, to consider voluntarily giving up its community action status.
According to court records, the Department of Justice lawsuit filed on behalf of the Department of Workforce Development alleges that SDC failed to pay $359,609.73 in wages and benefits owed to former employees.
However, the department is seeking double that amount – a total of $719,219.46 – as a penalty for “willful failure to pay.”
Sarah Woods’ claim against SDC seeks roughly $4,800 of back pay.
“These are not small payments,” said Woods, a former youth and family services supervisor for SDC.
This marks the latest stage in a long-running wage dispute following the agency’s abrupt April 2024 shutdown, leaving some employees unpaid. SDC, which reopened in December, has provided a variety of programs to serve low-income residents in Milwaukee County.
SDC’s response
William Sulton, the attorney for SDC, said Thursday that the agency will file a third-party complaint against the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, which he claims failed to reimburse the agency for services SDC provided.
“DCF needs to be held to account,” he said, adding that SDC should sue the Department of Children and Families regardless of what the Department of Justice does.
Woods remains skeptical that further legal back-and-forth will get people what they’re owed.
“I just want the workers to get paid,” she said. “SDC needs to … just leave it alone.”
Dispute over proper documentation
Sulton said a major dispute between SDC and the Department of Children and Family Services is about documentation.
“They had all of the required paperwork, but they kept asking for additional information that had never been asked for before,” he said. “We met every one of those obligations.”
In a letter sent last month, the Department of Children and Families said SDC failed to meet federal audit requirements and had not provided enough documentation to justify its reimbursement request.
Statelegislators ask for voluntary de-designation
Earlier this month, the Department of Children and Families decided to rescind SDC’s status as a community action agency effective July 3, making the agency no longer eligible to receive certain federal block grants that support anti-poverty work.
SDC plans to request a review of the decision from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Sulton said, whichcould take up to 90 days after the department receives documentation.
On Thursday, however, State Sen. LaTonya Johnson, Sen. Dora Drake and Rep. Kalan Haywood — all Milwaukee Democrats — sent a letter to SDC’s Board of Commissioners, asking the agency to voluntarily de-designate.
In the letter, the lawmakers said voluntarily de-designating would create a pathway for $1.182 million in block grant funding that had been allocated to SDC to be used in Milwaukee to support services such as food security, rent assistance and workforce development.
“These dollars must be spent by September 30, 2025, or they will be lost to the federal government,” the letter states. “At present, SDC’s operational instability prevents these funds from reaching the people who need them most.”
Sulton said this pathway does not seem viable because the state has not presented a plan. There is, he said, a lack of alternative agencies prepared to provide these anti-poverty services.
“If you want the board to consider de-designating so that these funds can go to another program, you gotta tell us what that is,” Sulton said.
Additionally, SDC leaders argue the state lacks authority to make this de-designation decision without also getting approval from the city and county’s boards, based on state statute.
A letter from State Sen. LaTonya Johnson, State Sen. Dora Drake and State Rep. Kalan Haywood to the Social Development Commission’s board. (Photo provided by the office of State Sen. LaTonya Johnson)
Even if SDC steps down, Johnson said in an interview, there is no guarantee the money will be spent in time, as the state must meet federal requirements to move the funds and find another agency to administer services.
“This is a really difficult place to be if you are an African American elected official because this is an agency that has been in the community forever that has a lot of support,” Johnson said.
“Everybody is rooting for SDC to be successful. … But the reality is that I cannot choose the side of an organization over the community’s needs.”
Edgar Mendez contributed to this report.
Meredith Melland is the neighborhoods reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.
Login
