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• ICE records list more than 130 arrests at county jails in Wisconsin between January and July 2025. Nearly 40% were awaiting a ruling in their first criminal case. 

• While defendants sit in ICE custody, their criminal cases generally continue without them — sometimes with no explanation of their absence.

• That leaves defendants without their day in court, victims without a chance to testify and thousands of dollars in forfeited bail paid by family and friends.

Stacey Murillo Martinez arrived at the Fond du Lac County courthouse in June to pay a $1,500 cash bond for her husband, Miguel Murillo Martinez, as he sat in jail facing drunken driving, bail jumping and firearms charges. 

Scraping the funds together was no small feat. Stacey lives on a fixed income, so Miguel’s boss chipped in. She expected the court to eventually return the $1,500. Bond is meant to serve as collateral to incentivize defendants to show up for their court dates, as she believed Miguel would. 

She did not know U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers would wait inside the Fond du Lac County Jail later that day to take Miguel, an immigrant from Honduras, into their custody. 

Five months later, Miguel still sits in an ICE facility near Terre Haute, Indiana. His detention caused him to miss a court date in September, prompting the Fond du Lac County judge to issue a bench warrant for his arrest. 

“They didn’t tell me, ‘You’re guilty’ or ‘You’re not guilty,’ ” he said, his voice muffled and distorted by the facility’s phone system. 

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Stacey said in early November, referring to the fate of her husband and the bail money – three times the monthly rent for the couple’s double-wide in a Fond du Lac manufactured home park. 

ICE records list more than 130 arrests at county jails in Wisconsin between January and July 2025. Nearly 40% were awaiting a ruling in their first criminal case.

While defendants sit in ICE custody, their criminal cases generally continue without them — sometimes with no explanation of their absence to the court. As ICE ramps up its enforcement efforts nationwide, Wisconsin courts are increasingly left with loose ends: defendants without their day in court, victims without a chance to testify and thousands of dollars in forfeited bail paid by family, friends and employers.

“If I get out, I’m going back to my house, and then I have to appear in county court,” Miguel said. 

Miguel is not the only recent example: ICE picked up his nephew, Junior Murillo, at the Fond du Lac County Jail in October as he faced charges for disorderly conduct and domestic abuse.

The Fond du Lac County Jail has transferred 10 people into ICE custody this year, Sheriff Ryan Waldschmidt said. His county is among 15 Wisconsin local governments to have signed agreements with ICE to assist in identifying and apprehending unauthorized immigrants. These are often called 287(g) agreements, referencing the section of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act authorizing the program. 

Fond du Lac is also among the more than two dozen Wisconsin counties participating in the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, through which the Department of Justice partially reimburses incarceration costs for agencies that share data on unauthorized immigrants in their custody. Fond du Lac County received nearly $25,000 through the program in fiscal year 2024, according to Waldschmidt.

Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney said ICE has been “very easy for us to communicate and work with,” and his prosecutors inform judges if a defendant is arrested in the courthouse. Waldschmidt noted that while his office communicates with prosecutors about inmates in county custody with ICE holds, it lacks a written policy requiring them to notify prosecutors of handoffs to ICE. 

Criminal and immigration courts collide

Wisconsin courts do not consistently track whether a defendant has entered ICE custody, but multiple Wisconsin defense attorneys told Wisconsin Watch that immigration authorities frequently arrest defendants shortly after they post bail. 

“The judge will issue a $500 cash bond, somebody in the family will post it before I’m able to tell them, ‘please don’t,’ and the client will get transferred into immigration custody, where they’re really not able to make the appearance in circuit court,” said Kate Drury, a Waupaca-based criminal defense and immigration attorney.

In rare cases, prosecutors work with ICE to extradite defendants from detention centers in other states – or, even rarer, from other countries. Doing so is complicated and expensive, especially for smaller counties.

Toney said his office can’t justify expenses for bringing any out-of-state defendant back to prosecute lower-level cases, such as driving without a license. 

Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne is similarly reluctant to spend thousands to extradite defendants from faraway detention facilities. “If it’s a misdemeanor retail theft (charge), let’s say, and the person is in California, that extradition cost may be $5,000,” he said. “We’re probably not going to spend $5,000 or bring that person back.”

Ozanne’s office did, however, successfully fight for custody of a Honduran woman accused of killing two teenagers while driving drunk on Highway I-90 north of Madison in July. ICE detained Noelia Saray Martinez Avila, 30, after her attorney posted a $250,000 bond to release her from the Dane County jail in August. Martinez Avila is scheduled to appear in Dane County court in December.

Defendants in ICE custody can sometimes appear for Wisconsin court hearings via video call, though some attorneys report struggling to schedule those from immigration detention centers. 

“Jails and private prisons that operate immigration detention facilities aren’t super focused or motivated in helping defendants make their scheduled court appearances,” Drury said.

When a defendant misses a court date, Toney’s office typically requests a bench warrant and moves to schedule a bail forfeiture hearing — regardless of whether ICE detention caused the absence, he said. 

Making exceptions for ICE detainees would mean “treating somebody differently because of their immigration status,” Toney said. Still, attorneys in his office can exercise their own discretion when deciding whether to seek a warrant or bail forfeiture, he added. The prosecutor responsible for Junior Murillo’s case, for instance, did not request that the court forfeit his bail after his ICE arrest.

Ozanne argued against forfeiting defendants’ bail if they miss a court date while in ICE custody. 

“It wasn’t their unwillingness to show up” that prevented them from appearing in court, he said, adding that his office would be willing to return bail money to whomever posted it on the defendant’s behalf.

“The problem is that we don’t necessarily know” whether a person is in custody, Ozanne added. While he, like Toney, has reported no difficulties communicating with ICE, the agency doesn’t proactively inform his office when it arrests immigrants with active cases in Dane County. 

ICE did not respond to emailed questions from Wisconsin Watch.

Mindy Nolan, a Milwaukee-based attorney who specializes in the interaction between criminal cases and immigration status, said judges generally issue warrants for defendants in ICE custody to keep their criminal cases alive if ICE releases them or they return to the country after deportation. 

“Over the years, what I’ve heard from judges is (that) if the person is present in the United States in the future, they could be picked up on the state court warrant,” she said.

Hearings without defendants

Wisconsin law gives courts at least 30 days to decide whether to forfeit a defendant’s bail. 

“The default assumption seems to be that the immigrant could appear and the statute places the burden on the defendant to prove that it was impossible for them to appear,” Drury said. “But how does the defendant meet that burden when they’re being held in immigration custody, transferred all over the country, potentially transferred outside the United States?”

Wisconsin courts have held more than 2,700 bail forfeiture hearings thus far in 2025, though the state’s count does not provide details on the reasons for defendants’ absence. If the defendant misses the hearing, the defendant’s attorney or those who paid the bail can challenge the forfeiture by demonstrating that the absence was unavoidable. 

On a Friday morning in late October, a Racine County judge issued a half-dozen bail forfeiture orders in just minutes. The court had scheduled a translator for most of the cases, and she sat alone at the defense table, occasionally scanning the room in case any defendants slipped in at the last minute.

“The problem is getting someone at the bond forfeiture hearings to assert those arguments on behalf of clients,” Drury said. Public defenders are often stretched thin, and family members may be unaware of upcoming hearings. Court records indicate Miguel Murillo lacks a defense attorney assigned to his case in Fond du Lac, leaving only Stacey to argue against bail forfeiture. 

Such hearings tend to be more substantial when attorneys are present, boosting the likelihood of bail money being returned. 

Miguel Murillo’s case does not involve an alleged victim, meaning forfeited bail would go to Fond du Lac County. Court costs typically exceed the value of forfeited bail, Toney said. 

When cases involve alleged victims, Wisconsin law requires that courts use forfeited bail for victim restitution – even without a conviction.

What’s missing are judicial findings that the defendant is responsible for the alleged actions and caused suffering to the victim, Drury said. 

“Without a conviction, I don’t understand how you maintain that policy and the presumption of innocence, which is such an important constitutional cornerstone of this country.”

Immigration arrests often throw a wrench in the gears of the criminal justice system, Ozanne said. 

“It’s most problematic for us when the person hasn’t gone through their due process,” he said. “We have victims… who don’t really get the benefit of the process or have the ability to communicate with the courts about what they think should happen.”

“In a sense,” he added, “that person has a get-out-of-jail-free card.” 

Months in ICE detention 

Miguel Murillo left Honduras a decade ago, initially settling in Houston. While in Texas, he says he survived a shooting and sought, but never obtained, a U-visa, which provides temporary legal status to victims of certain crimes. 

The shooting prompted him to head north to Wisconsin, where he found construction work and married Stacey, a lifelong Wisconsinite. Court records mark occasional run-ins with law enforcement and misdemeanors over the last five years, culminating in the April 2025 charges that preceded his ICE arrest. 

Stacey, who is receiving treatment for breast cancer, relied on her husband to keep their household afloat. In his absence, she said, “I have to beg, plead, and borrow to get any assistance.” 

“Right now, as I go through this situation… there’s no one to take care of her,” Miguel told Wisconsin Watch. The couple hope that argument will sway a Chicago immigration court judge to release him from ICE custody. The court held its final hearing on his order of removal case in late October, Stacey said, but has yet to issue a ruling.

Junior’s case progressed far more quickly. After his arrest in October, he spent just over a week in ICE custody before immigration authorities put him on a plane to Honduras. 

Miguel, on the other hand, has spent roughly five months in various ICE detention facilities. He was scheduled to appear by video in Fond du Lac County court Thursday morning. He never joined the call. 

“I don’t know what happened,” he wrote to Wisconsin Watch afterwards. “I was waiting and (facility staff) didn’t call me.”

Stacey couldn’t attend the hearing for health reasons, and Miguel has yet to secure an attorney for his Fond du Lac case. Court records do not indicate whether the prosecutor requested forfeiture of his $1,500 bail.

Courts left with loose ends when ICE detains criminal defendants 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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• A federal board ruling has paved the way for courts to more easily toss out asylum cases and instead deport applicants, not to their home country, but to a “third country” they barely know.

• The ruling has the potential to affect the cases of thousands of immigrants who entered the asylum process since 2019.

• The Department of Homeland Security is using its extra power inconsistently, moving to send some asylum seekers to third countries while making more traditional motions in other cases. One immigration attorney says it illustrates the “crazy arbitrariness of the system.”

Milwaukee immigration attorney Anthony Locke spent the first weekend in November wrapping his head around the latest ground-shaking rule change for asylum cases. His Department of Homeland Security (DHS) counterpart apparently did the same while pushing to deport one of Locke’s clients.

Locke represents a Nicaraguan asylum seeker arrested in a late September ICE operation in Manitowoc. That client was set to appear before an immigration court judge on Nov. 4 in a hearing Locke hoped would move the man closer to securing his right to remain in the U.S. 

But five days earlier, the Board of Immigration Appeals — a powerful, if relatively obscure Department of Justice tribunal that sets rules for immigration courts — had paved the way for courts to more easily toss out asylum cases and instead deport applicants, not to their home country, but to a “third country” they barely know. 

Just before the Nov. 4 hearing, the DHS attorney motioned to dismiss Locke’s client’s case and deport him to Honduras, through which he had only briefly passed on his trek north. Locke now has until early December to argue that his client could face “persecution or torture” in Honduras. 

“Trying to demonstrate that they’re scared of a place they’ve had minimal contact with,” he said, is akin to proving a negative. 

If the judge sides with DHS, the Nicaraguan man will be sent to Honduras without an opportunity to make his case for remaining in the U.S.

“I am, quite frankly, not too hopeful, and I’ve had to be quite honest with my client about that,” Locke said. “This is so sudden, so jarring, and it has such an immense impact.”

The full impact of the appeals board ruling remains to be seen, but it has the potential to affect the cases of thousands of immigrants who entered the asylum process since President Donald Trump’s first administration in 2019 began establishing “safe third country” agreements, starting with Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. 

U.S. law for decades guaranteed anyone physically present in the U.S. the right to seek asylum, but the agreements allowed the U.S. to instead send asylum seekers to third countries to seek legal status there. 

While Joe Biden suspended most third country agreements during his presidency, Trump, upon returning to office in January, revived them as a means to limit asylum applications and facilitate deportations. The list of countries willing to accept the deportees is still growing, though not all have signed formal “safe third country” agreements.

The Board of Immigration Appeals overhauled the process of sending an asylum seeker to a third country. Its ruling allows DHS to send asylum seekers to countries through which they did not pass en route to the U.S. It also requires immigration courts to consider whether asylum seekers can be sent to a third country before hearing their cases for remaining in the U.S., creating the proving-a-negative scenario Locke described. 

The ruling may not impact those who filed for asylum before third country agreements were forged. 

DHS did not respond to Wisconsin Watch’s request for comment.

Locke’s client entered the U.S. in 2022, requesting asylum on the grounds that his protests against Nicaragua’s ruling party made him a target for persecution. The man entered the country through a Biden-era “parole” program that allowed some immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to live and work in the U.S. for two years, Locke said. Roughly a third of new arrivals to Wisconsin who entered the immigration court system since 2020 came from Nicaragua, though not all secured parole. 

The Trump administration ended the parole program earlier this year, claiming that the roughly 500,000 immigrants who entered the country through the program had not been properly vetted and that participants limited opportunities for domestic workers.

Locke’s client landed in the immigration court system in September after his arrest in Manitowoc. He is currently in custody in the Dodge County jail — one of a growing number of local detention facilities in Wisconsin housing ICE detainees. 

One of his fellow detainees, Diego Ugarte-Arenas, faces a similar predicament. The 31-year-old from Venezuela entered the U.S. in 2021 alongside his wife, Dailin Pacheco-Acosta. The couple filed for asylum upon reaching Wisconsin, citing their involvement in opposition to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Pacheco-Acosta found work as a nanny in Madison, and Ugarte-Arenas found a restaurant job. 

ICE last month arrested the couple during a routine check-in at DHS’ field office in downtown Milwaukee, forcing them to argue their asylum case in the immigration court system. Ugarte-Arenas remains in Dodge County, while his wife sits in a county jail in northern Kentucky. Another recent Board of Immigration Appeals decision limits their ability to post bond and continue their case while reunited in Wisconsin. 

The couple appeared in court for the first time on Nov. 12, both via video call. Though separated by hundreds of miles, the cinderblock walls behind them made their settings look almost identical. 

As they waited for their case to reach the top of the queue, the couple watched the court field-test the new rule on third-country deportations as the DHS attorney motioned to send another asylum seeker to an unnamed third country. But when Judge Eva Saltzman called their case, the DHS attorney did not make the same motion.

“When you move this quickly and have this volume of cases, not every case gets treated the same,” said Ben Crouse, an attorney representing the couple. The inconsistency, Crouse said, reflects the “crazy arbitrariness of the system.” 

After scheduling a follow-up hearing, Saltzman allowed the couple to speak to one another for the first time since their arrest. 

“Everything will be OK, you hear me?” Ugarte-Arenas said through tears. 

Saltzman moved on to the next case.

‘So sudden, so jarring’: Immigration ruling streamlines deportations to countries asylum seekers barely know 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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• ICE agents arrested roughly 75 immigrants at or near its Milwaukee office between January and July of this year, mostly those without a past criminal conviction or a pending criminal charge.

• The arrests of one Venezuelan couple reflect an apparent shift in ICE’s interpretation of protections for asylum seekers. Officers are now detaining even immigrants who don’t have removal cases in immigration court.

A Venezuelan couple arrested Oct. 23 during a routine check-in at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s downtown Milwaukee office are attempting to continue their asylum cases while detained — one in ICE’s Dodge County detention facility and the other in a Kentucky facility. 

The arrests reflect an apparent shift in ICE’s interpretation of protections for asylum seekers, posing new risks for those waiting for immigration officials to hear their cases.   

Diego Ugarte-Arenas and Dailin Pacheco-Acosta fled Venezuela in 2021, crossing the border at Eagle Pass, Texas, by November of that year and encountering border patrol officers, according to an ICE spokesperson. Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have made the same journey in the last decade, of whom at least 5,000 have settled in Wisconsin. 

Milwaukee immigration attorney Ben Crouse, who took on the couple’s case after they were detained, told Wisconsin Watch that border patrol officers initially provided Ugarte-Arenas and Pacheco-Acosta with notices to appear in immigration court. Critically, those notices didn’t provide a date or time for their future hearing, preventing the immigration court system from opening removal cases against them. 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) at that time routinely issued notices to appear without specifying a hearing date, Crouse said, despite multiple U.S. Supreme Court rulings underscoring that notices must specify a time and date. 

“There was a lag time between the Supreme Court saying they had to have times and dates on the notice to appear and DHS actually communicating with (the Department of) Justice to put things on calendars,” Crouse noted.

The couple then made their way to Wisconsin and filed for asylum, a legal protection from deportation for immigrants fleeing persecution. Their joint application cited their involvement in the political opposition to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro as grounds for asylum, Crouse said.

Immigrants can take two paths to claim asylum in the U.S. 

Ugarte-Arenas and Pacheco-Acosta filed for “affirmative” asylum, managed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and generally open only to those without removal cases before an immigration court. Without complete notices to appear, Crouse noted, the couple’s cases had not yet reached the court, opening the door to this pathway.

Immigrants with open removal cases apply for “defensive” asylum with an immigration court judge.

At least 100 immigrants with Wisconsin addresses have entered the defensive asylum process between January 2020 and August of this year, court records show. Most came from Nicaragua, Colombia and Venezuela. Between 2019 and 2024, immigration court judges in Chicago — the court with jurisdiction over most Wisconsin cases — denied roughly 40% of asylum petitions, according to data collected by the nonprofit Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

Under the Biden administration, immigration authorities began correcting incomplete notices to appear, enabling them to move asylum applications from the affirmative process to the defensive process. That swap rarely landed asylum seekers in detention, Crouse said.

Ugarte-Arenas’ and Pacheco-Acosta’s arrests are part of a broader shift in ICE’s attitude toward asylum. Multiple Milwaukee-area immigration attorneys say the agency is now detaining immigrants after terminating their affirmative asylum case. 

An ICE spokesperson did not respond to Wisconsin Watch’s questions about its new approach. 

“ICE does not ‘randomly’ arrest illegal aliens,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “Being in the United States illegal (sic) is a violation of federal law. All aliens who remain in the U.S. without a lawful immigration status may be subject to arrest and removal.”

The couple is now pursuing the defensive asylum process while separated by hundreds of miles. In September, DOJ’s Board of Immigration Appeals, which can set rules for federal immigration courts, ruled that immigrants in ICE custody who entered the country “without inspection” are ineligible for release on bond. The decision mirrors an argument that the Department of Homeland Security has made in immigration courts nationwide since July. 

Navigating the asylum process from ICE detention is logistically difficult, Crouse noted. Scheduling a brief phone call can take days, he said, and attorneys must rely on faraway sheriffs’ offices to ferry paperwork to and from their clients. 

“Tiny little things take days to fix,” he added.

ICE’s shifting approach to asylum is not limited to affirmative cases.

In recent months, the agency has also begun filing motions to dismiss the immigration court cases of defensive asylum seekers, said Milwaukee immigration attorney Marc Christopher. Once the immigrants’ cases are dismissed, ICE can place them in “expedited removal” proceedings — a fast-moving process that does not require a hearing. 

In some cases, Christopher said, “they dismiss a case in court and ICE is waiting right outside. Or they wait until they come to a check-in and arrest them there.”

ICE agents arrested roughly 75 immigrants at or near its Milwaukee office between January and July of this year, more than at any other Wisconsin site listed in agency arrest records during the period. Most of those arrested at the office, including Ugarte-Arenas and Pacheco-Acosta, had neither a past criminal conviction nor a pending criminal charge.

The Milwaukee office also includes a “holding room” in which an average of six people were detained at a time as of June, according to Vera Institute of Justice data. 

DHS recently extended its lease on the property, which is owned by the Milwaukee School of Engineering, until April 2026, with options to retain the space until 2028. ICE is preparing to open a new office on Milwaukee’s northwest side this fall.

ICE arrests of asylum seekers in Milwaukee show shifting tactics 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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• The number of seasonal workers hired by Wisconsin farmers through the H-2A program has increased six-fold over the past decade.

• Although the surge began before President Donald Trump returned to office, farmers now consider the program even more critical during Trump’s crackdown on immigrants without legal status.

• The Trump administration has introduced adjustments to program rules, including cuts to minimum wages and a pending $250 per-visa fee.

• Mexican nationals made up over 90% of the H-2A workforce last year, but South Africans make up a growing share of workers as well.

• The program does not offer visa holders a pathway to legal permanent residency in the United States.

By the time Monty Lilford received a call from the American consulate in Cape Town in February, he had only days to get from his home in South Africa’s Western Cape to Wisconsin’s Driftless Area. If all went according to plan, the 35-year-old mechanic would spend the next nine months as a do-it-all farmhand, joining the thousands of seasonal agricultural workers seeking better wages in Wisconsin through the H-2A visa program.

Lilford could not afford a last-minute flight halfway across the world. There’s a market for lending to H-2A workers crunched for time, he said — one dominated by “people doing scams to get your banking details.” 

Lilford turned to his father-in-law for help. “I begged him,” he said. “I needed to go.”

The temporary visa program offers Lilford a chance to build a middle-class life back home, albeit one that requires spending much of the year sharing a modest ranch house with seven fellow farmworkers near Fountain City. His visa does not offer him a pathway to legal permanent residency in the United States, and he will be barred from the program if he overstays.

Mike Bushman, Lilford’s employer and the owner of B&B Agri Sales in Buffalo County, considers the program the only legal and reliable source of labor for his farm. While he could hire workers who lack legal status, Bushman is wary of the legal risks. 

“You work your whole life to put something together and then take the risk of losing it all,” he said. 

The H-2A program comes with higher up-front costs, he explained, but he considers it essential  to keep his farm afloat amid a labor shortage.

Bushman is not alone. The number of seasonal workers hired by Wisconsin farmers through the H-2A program has increased six-fold over the past decade, according to 2024 state Department of Workforce Development data. The surge began long before President Donald Trump returned to office in January. Amid the White House’s ongoing immigration crackdown, however, some farmers now consider the program an even more critical alternative to workers without legal status.

The program is far from a flawless solution to the agricultural sector’s labor crisis. 

For farmers, the H-2A application process is often an expensive, slow-moving headache – one they must relive year after year.

Workers, meanwhile, frequently report wage theft and other mistreatment, and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division routinely uncovers violations of H-2A rules on Wisconsin farms. With inspectors stretched thin, patterns of abuse and fraud can go unpunished for years. Workers who walk away from a dishonest employer or dangerous workplace risk losing their visa.

The Trump administration has introduced a litany of adjustments to the program’s rules in recent months, including cuts to minimum wages and a yet-to-be-implemented $250 fee per visa. With some details still hazy, farmers and workers are awaiting clarity on what lies ahead. 

Application process is ‘constant battle’

Farmers argue the program is rife with inefficiencies. Program staff are often difficult, if not impossible, to reach, the application process relies almost entirely on physical mail, and farmers regularly spend thousands of dollars on attorneys to help navigate the labyrinth of paperwork. Keeping an application moving on schedule is a “constant battle,” Bushman said. 

The application requires approval from multiple federal and state agencies, often resulting in delays during handoffs from one agency to another. Those hurdles and screening interview backlogs at American consulates and embassies can leave workers stuck in their home countries past the planned start of their contract.

“Last year, the workers came almost three days late,” said Adam Lauer, co-owner of a pickling cucumber farm in Waushara County. “At three days late, you’re throwing a lot of pickles away.”

Bushman said such delays were responsible for Lilford’s last-minute rush to secure a plane ticket – a systemic flaw loan sharks exploit by charging desperate workers extortionate interest rates, he added. 

Earlier this month, the Trump administration took steps to address some delays, allowing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to begin reviewing workers’ applications while the Department of Labor considers applications from employers. That could buy more time for workers to schedule screening interviews at consulates and embassies, said Tom Bortnyk, senior vice president and general counsel for Virginia-based másLabor, which provides H-2A recruitment and application services for farmers nationwide, including in Wisconsin.

Other hurdles are tougher to fix. Federal regulators can be slow to send crucial paperwork, said Ethan Olson, a labor contractor who works with Lauer. That can leave farmers without documentation required – at least in theory – to prove they comply with H-2A rules. “You’re at the government’s mercy,” he said.

The Department of Labor did not respond to a request for comment during an ongoing government shutdown. 

Remaking the workforce

Wisconsin’s H-2A workforce is smaller than those of its neighbors, in part because the seasonal visa program is largely off-limits to the year-round dairy industry, which plays an outsized role in state agriculture. Michigan farmers hired roughly 15,000 H-2A workers in 2024, compared to fewer than 3,000 in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin’s H-2A workers spent the summer picking celery near Janesville, driving farm equipment in Fond du Lac County and tending pheasants outside of Marshfield. Lilford spent an October afternoon bundling equipment in Bushman’s fabrication shop while another farmhand moved feed corn into storage.

In years past, at least some of those jobs went to workers without legal status. “We went down to Florida to recruit,” said Lauer. Between 2021 and 2022 – the most recent years for which Department of Labor survey data are available — roughly 42% of crop workers surveyed lacked work authorization.

Lauer noted practical reasons to switch to an H-2A workforce. “We were so short on people,” he said. “Multiple years, 20 to 30 people short.” By the time his farm needed workers in mid-summer, many undocumented farmworkers had already found jobs elsewhere. 

Hiring undocumented workers also comes with legal risks. If caught, employers face fines of up to $3,000 per worker. Amid a nationwide immigration enforcement crackdown, Lauer said, “I wouldn’t take that chance.”

Elsewhere in Wisconsin, some farmers turned to the program as local alternatives slipped away. 

Before 2019, Dan Hanauer largely hired in and around Shawano for seasonal jobs on his Christmas tree farm. Some local workers were out of high school; others arrived through a county jail employment program.

By law, employers must offer seasonal jobs to “qualified, eligible U.S. workers,” including past employees, before hiring H-2A workers. In the past six months, prosecutors in Mississippi and Washington state have scrutinized employers who allegedly prioritized H-2A workers over U.S. workers.

Hanauer argues he was forced to switch. His local workforce, he said, was dwindling and prone to missing shifts. 

“The job description says you miss three days and you’re gone,” he added. 

On a recent weekday morning, several H-2A workers cut boughs from the bases of fir trees to be sold as Christmas wreaths — a new product for his business made possible by a more reliable team of seasonal workers from Mexico, Hanauer said.

Most of the roughly 20 H-2A workers who spoke to Wisconsin Watch — all employed by either Bushman, Lauer or Hanauer — were from Mexico. 

Upon returning to Mexico, “I take a week off to rest, and then it’s back to work,” said Israel Cruz, a construction worker who spent much of the summer picking cucumbers on Lauer’s farm in Waushara County.

Mexican nationals made up over 90% of the H-2A workforce last year, often traveling by van to and from farms in rural communities like Shawano. This year, a handful of Hanauer’s workers flew to Appleton instead. 

South Africans make up the second-largest nationality in the H-2A workforce, as they have for much of the past two decades. They outnumbered Jamaican workers, the next-largest cohort, more than 3-to-1 last year. 

Lilford, like the other members of Bushman’s crew, is an Afrikaner – a descendant of early Dutch, French and German settlers. Data on the nationalities of visa recipients does not specify ethnicity, but labor contractors who recruit in South Africa say most H-2A workers from the country are white. 

Labor costs and pay cuts

To theoretically avoid undercutting U.S. farmworker wages, the Department of Labor sets a minimum wage for H-2A workers. This year, Wisconsin H-2A employers must pay at least $18.15 an hour, up from $14.40 in 2020. The program also requires employers to pay for housing and transportation and to reimburse travel to and from workers’ home countries, none of which is required when hiring local farmworkers.

The Department of Labor announced cuts to the program’s minimum wage in early October, responding to farmers’ complaints about rising labor costs.

In a preamble to the new rule, the agency argued that the cost of participating in the H-2A program has become “increasingly burdensome” — surpassing the cost of hiring U.S. workers if they were available. The agency also noted that a decline in the number of undocumented agricultural workers will “deprive growers of a relatively cheaper labor supply,” pushing more farmers to the H-2A program.

The new rules reverse a 2023 Biden administration decision requiring farmers to pay H-2A workers based on the specific duties they perform. Some roles, like veterinary medicine and truck driving, required higher wages than standard field work, and farmers were obligated to pay according to the highest-earning role employees performed, even if it was not their primary role.  

That standard prompted legal challenges from H-2A employers, including Bushman, who joined a federal class action lawsuit challenging the rule earlier this year. A federal judge in Louisiana vacated the rule in August after a sugar cane growers’ association brought a separate lawsuit.

Instead, the Department of Labor’s new rule divides H-2A workers into two “skill levels” based on the experience and training required for their job. It does not guarantee that workers who have spent previous seasons in roles deemed “entry-level” will be paid at the higher end of the scale.

The department will also now allow employers to deduct a portion of workers’ hourly wages to reflect housing costs, which the agency argues will even the playing field for domestic farmworkers.

Wisconsin workers classified as less-skilled could receive as little as $12 per hour next year under the new standards — a reduction of 34% from the current H-2A minimum wage.

“In the countries where they’re recruiting, people are desperate enough to take a job for less than the prevailing wage,” said Jose Oliva, campaign director with HEAL Food Alliance, a national group that organizes and advocates for food supply chain workers.

New H-2A minimum wages are higher in every state neighboring Wisconsin. In Michigan and Illinois, H-2A workers will be paid at least the state minimum wages, exceeding the federal program minimum.

Program wages have always varied from state to state, said Bortnyk of másLabor. The latest changes, however, create a “meaningful enough difference” to fuel steeper recruiting competition for Wisconsin farmers. 

For Bushman, that competition is reason enough not to cut wages. The lower minimum “won’t save us anything,” he said, because retaining experienced crew members makes more business sense than training new hires.

Room for abuse

The minimum wage changes follow the Trump administration’s decision in June to suspend enforcement of Biden-era rules intended to crack down on H-2A abuses. 

Among other protections, those rules previously guaranteed that workers could invite guests like legal aid providers and clergy into employer-provided housing. In Wisconsin, H-2A workers retain that right through the state’s migrant labor law.

Wisconsin farmers are well aware of the opportunities for exploitation. 

Lauer recalled discovering that a recruiter in Mexico had charged job seekers hundreds of dollars to apply for openings on his farm — a violation of program rules.

“It all happened in Mexico, so we never saw the money,” he added. Lauer says his business cut ties with the recruiter after consular officials in Mexico alerted him of the recruiter’s practices.

None of the workers who spoke with Wisconsin Watch shared firsthand accounts of violations or mistreatment at their current workplaces. However, the Department of Labor has fined 23 Wisconsin H-2A employers for program violations in the past decade.

Auditors cited one labor contractor, Adams County-based J&P Harvest, for more than 650 violations of H-2A program rules between 2019 and 2023. The department approved J&P Harvest’s most recent application in March of this year. The company, which lists a Florida phone number in its contact information, did not respond to a request for comment.

In some cases, the Department of Labor can temporarily ban, or “debar,” farmers and contractors from participating in the program. J&P Harvest does not appear on the agency’s current list of debarred businesses, but Jan Enterprises, a flower-growing business near Green Bay, is currently banned from participating in the program for allegedly hiring H-2A workers in place of an American applicant. A related greenhouse is also on the department’s debarment list. 

According to a 2015 review by the federal Government Accountability Office and 2023 reporting by Investigate Midwest, loose enforcement of debarments has enabled some businesses to continue hiring through the H-2A program by operating under a new name. 

Federal inspectors do not catch every violation. The Wage and Hour Division employed just over 720 investigators to enforce labor laws nationwide last year, according to the Department of Labor’s fiscal year 2025 budget. The agency audited 659 agricultural workplaces last year — less than half the number of audits conducted a decade ago. 

Inspectors have recorded H-2A violations by more than half of the 42 Wisconsin agricultural employers audited since 2015, not all of which employ H-2A workers.

“There are other places where you’ll work 10 hours and they’ll pay you for nine,” said Salvador Gonzalez Mosqueda, a veteran member of Hanauer’s crew, recalling warnings about dishonest employers from fellow seasonal workers during an earlier stint in Kentucky. 

Some citations were for technical reasons. Lauer Farms, for instance, says it was fined in 2019 for missing date information on pay stubs.

Trump’s law brings new fees 

The Trump administration’s signature “big beautiful” bill-turned law adds another potential hurdle for workers and employers: a new $250 fee for all nonimmigrant visas, including H-2A. 

If federal rulemakers decide workers must pay the fee before entering the country, employers would likely be required to reimburse them. But Oliva warned that enforcement could be weak. “$250 is not chump change” for already vulnerable workers, he added.

It remains unclear whether employers will be eligible for reimbursement from the federal government once their workers return home.

“We’ll just eat another $30,000,” said Lauer, who often hires 120 or more H-2A workers over the course of the year – Wisconsin’s largest crew. While that expense alone won’t bankrupt him, Lauer considers the rising overall costs of participation unsustainable. 

“They’ll eventually push us out of business,” he said.

Workers keep returning  

Most H-2A workers who spoke with Wisconsin Watch worked on the same farms last season. 

Gonzalez, the veteran member of Hanauer’s team, said that he has returned to Shawano for the past six years, turning down offers from other farms. At Lauer Farms, roughly 90% of last year’s crew returned for the most recent harvest season. 

Some workers say they would prefer to settle in the U.S. rather than traveling back and forth from their home countries. 

“Things in Mexico are very hard,” said Jesus Hernandez Robles, another member of Hanauer’s crew. Hanauer says he has researched sponsoring seasonal employees for green cards, but without a full-time job to offer, that option is out of reach.

But Robles considers the H-2A program preferable to entering the country without a visa. 

“You can enter and leave, spend time with your family,” he said. “If you come here illegally, you have to work for a few years to pay off a coyote.” 

South African workers may have a clearer path to legal residency through the Trump administration’s new refugee program for Afrikaners. 

None of the members of Bushman’s crew who spoke to Wisconsin Watch had applied for refugee status as of early October. Anyone who did secure refugee status, Bushman said, “won’t be working in agriculture. There are just better opportunities.”

International workers continue to show interest in H-2A jobs, Bushman added. But when the federal government entered a shutdown earlier this month, the Department of Labor furloughed staff responsible for reviewing H-2A applications. If the shutdown continues into December and January — the busiest season for applications — Wisconsin farmers could be left high and dry next spring.

Farmers turn to flawed visa program in search for legal labor. Now the rules — and costs — are changing. 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

• 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.