Images depicting Dodge County deputies transporting ICE detainees to Broadview, Illinois. (Photo courtesy of Unraveled)

The Dodge County Sheriff’s Office in Wisconsin has been sending deputies into Illinois to transport migrants to and from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in suburban Chicago at the center of the Trump administration’s clash with Illinois officials and activists. 

For more than two decades, the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office has had a contract with the U.S. Marshal’s Service to hold federal detainees in the county jail. As part of that contract, which budget documents show provided the county with more than $6 million last year, the sheriff’s office regularly holds migrant detainees for ICE and transports federal detainees of all sorts. 

“We house federal inmates/detainees as part of our agreement with the U.S. Marshal Service.  We also transport to and from various facilities as part of our agreement. The federal government reimburses us for transportation. ICE is a rider on the agreement,” Sheriff Dale Schmidt told the Wisconsin Examiner in an email. “It is a simple, non-political arrangement we have had for 20+ years under all previous administrations during this contract (Including President Obama and President Biden).” 

But critics say that this year the arrangement has become more political because of President Donald Trump’s increased immigration enforcement and ICE’s escalation of tactics in both its efforts to capture people without legal documentation, and its confrontations with protesters.

“For two decades or more, the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office has obtained a steady stream of revenue from ICE for transporting and jailing persons in immigration detention,” Tim Muth, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin said in an emailed statement. “That practice continues. We regret that the sheriff declines to terminate his contract with ICE, a rogue federal agency that is increasingly violating the rights of persons it seizes from our communities, racially profiling and separating families, and landing some of them in the jail which the sheriff operates.”

Advocates and attorneys for immigrants say that ICE has been frequently moving detainees between detention centers as part of a “shell game” in an effort to keep them hidden from their lawyers and family. 

“I don’t even know where to begin,” said immigration attorney Marc Thompson, describing unprecedented difficulties he’s experienced attempting to locate and represent clients under the second Trump administration. Under previous administrations, Thompson said, clients were relatively easy to locate and communicate with, and the attorney felt he had a good relationship with staff at facilities like the Dodge County Jail. 

Now in nearly 70% of cases, Thompson told the Wisconsin Examiner, clients are “being shipped off to different facilities in many different locations…I’ve had clients sent to Indiana, Louisiana, Texas, Ohio, all different locations.” 

In one case, coordinating a telephone conference with a client who’d been detained in a private out-of-state facility required a three day set-up process for a video call with poor audio quality that lasted just 20 minutes, Thompson said. 

Another change he’s seen is that detainees in Wisconsin who are taken to Dodge County are given court dates in Chicago. 

“I had it where I’ve traveled to Dodge County after checking to see if my client’s there, only to drive all the way there to find out that that morning they were moved to a different facility,” said Thompson. 

The Broadview ICE detention center in a suburb of Chicago has drawn regular protests for months. The presence of Dodge County Sheriff’s deputies at the Broadview facility were first reported by the independent media outlet Unraveled.

The federal response to those protests has frequently escalated into violence and those escalations have been used as justification for Trump’s attempt to deploy troops from the Texas National Guard to the Chicago area. 

Illinois state laws restrict ICE cooperation with local law enforcement and prevent the long term detention of migrants in Illinois. Because of that prohibition, ICE has moved detainees from Illinois to facilities in nearby Indiana and Wisconsin. 

Schmidt did not respond to questions from the Wisconsin Examiner about how frequently his deputies have driven detainees in and out of Broadview under Trump, but the department’s 2024 annual report shows sheriff’s office personnel made 302 trips at the request of ICE last year. 

Dodge County is reimbursed for its trips to Illinois. The journey from Juneau to Broadview is a five-hour round trip. State Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove), whose district covers part of Dodge County, says expending county resources to help ICE doesn’t keep the community safe and amounts to participating in the administration’s “cruelty.” 

“Local law enforcement does not have to take on federal immigration enforcement duties. When they do, it risks discouraging victims and witnesses from coming forward — making all of us less safe,” Ratcliff said in a statement. “Our local resources should not be diverted from protecting our local communities. Further, there are serious concerns about inhumane conditions at ICE detention centers. There are also troubling political shell games being played in which detainees are transferred from facility to facility — sometimes across state lines — making it difficult for attorneys and families to locate them or ensure they receive due process. That is not justice; that is cruelty disguised as policy and it’s unconstitutional. Wisconsin’s strength lies in our welcoming communities and our commitment to fairness, dignity, and safety for all. I urge our local leaders to prioritize community trust, transparency, and compassion in every action they take.”

“You used to be able to call Dodge, set something up for the next day, spend two-three hours talking,” Thompson said.  “Now I have to fight and find out where they are, try to schedule a time to speak with them. And the family is sitting on pins and needles. They have no idea where their loved one is. They have no idea what’s going on. I’m spending all my time not trying to analyze their case, but simply to find out where they are and try to arrange a time to chat with them. It’s horrible.””

Under the current administration, critics say, transporting ICE detainees is direct participation in an effort to deny due process and avoid transparency. 

“I think there’s a concerning pattern of more local law enforcement being brought in to play an immigration enforcement role as part of the machinery of mass deportations,” said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera. Local departments are paid to transport immigrants for ICE, “as in Dodge most recently, in Brown County as well and Sauk,” she said, and also receive significant federal money for sharing information on immigrants in their custody through 287g agreements.

Neumann-Ortiz pointed to the 287g agreement sought by the Palmyra Police Department, which is still pending. The 287g program involves local law enforcement agreeing to aid ICE in arresting undocumented migrants or holding them in jail until ICE can pick them up.

“There’s real concern about it,” said Neumann-Ortiz. “They’re really trading off public safety and building trust in a diverse community to take this money. That is particularly alarming when you see what’s happening with ICE, and Customs, and Border Patrol and how they’re operating…They are operating as a militarized operation with masks, with guns, and they are profiling people and physically assaulting people violently, and really trampling over people’s due process rights.” 

“Under that threat which is terrorizing communities,” she added, “why in the world would local law enforcement want to partner with that?”