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• A Manitowoc County dairy farmer can’t find an attorney and has no idea where her husband is after he was among 24 people arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Manitowoc County on Sept. 25.
  
• Wisconsin immigration attorneys said they were surprised to hear that, unlike during other recent federal government shutdowns, immigration court hearings for clients not in ICE detention would continue as planned. 
  
• Only about a third of immigrants in Wisconsin with upcoming hearings in federal immigration court have legal representation.

A Manitowoc County dairy worker arrived for her shift early on a Thursday morning in late September and waited for a message from her husband. It’s their routine, she said: rise early, commute to jobs at separate dairies and check in by phone.

“But when I called him, he didn’t answer,” she said in Spanish. “And so I was calling and calling and I said, ‘something happened, because he’s not answering – that’s not normal.’”

Her husband, Abraham Maldonado Almanza, was among the 24 people arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Manitowoc County on Sept. 25. As far as she knows, officers picked Maldonado Almanza up in the Walmart parking lot where dairy workers gather to carpool hours before sunrise. Within a matter of days, he had — at least from her perspective — effectively vanished, carried away at breakneck speed by the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown.

The pace of enforcement operations, lack of transparency and sudden shifts in policy have disoriented both those targeted in the crackdown and immigration attorneys already managing overwhelming caseloads.

A Department of Homeland Security press release tied the arrests to a joint operation with the FBI, IRS and other federal law enforcement agencies targeting an alleged human and drug trafficking ring. Neither DHS nor the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Wisconsin responded to inquiries about whether the investigation has resulted in criminal charges against any of those arrested last month, nor did federal district court dockets point to criminal charges resulting from the investigation as of Friday.

Over the following days, the dairy worker says she made her way through a list of immigration attorneys’ phone numbers, none of whom agreed to take her husband’s case. She attributed the reluctance to a preexisting removal order on her husband’s record, which can speed the deportation process. But without a reliable source of information, she was left relying on hearsay to keep track of Abraham’s case.

As the federal government entered a shutdown on Wednesday, several Wisconsin immigration attorneys said they were surprised to hear that, unlike during other shutdowns in recent memory, immigration court hearings for clients not in ICE detention would continue as planned. 

Attorneys had not expected the shutdown to slow down the cases of immigrants in detention, but the speed of operations has still caught some off guard. Some of those arrested in Manitowoc County last month were already out of the country days before Congress missed its funding deadline, according to Aissa Olivarez, an attorney with the Community Immigration Law Center in Madison.

“Historically, people are taken to (the Dodge County Jail) and we’re able to at least do an intake and speak with them before anything else happens,” Olivarez said. “But it seems like in this operation, they knew who they were looking for, or exactly what they were going to do. … They did this really, really fast.”

As of Friday, three of the six arrestees named in a DHS press release about the Manitowoc County operation were still in the Dodge County Jail, according to ICE’s detainee locator tool. 

Maldonado Almanza was not among them, though his name and photograph appeared in the press release, which also claimed he had a prior conviction for identity theft. 

Wisconsin circuit court records yield no matching criminal record, nor do trial court records in Iowa, where his wife says they lived after emigrating from Mexico and before moving to Wisconsin. Iowa court records do, however, reflect that Maldonado Almanza was fined for driving without insurance in 2009.

As first reported by the Wisconsin Examiner, another man named in the September DHS press release on the Manitowoc County operation had been in ICE custody since July. That man, Jose Hilario Moreno Portillo, was charged with second-degree sexual assault of a child in Manitowoc County in May. 

The dairy worker said her husband had previously received a deportation order in an immigration court case that began while the couple was living in Iowa. That detail matches Olivarez’s understanding of the Manitowoc operation. “It does seem like there were people who have been ordered deported before,” she said. In those cases, “without a quick stay of removal or motion to reopen, the government executes that removal order right away.”

“Because there is such a low capacity (of attorneys) in the state in general, when people already have removal orders, we can’t work fast enough to stop it,” she added.

Maldonado Almanza’s whereabouts remained unclear as of Friday.

Milwaukee immigration attorney John Sesini says his firm took the case of another man picked up in the Manitowoc operation only to discover he had been deported to Mexico within four days of his arrest. The man had no criminal record, Sesini said, and it remains unclear whether he had a prior deportation order. If not, it may still be possible to challenge the deportation in court. 

Only about a third of immigrants in Wisconsin with upcoming hearings in federal immigration court have legal representation. Unlike courts operated by the federal judiciary, immigration courts – part of the U.S. Department of Justice – do not provide free representation. Instead, immigrants must pay out of pocket, rely on the few free and low-cost legal services organizations like Olivarez’s legal center or face the courts alone. Those able to find attorneys are vastly more likely to avoid deportation than those who attempt to represent themselves. 

For some immigrants facing court dates in the coming weeks, a typical government shutdown could have provided breathing room. In past shutdowns, the DOJ has typically deemed only the cases of immigrants in detention “essential” enough to move forward. The shutdown from late December 2018 to mid-January 2019, for instance, forced the cancellation of at least 80,000 hearings nationwide, according to immigration court records analyzed by the nonprofit Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).

A Wisconsin Watch analysis of federal immigration court data suggests that as of August, almost 1,000 immigrants with Wisconsin addresses had hearings scheduled for October. So far, the DOJ has not called off those hearings en masse, though the agency has also not clarified whether immigration courts will continue holding hearings of immigrants who are not detained during a prolonged shutdown.

But in a press release issued on Wednesday, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin underscored that the shutdown will not slow ICE. “The deportations will continue,” she wrote.

Rapid deportation push leaves immigrant families in the dark 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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Of the roughly 6.6 million immigrants who landed in the federal immigration court system over the past decade, at least 41,000 listed addresses in Wisconsin.

Those immigrants, many of them new arrivals, are now in the spotlight. 

The Wisconsin Assembly voted earlier this month to bar local governments or state agencies from subsidizing or reimbursing health care for immigrants who are not “lawfully present” in the United States. One bill sponsor described that proposal as mostly “preemptive,” given that undocumented immigrants are already ineligible for most Wisconsin Medicaid coverage. The ACLU of Wisconsin is asking the state Supreme Court to prohibit local jails from holding immigrant detainees on behalf of federal immigration authorities, even while some law enforcement agencies attempt to wade further into the realm of immigration enforcement. 

Many of the human details of those interactions – immigrants’ names, for instance – aren’t recorded in the spreadsheets listing immigration court hearings and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests. But the records do provide clues about where new immigrants to Wisconsin came from, where they settled and how they have fared in the immigration court system. 

The records also illustrate a 10-year history of shifting immigration enforcement priorities, including the beginning of the Trump administration’s ongoing crackdown. 

At least in Wisconsin, immigrants with legal permanent residence outnumber new arrivals. Roughly 21,000 new immigrants in Wisconsin obtained permanent residence between 2015 and 2023: the most recent year for which those data are available. Most were relatives of U.S. citizens, employees of American companies or refugees, though the number of refugees arriving annually in Wisconsin has declined. Of the nearly 7,000 immigrants in Wisconsin who became legal permanent residents in 2023, roughly a quarter were from Mexico. 

Those with cases before immigration court, on the other hand, often overstayed visas or entered the country without them, complicating their paths, if any exist, towards legal permanent residency or citizenship. Most came to the U.S. within the past five years, making their way north and registering with the court using a Wisconsin address. Others arrived as children decades ago, first appearing in immigration court records well into their adulthoods. 

Unlike federal district courts, immigration courts do not operate within the judicial branch, nor are immigration court judges political appointees subject to Senate confirmation. Instead, the courts operate within the U.S. Department of Justice, hearing cases of noncitizens who the federal government intends to “remove” – in other words, deport. The courts can also consider immigrants’ requests for asylum and other forms of relief.

Wisconsin has no immigration court of its own. The immigration court in Chicago handles most cases involving immigrants with Wisconsin addresses, while a court in Fort Snelling in Minnesota handles a smaller number. But other new arrivals have cases in courts as far away as California and Puerto Rico – an indication of the bewildering range of paths through the federal immigration system. 

Immigrants with cases before the courts have the right to an attorney, but the federal government is not generally required to provide one. Unable to afford private attorneys’ fees, many immigrants opt to represent themselves. 

Roughly a third of immigrants in Wisconsin who entered the immigration court system over the past decade have been represented by an attorney at some point in their case. 

The limited address data available in court records suggests that these new immigrants have settled in major cities and rural communities across Wisconsin, often following jobs in agriculture and manufacturing. Small cities like Abbotsford and Darlington have received more of those recent immigrants per capita than Green Bay, though parts of Milwaukee and Dane County absorbed the largest numbers, both in absolute terms and per capita. 

More than half of the new arrivals came to Wisconsin from Mexico and Nicaragua. Wisconsin received roughly 1 in 20 Nicaraguan immigrants to the U.S. over the past decade – behind only Florida, California and Texas, and by far the most disproportionate number in the country relative to the state’s overall share of recent arrivals. 

“Most Nicaraguans (in Wisconsin) came from the northern parts of the country and are used to working in agriculture,” said one woman who immigrated to Wisconsin from Nicaragua in 2021. Wisconsin Watch agreed not to name her due to fears of legal repercussions. 

A spiraling economy, nationwide protests and a violent police crackdown in 2018 prompted many of her neighbors to leave the country, she said, and word of abundant – and familiar – agricultural jobs drew many to Wisconsin. “By the time I left, only the grandparents remained,” she recalled in Spanish. “There were no more young people, no more children, no more parents.” 

Nicaraguans made up the largest share of new immigrants on Milwaukee’s south side, whereas new immigrants from Mexico outnumber those from Nicaragua in the neighboring suburbs.

But the makeup of new immigrants varies substantially between Wisconsin communities. Venezuelans make up the largest share in parts of Dane County, as do Cuban immigrants in parts of Outagamie County, Vietnamese immigrants in Menomonee Falls and Indian immigrants in Oak Creek. 

Representation rates vary significantly between immigrant nationalities: Only about 20% of Nicaraguan nationals had representation at some point in their case, compared to roughly 90% of Indian and Chinese nationals. 

Not everyone with a case in the immigration court system lacks legal status. Some have obtained Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which currently shields nationals from a dozen countries from deportation, though Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has moved to terminate those protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Venezuela and Haiti in the coming months. DHS terminated TPS for Nicaraguan nationals in early September.

ICE, a branch of DHS, can move to deport immigrants without a hearing in some cases.

ICE records through late July indicate the agency has arrested roughly 1,700 people in Wisconsin since September 2023. Roughly 45% of those arrested have left the country, either via deportation or “voluntary departure.” Those able to leave via “voluntary departure” avoid adding a removal to their record.

The pace of ICE arrests in Wisconsin is rising during the Trump administration’s nationwide immigration enforcement surge.

In recent months, those arrests have primarily targeted immigrants with criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. The records offer no specifics on the nature of the convictions or charges.

In that regard, Wisconsin is out of step with countrywide trends. ICE data indicates that immigrants with no criminal history made up nearly 30% of arrests nationally in 2025 as of late July, compared to just over 15% of arrests in Wisconsin.

Still, arrests in Wisconsin of immigrants with no criminal history and subsequent deportations  are ticking upwards. Milwaukee immigration attorney Davorin Odrcic says the trend reflects a new set of priorities among immigration enforcement officials.

“There was an unspoken rule,” he said, that if an immigrant was seeking legal status and “not a danger to the community, didn’t have any convictions, ICE would let them go through that process.” Based on one client’s recent arrest and detention, Odrcic believes that unspoken rule has vanished.

While location data on ICE arrests is sparse and often unreliable, the agency’s records point to hundreds of arrests in Wisconsin jails and prisons over the past two years. Those figures will likely grow as Wisconsin sheriffs increasingly sign agreements to help ICE locate and take custody of undocumented immigrants detained in local jails. 

Arrest data from the Biden administration included hundreds of records of arrests at an ICE office in downtown Milwaukee, the vast majority of which involved Nicaraguan immigrants with no criminal history. Only a handful of those arrests resulted in deportations, suggesting the immigrants were quickly released. Researchers at the Deportation Data Project, which collects and publishes federal immigration enforcement data, say the “arrests” may simply represent immigrants checking in at the ICE office. 

Many of Odrcic’s clients are still required to check in at an ICE office periodically – a visit that has become far more daunting under Trump’s recent crackdown. “It’s a challenging situation,” he said. “I can’t advise you to blow off one of these appointments. I could advise you that there is a possibility of detention. So I just have to leave it at that.”

A decade of immigration in Wisconsin in 9 charts 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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As of July, two dozen Ashland residents had cases pending in federal immigration court. Attending court dates in person would require at least a three-and-a-half-hour trek to Fort Snelling in Bloomington, Minnesota.

Two mosques in Barron owe their existence to a nearby Jennie-O turkey plant, which has employed Somali refugees on its processing line since the 1990s.

And for the first time in five decades, Milwaukee’s Oklahoma Avenue did not host a Mexican independence day parade this September. Instead, a smaller crowd marked the holiday on a sunny Saturday afternoon in Mitchell Park, and a small convoy of pickup trucks flying Mexican flags spent the weekend cruising Milwaukee’s South Side, eliciting friendly honks from supportive fellow drivers.  

Immigration is as front-of-mind in Wisconsin as it is across the country. If it’s at the front of your mind, Wisconsin Watch wants to hear from you.

Are you an immigrant yourself? A business owner sponsoring an employee’s green card? A teacher meeting with parents from a half-dozen countries? A public official in a town like Barron? Does your farm rely on seasonal guest workers? Whoever you are, we want your help building a clearer picture of how immigration is reshaping Wisconsin – and how Wisconsin is shaping its immigrant communities.

Wisconsin Watch has covered immigration for more than a decade, but this year, we’re devoting new energy to the subject. That’s where I come in.

I’m Paul Kiefer, Wisconsin Watch’s first dedicated immigration reporter, albeit as a one-year Roy W. Howard fellow. I’m new to Wisconsin, but I’ve covered immigration before, most recently for the Washington Post on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where a fast-growing Haitian community is reassessing its relationship with the region’s poultry industry.

Immigration is rarely a stand-alone subject, and we plan to explore the intersections with Wisconsin Watch’s other coverage areas. What role will immigrants play in the future of Wisconsin’s paper mills? What becomes of homes left empty when their residents are deported? What trade-offs are involved when a county jail dedicates cell space to hold ICE detainees?

Above all else, we want our immigration coverage to reach as broad a cross section of Wisconsin as possible. That means considering the input of Wisconsinites from every walk of life, always with our mission – to inform, to connect and to hold officials accountable – in mind.

If you have suggestions, tips or questions, please reach out to me at pkiefer@wisconsinwatch.org. I speak English and Spanish; if you speak another language, we can work out a way to communicate.

Help shape our immigration reporting 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.