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Cuban asylum seeker Miguel Jerez Robles returned to family in McFarland on Thursday, a month after ICE agents arrested him following a routine immigration hearing in Miami. 

His arrest was one of the first in a wave of courthouse arrests, which appear to be part of a new strategy by President Donald Trump’s administration to send many people who were in legal immigration processes on a fast-track to deportation. Jerez spent the next four weeks at an ICE detention center in Tacoma, Washington, uncertain what his future would hold. 

Now, he is home. 

“I still don’t believe it. I say it’s a miracle from God,” said Jerez, who got word he’d be released on his own recognizance just minutes before he was scheduled to request a bond before a judge. 

Jerez still doesn’t know why he was arrested, or why he’s now been released. Andrew Billmann, a family friend, contacted Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin as soon as Jerez was detained. Jerez said he thinks that effort, along with news coverage about his detention, likely helped.

He was released on Wednesday with just one other person, a fellow Cuban asylum seeker, though he says he met many other immigrants who came to the detention center in similar circumstances. 

“They’d been living in the U.S. for three years. They had no criminal record. … Their cases were dismissed, and they were detained outside the courtroom,” Jerez said. “And they’re still detained.” 

As he collected his clothes to leave the Northwest ICE Processing Center on Wednesday, an official told him just how unusual his situation was.

“He told me, ‘You’re very lucky because right now we’re not releasing anyone. Everyone who leaves here is going back to their country, or they’ve won an asylum case while detained, or they’ve gotten out on bond,’” Jerez said. 

He agrees that he’s lucky. “There are a lot of people who don’t have the resources to pay for a lawyer. It’s very sad, what I saw inside there.”

Before his release, Jerez was connected with a local immigrant aid organization that brought him to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Billmann said. 

“We booked a redeye for him, from (Seattle) to (Chicago),” Billmann wrote in a text message to the Cap Times and Wisconsin Watch Friday. 

Billmann and his wife, Kathy, joined Jerez’s wife, sister and mother to pick him up at the airport Thursday morning.

Escape from Cuba

When Jerez crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in 2022, he turned himself in to Border Patrol agents and asked for asylum. He’d participated in protests against Cuba’s communist government in 2021 and had been targeted by the police and government ever since, his family said during his detention. Federal and international law requires the United States to allow people to apply for asylum if they fear persecution in their home countries based on their politics or identity.

At the time, Joe Biden was president and border agents routinely allowed asylum seekers to enter the country with temporary legal protections while their cases were pending in immigration court — a process that can take years due to court system backlogs.

Jerez hired a lawyer and followed the steps required by law. Then U.S. voters elected a new president who promised to carry out mass deportations. In January, Trump issued an executive order suspending legal protections for asylum seekers. In May, immigrant advocates say, judges began coordinating with ICE agents to dismiss asylum cases and detain asylum seekers in courthouses.

Jerez was detained in the first few days of that new strategy at courthouses, his attorney said. Jerez had flown to Miami with his wife and mother for the first hearing in his asylum case, usually just a bureaucratic step. Instead, at the request of the federal government’s attorney, the judge tossed his claim without explanation. 

Plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents met him outside the courtroom, arresting him and placing him in expedited removal proceedings, where immigrants can face immediate deportation unless they can show a “credible fear” of persecution in their home country for their politics or identity. 

ICE gives no reason for release

Just like his arrest, Jerez’s release left his lawyers and family with questions. 

Billmann said he received an email from Baldwin’s office informing them Jerez would be released Wednesday. 

Ismael Labrador with the Miami-based Gallardo Law Firm, said Friday ICE gave the legal team no explanation for Jerez’s release. 

“We didn’t get anything from the deportation officer regarding the reason why he got released. We just got the good news,” Labrador said, noting the legal team got the call on Wednesday.

The Department of Homeland Security claimed Jerez was taken into custody because he entered the U.S. “illegally.”

“Most aliens who illegally entered the United States within the past two years are subject to expedited removals,” the DHS wrote in an email Friday. “(Former President Joe) Biden ignored this legal fact and chose to release millions of illegal aliens, including violent criminals, into the country with a notice to appear before an immigration judge. ICE is now following the law and placing these illegal aliens, like Miguel Jerez Robles, in expedited removal.”

“(Homeland Security) Secretary Noem is reversing Biden’s catch and release policy that allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens to be let loose on American streets,” the DHS wrote in the  email.

Jerez arrived in the U.S. more than two years ago and has no criminal record.

The department did not respond to follow up questions on why Jerez was released. 

Baldwin played role behind the scenes

Baldwin confirmed Friday her office pushed for Jerez’s release. 

“From day one, the Trump Administration has sought to divide our communities by attacking immigrants – from executive orders to new policies,” Baldwin wrote in an emailed statement. 

The senator became involved after Billmann contacted her office in May. 

Her office contacted ICE, requesting information on the reason behind Jerez’s detention and the status of his case. 

“After that they checked in with us from time to time,” Billmann wrote in a text message to the Cap Times and Wisconsin Watch. “(But) Wednesday was a total surprise.”

The senator’s office said it followed up multiple times with the ICE’s Seattle field office seeking more information on Jerez’s request for release. On June 24, ICE officials told Baldwin’s office they had no record of a request for release, at which point the senator’s office connected with Jerez’s legal team and re-sent the request to the Seattle office.

“I am glad to have been able to help Miguel reunite with his family and stand ready to continue to fight for Wisconsinites facing similar situations,” Baldwin’s statement said.

Billmann said he and his wife, Kathy, postponed a planned vacation this week after hearing Jerez was coming home. 

“This was a better way to spend the (days),” Billmann said.

Future remains unclear

Despite the family’s joyous reunion, Jerez’s future remains shrouded in uncertainty. 

On June 12, while at the detention center in Tacoma, Jerez completed an interview to assess the validity of his fear of persecution in Cuba. 

Jerez’s attorney said the law firm has not yet received the results and does not know when it will receive that information. 

“We should have gotten that by now,” Labrador said. 

Labrador said Friday he and other lawyers had appealed Jerez’s expedited removal as soon as he was arrested in May. If Jerez wins that appeal, they will file a second asylum request. If he loses that appeal, he may be forced to return to ICE custody.

For now, Jerez said, it looks like he may be back where he was before his month-long imprisonment. When he was released from detention on Wednesday, he was handed the same I-220A form he’d received when he crossed the U.S. border. 

He and his wife, Geraldine Cruz Dip, said they’re glad for a fresh chance to make his asylum case “in freedom.”

“As it should be,” Cruz said.

Wisconsin asylum seeker sees ‘miracle from God’ in unexplained release from ICE detention 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.

Reading Time: 10 minutes

Click here to read highlights from the story

• Last month, a McFarland man who arrived in the U.S. three years ago from Cuba attended what he thought would be the first hearing in his asylum case. Instead, in what appears to be a nationwide trend, a judge dismissed his case and ICE arrested him.

• Miguel Jerez Robles was among the first people swept up in a recent wave of arrests inside immigration court buildings, a place considered off limits for such enforcement until the Trump administration loosened restrictions.

• His story illustrates the volatility and randomness of the country’s immigration processes. While Jerez is now imprisoned in a Tacoma, Washington, detention center, his sister — who arrived in the U.S. just days later and was given different paperwork — has a green card.

Editor’s note: A day after this story was published Miguel Jerez Robles was released from an ICE detention center in Tacoma, Washington. Read an update here.

When McFarland resident Miguel Jerez Robles boarded a plane to Miami last month, he thought he’d be attending a routine immigration hearing about his asylum application and enjoying a rare vacation with his wife and mother. 

The 26-year-old and his family had come to Wisconsin in 2022, fleeing political persecution from the Cuban government. They moved to the village just outside Madison, home to a friend his brother-in-law met while driving a taxi in Santiago de Cuba. 

Jerez rented an apartment near the high school and got a job delivering packages all over southern Wisconsin, first for FedEx and later for an Amazon subcontractor. He and his wife started a popular YouTube channel, Cubanitos en la USA, where they shared videos about what it was like to work as a delivery driver, buy a car or shop for groceries in Wisconsin.

The Florida trip was Jerez’s first vacation since arriving. Jerez planned to go to the May 22 preliminary hearing in his asylum case, then take his family to the beach and explore the city.

Instead, immigration authorities arrested Jerez and sent him to a detention center, sweeping him up in what appears to be a coordinated strategy to fast-track deportations.   

When Jerez appeared in the Miami courtroom, a federal attorney asked the judge to dismiss his asylum claim. According to Jerez’s family, the judge agreed without explanation, then wished him luck. 

Jerez headed to meet his wife, Geraldine Cruz Dip, and his mother, Celeste Robles Chacón, who were waiting just outside the fifth-floor courtroom. 

Plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were waiting too. They handcuffed and arrested him before he could reach his family, his mother said.

Three days later, Jerez was shackled and flown to a detention center in Tacoma, Washington, through a process called expedited removal, which allows the government to deport certain immigrants without first hearing their cases in court.

His wife and mother returned home to McFarland alone.

“The vacation turned into a nightmare,” Cruz said. “Everything fell apart in a moment.”

Jerez was among the first people swept up in a recent wave of arrests inside immigration court buildings, a place considered off limits for such enforcement until the Trump administration loosened restrictions earlier this year. Some, like Jerez, report judges unexpectedly dismissing their cases in what some immigrants and attorneys believe is a coordinated effort to quickly detain large numbers of people as soon as they lose legal immigration status — including those who, like Jerez, have no criminal history.  

“It’s easier to go to a courthouse and pick up everyone there than go searching for them at home,” Cruz said.

These arrests, which appear to have begun in late May, are part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown, some of which he promised on the campaign trail. The scale and methods reach far beyond what many expected from an administration that has vowed to prioritize removing people who threaten public safety. Recent ICE raids at schools and other sensitive locations have sparked multi-day protests in Los Angeles and other major cities.

For asylum seekers like Jerez, who followed steps laid out by the previous administration, the policy shift means they’ll now likely have to make their cases from behind bars. 

His story illustrates the volatility and randomness of  the country’s immigration processes. Had Jerez arrived five years earlier, before President Barack Obama ended the “wet foot/dry foot” policy that applied to Cuban immigrants since the 1960s, he and his family would have immediately qualified for legal status and a pathway to citizenship. And if he’d only been given the same paperwork as his sister — who arrived for the same reasons just days later — he may have a green card today like she does.

Attorneys: Judges and ICE collaborate in courthouse arrests 

Jerez’s arrest shocked his attorneys too. For much of the past two decades, officials reserved the expedited removal process for immigrants arrested near the border within two weeks of arriving in the country. 

Former President George W. Bush first implemented these guidelines in 2004. However, during his first term, Trump expanded use of expedited removal procedures to include immigrants anywhere in the United States who have spent less than two years in the country. Former President Joe Biden rescinded that expansion, only to see Trump restore it in January through one of the first executive orders of his new term. 

People who are convicted of certain felonies can face expedited removal outside of normal parameters. 

“But these people, they are clean. They have no crimes, no record, no nothing,” Ismael Labrador, an attorney with Miami-based Gallardo Law Firm who is representing Jerez, said of those affected by Trump’s latest tactics.  

Jerez has been in the country longer than two years. But the Trump administration argues expedited removal should apply to similarly situated immigrants, as long as immigration authorities processed them within two years of their arrival. 

“He had everything in order, and he was arbitrarily arrested and placed in expedited removal when he doesn’t qualify to be in expedited removal,” Labrador said. 

The American Civil Liberties Union of New York sued the Trump administration in January, arguing Trump violated the rulemaking process and the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause in expanding the scope of expedited removal.

Now, the administration is further accelerating removals by dispatching ICE agents to courthouses to immediately arrest following the dismissal of immigration cases. 

Labrador isn’t surprised immigration judges, government attorneys and ICE agents appear to be collaborating on the plan. While the federal government’s judicial branch houses most judges, immigration judges are part of the executive branch, employed by the Department of Justice. 

“They work for the same boss,” he said, referring to Trump. 

In light of the new practice, the nonprofit National Immigration Project recommends immigration attorneys consider requesting virtual hearings to protect clients from courthouse arrest. 

The group released that guidance in May, just a week after Jerez’s arrest.  

“Unfortunately, if I remember correctly, he was imprisoned on the second day this new (courthouse arrest) strategy had begun,” Labrador said. “It was a surprise to all of us.”

Some of Labrador’s other clients have been detained in similar ways, prompting him to begin requesting virtual hearings. 

He followed the rules. Then the rules changed.

Jerez sought asylum in the United States after mass demonstrations in his homeland in 2021, when people in dozens of Cuban cities took to the streets to protest shortages of food and medicine, as well as their government’s strict response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Jerez had spoken out against Cuba’s communist government and refused to perform his mandatory military service, putting him and his family in the crosshairs of the authorities, Cruz said. She recalled a time when police interrogated him for six hours and broke his cellphone.

“They told him that the same thing would happen to us as to that phone,” Cruz said. Another time, she said, the police chief came to the family’s home ahead of another round of protests and told them that if they wanted to live, they’d stay home. 

The couple lost their jobs at a Chinese restaurant, she said, after police threatened to shut it down if they weren’t fired. The pressure wouldn’t let up, Cruz said, so Jerez and three family members flew to Nicaragua in separate trips and then spent two months traveling by land to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Jerez and his family followed all the government’s requirements while pursuing permanent legal status, his immigration attorneys said.

That included presenting themselves to Border Patrol agents and requesting asylum when they arrived in Nogales, Arizona, in 2022. Jerez was handed an immigration form called an I-220A, allowing immigrants to be released into the United States as long as they stay on the government’s radar — following certain rules and appearing at all court hearings. 

After the family settled in McFarland, Jerez drove to Milwaukee every year for a check-in with  immigration agents. He never missed an appointment, his wife said. The government issued a  work permit that authorized him to work in the U.S. until 2029. 

In 2023, Jerez’s sister Vivianne received a green card, making her a permanent U.S. resident.  That’s because she received different paperwork upon her release at the border. It placed her on humanitarian parole, which provides temporary legal status to people from certain countries. 

The 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act allows Cubans to apply for permanent residency after having lived in the United States for more than a year. But Jerez was not eligible while his asylum case was pending in immigration court. The U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals ruled in 2023 that immigrants with I-220A status could not apply for green cards. 

Meanwhile, a Trump executive action ended humanitarian parole for people arriving from a slew of countries, including Cuba.  

Border agents’ choice to nudge a brother and sister toward divergent immigration pathways appears to be random, the family said. That fits a trend, said Labrador, as border agents receive little to no guidance — and wide discretion — on what paperwork fits each situation. 

Seeking asylum a second time 

Once in expedited removal proceedings, immigrants can be immediately deported unless the government determines they have “credible fear” that they would be persecuted in their home country because of their political views or identity.

On June 12, guards at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma told Jerez to get dressed to go to the library, his sister said. When he got there, he learned this would be his official interview about why he’s afraid to return to Cuba — determining whether he’ll get a chance to bring his asylum case.

No one has told Jerez when he’ll learn the result, Cruz said, so she asked ChatGPT. 

“It says it takes three to five business days, so I think it would be this week,” Cruz said in a June 17 interview. As of Friday, she was still waiting for news.

Based on Labrador’s experience, it can take up to a month. 

If Jerez passes the interview, his lawyers will file a second asylum application. But that wouldn’t prompt Jerez’s release. 

“He will have to defend his case in custody, unfortunately,” Labrador said. 

Jerez’s mother calls uncertainty “psychological torture” for detainees.

Guards have offered Jerez and other detainees the chance to sign papers consenting to be deported, Cruz said. 

“From the time they arrest them, the first thing they say is, ‘Sign this and you’ll go to your home country, or prepare to be detained here for up to two years,’” Cruz said. 

Jerez and his family are still trying to understand why the government detained him after he did everything it asked, including attending immigration and court appointments, working and paying taxes.

“He doesn’t have so much as a traffic ticket,” his sister, Vivianne, said. 

But they know he’s not alone. On TikTok, they see one woman after another “crying because they took their children or their husbands,” Cruz said. 

They know others who voted for Trump, thinking he’d only deport criminals, only to have their loved ones detained too, Cruz added. 

“He just wants white Americans who speak English when really Latinos are this country’s main workforce,” she said. “If they said they were going to search for people with criminal records, why are they arresting people who don’t have any kind of criminal record?”

In a recent New York Times interview, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, claimed the administration is prioritizing “the worst first” for deportation but acknowledged other immigrants may get swept up in the fray.

“We’re prioritizing public safety threats, people who have committed crimes in this country or who have committed crimes in their home country and came here to hide,” Homan said. “But I’ve also said from Day One, if you’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to questions about Jerez’s detention.

‘A total disaster’

To talk to his family from the Tacoma detention center, Jerez waits his turn to make video calls on a tablet shared by around a dozen detainees. 

On those calls, he usually looks sad, Cruz said. She thinks detention has made him depressed. 

Labrador also tries to speak with Jerez as often as possible. The conditions at the facility, one of the country’s largest, are “a total disaster,” he said.

“They are sleeping on the ground. They are being moved constantly. They are waking up in the middle of the night for (head) counting,” he said, adding that fights occur regularly and detainees get little to no medical treatment.  

But Jerez’s mood was better last Saturday. When he called his family that day, his sister had just returned from protesting the Trump administration at the “No Kings” rally in McFarland, where she’d carried a hand-written sign covered with family photos . 

“Freedom for Miguel,” it read. “He is not a criminal. He is a husband, a son and brother.”

He smiled as they showed him photos and told him about the people who approached her to express sympathy or outrage. Some hugged her and cried. Some said they would pray for her brother. 

Cruz saved screenshots from that call. In the three weeks since his detention began, Vivianne said, it was the first time she’d seen him looking happy. 

Andrew Billmann, the friend her husband met in his taxi years before, protested alongside Vivianne Jerez, carrying a sign that included a QR code with more information about the detention.

“This is not someone that snuck in. This is not someone who’s trying to conceal their location. He’s been completely forthcoming from the beginning,” Billmann said in an interview. 

Billmann and his wife, Kathy, have helped the family settle in McFarland, find housing, set up bank accounts and stay on top of their immigration paperwork. 

“They’ve literally done everything right,” Billmann said. “I helped Miguel get his driver’s license. He’s got a Social Security number, a work permit. This is all as it’s supposed to go.”

Instead, the arrest has upended life for the whole family. Vivianne canceled her June 9 wedding ceremony. That cost the couple $1,000, but they couldn’t stomach trying to celebrate. Their loved ones cried as the couple quietly signed their marriage license at the McFarland apartment they share with her mother. 

And now? The family waits. 

Vivianne, who worked as a doctor in Cuba, recently finished training to become a U.S. registered nurse. Her graduation photo sits in her living room, but she hasn’t celebrated that feat either. On the coffee table sit the now-shriveled roses Jerez gave his mom for Mother’s Day. She can’t bring herself to throw them out. 

On the couch, Cruz sorts through the evidence she’s marshaled as proof of her husband’s good character: the letter from the Madison Police Department saying he had no record with the department, the awards he received from his delivery jobs, the letter in which his boss called him “an exemplary employee” and said he was “praying for his eventual return.”

Cruz, who drives for the same company, has continued delivering Amazon packages to pay the bills.

Billmann set up a GoFundMe page where community members can donate money to help Cruz cover living expenses while her detained husband can’t work. 

If the court gives Jerez another chance at release, she plans to use that money to pay his bond.

“They’re just wonderful, wonderful people,” Billmann said. “It’s just absolutely crazy what they’re putting this family through.”

The story was co-produced by The Cap Times and Wisconsin Watch.

‘The vacation turned into a nightmare’: Wisconsin asylum seeker detained in unprecedented wave of courthouse arrests 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.

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Click here to read highlights from the story

• Southwest Wisconsin Technical College was named the top community college in the nation after revamping its curriculum and counseling to better position students for higher-earning careers. 

• The college cut majors that often led to low-paying jobs and added training for industry certifications that garner premium pay. It also raised pay for some of its own workers, then urged local employers to increase wages. 

• Southwest Tech alums five years after graduation earn $14,000 more a year than other newly hired workers in their area.

Eight years ago, Southwest Wisconsin Technical College faced a crisis. An accreditation agency had placed the Grant County community college on probation for shortcomings in using evidence to advance student learning. 

Without improvements the college risked losing its accreditation, which would have affected the roughly 3,700 students near the Iowa border training for careers as mechanics, midwives, farmers and more. Without Southwest Tech, many would have to travel farther, pay more or forfeit their plans.

The news jolted the college into action.

“We had some issues that we had to address,” Holly Clendenen, chief student services officer, recalled. “That really brought the campus together to find the best way to improve our assessment work and ensure students were learning.”

The efforts paid off and then some. Last month, Clendenen walked across a Washington, D.C., stage to accept an award in a competition former President Barack Obama once called “the Oscars of great community colleges.”

Organized every two years by the nonprofit Aspen Institute, the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence recognizes schools setting an example in their field. It awards a total of $1 million to the top handful of institutions and publicizes their best practices for serving students. 

Southwest Tech took home the top prize: $700,000 for revamping its curriculum and counseling to better position students for higher-earning careers after graduation. It cut majors that often led to low-paying jobs and added training for industry certifications that garner premium pay. To practice what they preached, campus leaders raised pay for some of the college’s own workers, then urged other local employers to do the same.

Southwest Tech alums five years after graduation now earn $14,000 more a year than other newly hired workers in their area, the Aspen Institute found. 

Community colleges educate about two in five U.S. college students. But they don’t always set up those students for family-supporting careers, said Joshua Wyner, who oversees the Aspen Prize.

Community colleges have been underperforming for years, Wyner said. “If we are going to enable economic mobility and achieve the talent that we need for the economy, for democracy, etc., community colleges, frankly, just have to do better.”

On that front, Wyner said, Southwest Tech stood out. “This commitment to making sure every program leads to a living-wage job, and to actually confront programs that lead to low-wage work, is really unusual.”

Precision agronomy yields higher wages 

Jamin Crapp, 19, already knew plenty about farming when he enrolled in Southwest Tech’s agribusiness management program last fall. Growing up on his family’s farm just outside of nearby Lancaster, he learned to tend dairy and beef cattle and use basic equipment. 

But when he got a job at a farm in Rockville, he encountered a tractor he didn’t know how to drive. The newer model, which steers itself using GPS, was just one example of the kind of “precision farming” tools farmers are increasingly using to boost efficiency.  

Crapp was in luck. Southwest Tech had begun shifting to precision agriculture as part of its broader effort to set up graduates for higher wages. 

Two years ago, college leaders categorized academic programs by graduates’ average earnings: Programs leading to hourly wages of $16.50 or less were considered low-wage. Programs yielding at least $25 an hour were designated high-wage. A medium-wage category covered those in between.

Then the college set out to raise pay in every low-wage program. 

First, college officials turned to local employers. “We met with all of our partners to find out: Why aren’t these students making more money?” college spokesperson Katie Glass said. 

Agronomy was one low-wage program at the time. Local agriculture businesses, it turned out,  needed workers who could fly drones or apply pesticides — training Southwest Tech didn’t offer.  

“If our graduates could do those things, they could pay them more, because they could reorganize their business somehow,” Glass said.

So the college added that training. 

Southwest Tech agronomy graduates can now raise their starting hourly pay by up to $2 with drone and pesticide certification, the college said.

This fall the agronomy program will be completely reshaped and renamed precision agronomy, focusing on using technology to measure and analyze data to inform farming decisions. The college spent $1.3 million to purchase 85 acres of farmland to provide space for students to maneuver drones and gather the data they need.

‘Oh, that’s how you run that’

Agriculture instructor Andrew Dal Santo, who will lead the new program, likens the agronomy overhaul to switching from an analog clock to digital. 

On a sunny May afternoon, he led agribusiness management students as they filled compartments of an industrial planter with one soybean variety after another. The students took turns driving a tractor that recorded data throughout the drive. Students would later take those data back to the classroom.

“We can read everything from how many seeds per inch to how much pressure we’re putting into the ground, so the seed’s at the right depth,” Dal Santo said. “Instead of coming out here for five hours and collecting all that data, it’s right at your hands.”

One of the busy students was Crapp, who learned to operate an auto-steer tractor in another of Dal Santo’s classes — a lesson he brought to his job in Rockville.

“The next time I went to that farm, I said, ‘Oh, that’s how you run that,’” Crapp said.

He’s still weighing post-graduation plans, but he expects his new knowledge of precision techniques will help whether he’s running his own farm or writing loans for other farmers. 

“With my degree, I believe I can do almost anything,” Crapp said.

Changes to the agronomy program have already elevated it to the medium-wage category, Glass said. Six other previously low-wage programs made the same jump, while two more moved from medium-wage to high-wage. 

The college also added a new radiography program, training students to use medical imaging equipment like X-rays and CT scanners. That profession promises a median wage of around $38 an hour nationally, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

The overhaul at Southwest Tech drew criticism from some business leaders, including a few members of its advisory boards, Glass said.

“They built a business model off of paying our graduates lower wages, and we asked them to step down from our advisory board,” she added. “That’s not the direction that we’re going.”

Creative solutions to grow child care wages

Some programs weren’t worth saving, campus leaders found. Culinary arts and culinary management — programs considered successful by other measures — got the ax when the college couldn’t find ways to raise graduates’ wages.

“If our graduates don’t make family-sustaining wages, we’re not going to offer the program anymore,” Glass said. “Our degrees have to have value.” 

But some low-wage majors proved too important to cut, such as pathways for certified nursing assistants and child care workers. 

While many parents pay more for day care than they would for in-state university tuition, child care workers in Wisconsin earn an average of just around $14.50 an hour, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show. 

The state needs more people to fill these low-wage jobs: With waitlists for child care often months or years long, more than half of Wisconsin providers say they could serve more kids — if only they could find the staff. Without adequate child care, advocates say, many potential workers leave the workforce, worsening economy-wide labor shortages.

“Child care is so essential to our area that we can’t entertain the idea of not having the program anymore,” Glass said. “We have to find all the other avenues for what we can do to raise wages.”

Elementary school teachers, also high in demand, earn more than child care teachers. To set Southwest Tech graduates on a higher-earning path, the college revised the early childhood education curriculum to ease transfers to teacher training programs at Wisconsin’s four-year colleges. Faculty began talking “early and often” about that option, said Renae Blaschke, an early childhood education instructor. 

To improve immediate job prospects, the college began offering substitute teacher training, along with in-demand nonviolent crisis intervention training.

The school also helped students qualify for the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association’s TEACH scholarship, which supports Wisconsin students studying early childhood education. To be eligible, students must work at least 25 hours a week in a child care job. Southwest Tech students regularly perform such work to gain required field experience, but they struggle to find jobs that meet the scholarship requirements.

To help, the college created two substitute teacher jobs paying $19 an hour at its on-campus child care center. To set an example for other area child care providers, the college raised full-time staff salaries at the center to $40,000 a year, and it urged other local providers to raise wages too. According to the Aspen Institute, the center is now the region’s highest-paying child care provider.

Second-year early childhood education student Autum Butler, 20, who has worked at the on-campus center since 2023, is now a substitute in a toddler room. At Blaschke’s recommendation, she applied for a TEACH scholarship, which covered 90% of her school tuition this year and provided additional stipends for certain materials and technology.

Butler hopes to continue working with toddlers after graduation and possibly open her own day care.

Leaders vow to keep improving

Southwest Tech’s recognition comes during a tumultuous time for Wisconsin community colleges, several of which have recently closed amid declining enrollment.

Nationwide, college enrollment is down since the COVID-19 pandemic, with many students questioning whether the benefits of a degree are worth the growing cost. Community colleges with the biggest drops during the pandemic experienced bigger jumps than other types of colleges this year, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Southwest Tech isn’t the only Wisconsin community college earning kudos. The Aspen Institute, which analyzes data on about 1,100 U.S. community colleges, included seven others from Wisconsin on a list of 150 top institutions invited to apply for an Aspen Prize. 

One of those schools — Northeast Wisconsin Technical College in Green Bay — joined Southwest Tech as one of 10 finalists for the top prize, with judges citing dual enrollment opportunities for high schoolers and engagement with local employers to help more students learn on the job.

Southwest Tech prevailed after judges visited each finalist’s campus and compared data on how many of the students go on to transfer to four-year colleges or earn bachelor’s degrees — along with post-graduation earnings.

More than half of the college’s full-time students graduate within three years, far above the 35% national average. The school wants to raise that rate to 70%.

Other colleges could learn plenty from Southwest Tech, Aspen Institute judges said. Rural students often struggle to gain relevant work experience during school due to limited jobs and internships in smaller communities. But Southwest Tech leaders filled the gap by creating relevant work opportunities on campus.

Construction students now build student housing. A recent class completed an eight-bedroom duplex in just two semesters. Across campus, graphic design students create brochures and billboards advertising the college. 

Staff provide hands-on support outside of the classroom, including directing students to child care, mental health and food pantry services. They also help students draw up budgets that incorporate their income, financial aid, rent and school costs. 

“It’s a very sophisticated way of thinking about supporting students,” Wyner of the Aspen Institute said. “Other colleges often have lots of services that they offer, but it’s not tied to a particular sense of what students’ budgets are.”

Southwest Tech even won high marks for how it assesses student learning — the very worry of accreditors eight years ago. The college, which has since returned to good standing, now continually evaluates whether students are learning what instructors intended. When they don’t, faculty must create course improvement plans that everyone in the college can see, something Wyner calls “radical accountability.”

Looking back, Clendenen said the bad 2016 accreditation review was instrumental in bringing the college where it is today — rolling “a snowball that started us on this continuous improvement path.”  

“This prize is not the finish line,” Clendenen told the Aspen Prize crowd. “It’s also fuel for the road ahead. We accept this honor not just as recognition of our past success, but as a challenge to keep growing, innovating, leading and serving our community.”

How this rural Wisconsin community college raised grads’ wages — and saved its accreditation 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.

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• Reporter Natalie Yahr spoke to Matt Kures, who researches state labor and demographic trends as a community development specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension.

• The current labor market is good for people who have a job right now, but challenging for those looking for a job, Kures says. 

• Wisconsin’s working-age population is projected to keep declining into 2030, before leveling off in the subsequent decade, fueling challenges for certain industries. 

• Industries with particularly large shares of older workers include: real estate, transportation, warehousing, wholesale trade, manufacturing and public administration.

Wisconsin Watch is starting a new beat called pathways to success, exploring what Wisconsin residents will need in order to build and keep thriving careers in the future economy — and what’s standing in their way. 

To learn more about the jobs Wisconsin will most need to fill in the coming years, we spoke to Matt Kures, who researches state labor and demographic trends as a community development specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

What numbers do you think best tell the story of Wisconsin’s labor market and what’s coming?

Unemployment rates are still near historic lows, but despite that, we’re still not seeing a large number of people being hired. The hiring rate has slowed down. We’ve also seen fewer people being laid off. So more businesses are actually retaining employees that maybe they wouldn’t have otherwise. There’s still some hangover from the pandemic and ability to hire people, so they’re a little bit hesitant to let them go. 

The number of job openings has ticked down as well. We’re still seeing some uncertainty from a lot of businesses in terms of what’s going to happen with inflation, interest rates, tariffs and just the broader U.S. economy. 

Those numbers put together tell of a labor market that’s good for people who have a job right now, but maybe a little bit challenging for people looking for a job.

And how about when it comes to long-standing trends in Wisconsin’s labor market or demographics? Are there numbers you like to bring up that you think people don’t tend to know?

If you look at the working-age population declining from 2020 to 2030, and then kind of leveling off from 2030 to 2040, we’re just not going to have strong growth in the number of individuals who are working age in the state. That’s mostly true across the state, although there are some counties that will be projected to grow, like Dane and Eau Claire. 

And then also, the combination of individuals of retirement age or nearing retirement age that are going to either leave the labor force or change the types of work they’re doing. If we look at the manufacturing sector, for instance, we have almost 131,000 individuals in that industry who are aged 55 or older, or almost 28% of that industry. So in those large employment sectors in the state, how do we think about replacing the workforce or augmenting the workforce going forward due to retirements or just shifting abilities due to the aging population?

How are the challenges or opportunities different in different parts of the state, say in urban areas versus more rural areas?

Certainly many of the non-metro areas do have an older population and will continue to have an older population going forward, so they will most likely face some of the bigger challenges in terms of some of the population shifts by age group. In some of those areas too, you have some of the bigger challenges in developing housing … to try and attract a new labor force. So those challenges are a bit twofold.

Would you describe Wisconsin as having a labor shortage?

The labor shortage is probably not as significant as it was, say, two or three years ago. But with our structural population distribution in terms of our age groups, we’re going to face challenges going forward. We’re going to have fewer individuals of working age. 

What are your thoughts on how Wisconsin could fix that?

There’s a lot of strategies out there, and not one is going to be the sole key to solving labor problems going forward. Those strategies include thinking about ways to attract new individuals to our communities, creating quality places that people want to reside in, thinking about housing availability and affordability, and creating ecosystems where people can start a business. 

So those are community-based strategies that people or communities can think about. But it’s also going to require improving productivity, and that could be through AI, automation, other capital investments and equipment, and thinking about new production techniques. 

Can you tell me about some of the fastest-graying industries in Wisconsin, the ones where the most workers are aging out?

So we can look at this in two different ways: by numbers or percent. Some industries, on a percentage basis, have a very high share of individuals who are aging out of the workforce, but some of those are not the largest sectors in the state of Wisconsin. 

For instance, in agriculture and natural resources, 31% of employees (covered by unemployment insurance laws) are age 55 or older, but there’s only about 8,400 of them. (Federal agriculture census data shows around 65,000 Wisconsin farmers in that age group, most of whom are not covered by unemployment insurance laws.) 

But if you look at real estate, transportation, warehousing, wholesale trade, manufacturing and public administration, those are some of the biggest industries that have the highest share of individuals aged 55 or older, with manufacturing certainly being the largest in terms of total numbers with an estimated 131,000 employees aged 55 or older. That’s not surprising given that it’s a very large employment sector in the state. 

You can also look at, say, health care and social assistance. They’re below the state average for their share of individuals aged 55 and older, but there’s almost 99,000 of them in that age category. So that’s an industry sector that, as we age as a state, will probably face even greater labor demands. 

Of those graying industries, are there any that you’re particularly worried about?

I don’t know if “worried” is the term I would use because different industries will respond in different ways. For instance, manufacturing can probably rely a bit more on things like automation, while other industries might be able to have some of their jobs done remotely. But health care and manufacturing are two very large cornerstones of our economy, and they are going to face challenges with labor availability going forward.

When you say remotely, you mean they might use workers in other states?

Yes. But in an industry like health care, for the most part, that’s probably not going to be an option.

Can you tell me about a few of the fastest-growing industries in Wisconsin?

To be honest, I haven’t looked at any of the recent numbers on a sector-by-sector basis. I can say that health care and social assistance has been one of the largest growing sectors in the state, and that’s also true nationally.

Regardless of the industry, we’re seeing growth in demand for digital skills across all industry sectors. Especially in professional and technical services, we’re seeing a higher demand for digital skills, but across all industries, a lot of job postings require some sort of knowledge in terms of digital skills, which may be anything from software development all the way down to just being able to work with social media or operate word processing.

Anything else you want to talk about?

Thinking about the aging workforce, there are a lot of opportunities for businesses to make sure they capture and transfer a lot of the knowledge that those individuals may have gained over their careers. As new employees or younger employees come into those firms, are there opportunities to match up younger and pre-retirement workers to share all that knowledge and make sure that it benefits the organization going forward? 

Also, with the aging workforce, are there opportunities to help those who may want to change their occupation or career trajectory going forward? Maybe they’ve done construction labor for a long time and now they want to try something different because they just physically can’t meet the demands anymore. There are a lot of opportunities.We can take advantage of the knowledge, skills and abilities that those individuals have or may want to have going forward. 

Have a question about jobs or job training in Wisconsin? Or want to tell a reporter about your struggle to find the right job or the right workers? Email reporter Natalie Yahr nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org or call or text 608-616-0752‬.

Wisconsin’s workforce is aging. How can communities and employers prepare for the future? 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.