Protesters gathered at Kosciuszko Park Wednesday evening to stand in solitary with immigrant families in the predominantly Latino neighborhood in Milwaukee. Speaking to the crowd through a microphone, Alan Chavoya, a local activist with the ICE Out Coalition, said the gathering is both educational and “to show that this community stands together, and we’re ready to fight back.” 

Earlier this week, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents launched a flurry of arrest operations in communities across Wisconsin. In Milwaukee, witnesses described masked agents following people through town, smashing car windows and violently arresting their targets, sometimes in front of young children. 

Local immigrant rights groups and the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) described the surge as “targeted,” with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) saying 39 people had been arrested as of Wednesday. Although the federal agency said that the people arrested had a variety of criminal histories, from sexual assault and domestic violence to property damage and obstruction, local advocates have said that the vast majority of arrestees do not have criminal records. 

ICE agents were also seen staging in a MPD parking lot and county park, despite local ordinances meant to prevent that from happening. During public comment at a Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission meeting Thursday, two residents denounced the presence of ICE at the MPD District 2 parking lot, saying that the department should have prevented it.

Galo Suárez, whose fiance Reyna Elizabeth Garcia was arrested Sunday along with her brother Teodoro, attended the protest Wednesday night to call for their release. “Milwaukee, we have to unite against these people,” he told the crowd, his words translated from Spanish by Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera. “We cannot live in peace when there are people running around who are separating families, who are masked. I am here because I am one of the people that was affected by these people who are terrorizing our community, and who has my loved one incarcerated right now.” 

Neumann-Ortiz and legal observers from the Milwaukee Turners separately told Wisconsin Examiner that ICE agents had been seen earlier that day driving around the park in an apparent attempt to intimidate the people gathering there. 

Suárez told the crowd that when his fiance asked why they were being arrested, agents told her, “you have no rights, dog.” Suárez said that “it’s time for us to unite as a community, to have a single voice, and to help the families that are being impacted by this. We do not want ICE terrorizing our families in the streets.” He added, “It’s time for us to unite, to hold hands, because that’s the way that we’re going to be able to accomplish driving these people out of our streets.”

Chavoya said that “these are humans that are being terrorized by those monsters in ICE.” He described the people being targeted as “hardworking immigrants” and said, “these are not criminals, the criminals are the ones hiding their faces, the ones that have those stupid vests that say ‘police’. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, those are the criminals, those are the people who should be behind bars.” Chavoya translated everything he said into Spanish as well.

ICE Out Coalition members also held a know your rights session. They said that ICE cannot enter your home and workplace without a judicial warrant, unless you give them permission. The crowd was warned that agents may try to use deception to get the access they want. People also have the right to remain silent and not answer questions from ICE agents, organizers said. People also are allowed to film ICE agents. They said that publicizing details about the number of ICE agents, where they are, what they’re doing, what unit they’re from and when sightings occurred are important.

Luz Hernández, vice president of the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association (MTEA), said that the Latino community of Milwaukee’s South Side is in distress. Besides ICE agents patrolling neighborhoods, an elementary school  burned down on the same day that Suárez first told the world what happened to his fiance Reyna. Hernández, a bilingual teacher and an immigrant whose parents came from Mexico, said ICE “will not intimidate us, we will not give them that satisfaction!” 

She said “undocumented or documented, we all have inalienable rights, we will defend those rights! We will defend one another, and we refuse to let fear divide us.” Hernández said that “education workers know that no child can learn while living under fear that a parent or family member may disappear.” 

MTEA has established know-your-rights, ICE verifier and legal observer trainings while also organizing “school defense teams, marches, and rallies such as this one,” Hernández said, adding, “together we are building a community that protects its own.”

In temperatures rising to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the protesters marched through the surrounding neighborhood before returning to the park. Suárez was among those at the front, holding a banner that said “stop scapegoating immigrants.”

MPD and Milwaukee County Sheriff vehicles kept a close eye on the protest while also helping block off traffic. A drone shadowed the crowd from a distance. All along the protest route, people came out of their homes to cheer the marchers on. One restaurant worker rushed outside to hand out free drinks, and a woman in the neighborhood wept and thanked the marchers. 

The ICE surge has been distressing for local officials and ordinary residents alike. Milwaukee Ald. Marina Dimitrijevic and County Supervisor Juan Miguel Martinez expressed their concerns earlier this week, asking residents to document what they see while elected officials try to work out legal or legislative solutions. Although the city passed an “ICE Out” package, which included a prohibition on ICE using city property and wearing masks, the agents are openly defying those ordinances, and DHS has said that federal law overrules state and local regulations. Martinez said that residents should document ICE sightings, such as staging in county parks, so that local governments can file lawsuits.

The Fraternal Order of Police in Milwaukee criticized the city’s ICE Out package, calling it divisive and irresponsible. A representative from the order told WISN Channel 12 News that agents hide their faces to protect their families and their personal lives. 

U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore denounced the reports of ICE activity in Milwaukee. “Their reckless tactics are terrorizing families and inflicting real harm on our residents, especially across the South Side,” Moore said in a statement. “ICE is operating like a rogue agency and its abuses make clear that serious reforms are long overdue. This is exactly why I refused to give this out-of-control agency one more penny.” Moore added that people “should know they are entitled to due process in our country. Every person has rights, no matter their status.”

ICE arrests are also occurring  outside of Milwaukee. Centro Dane County, a local immigrant outreach group, posted a warning to Facebook Tuesday that seven arrests had occurred in the Madison area. “Do not open the door unless ICE presents a judicial warrant signed by a judge,” the post advised. 

In late June, Diana Socha Torres was arrested by ICE along with her 8-year-old son at their home in the Wisconsin Dells. Socha Torres and her son were taken to an ICE office in downtown Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported and then were transferred to the South Texas Residential Detention Center in Dilley, Texas. Socha Torres had an active asylum case and wore an ICE ankle monitor, and does not have any criminal charges or convictions in Wisconsin.

Socha Torres’ partner of 20 years told reporters that they feel desperate after her arrest. 

Attorney Marc Christopher, who represents Socha Torres, has filed a motion to have her deportation order reconsidered. She has a credible fear of violence, he said, and has carefully followed the rules while seeking asylum. The reason for her arrest was a missed hearing, but she was unaware her hearing had been rescheduled, Christopher said, adding that it was a frequent occurrence as immigration hearings have been rapidly rescheduled recently and many immigrant clients say they were caught unaware.

The Texas detention center where Socha Torres and her 8-year-old son are being held has been cited by Amnesty International for inhumane conditions, including lack of medical care, food and water.  

A DHS spokesperson said in a statement earlier this week that “being in detention is a choice.” The agency has not responded to a request for updated arrest numbers. 

People can call 1-800-427-0213 to report ICE detentions or credible sightings, Centro Dane County posted.

A final agreement has been reached to release the remaining beagles housed at the Ridglan Farms dog breeding and research facility in Dane County, finding them medical treatment and new homes. Animal welfare groups praised the settlement. 

Dr. Alka Chandna, vice president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), called the news “a milestone” which reflects years of “relentless pressure” from people “who refuse to accept a system that breeds dogs and other animals only to confine, mutilate, poison, and kill them in laboratories.”

Ridglan Farms operated for decades, accumulating a long list of complaints from concerned citizens. The facility both breeds beagles which are sold to labs for animal testing and maintains its own research branch. Animal rights groups have spent years bringing attention to what they described as deplorable living conditions for the dogs as well as painful medical procedures without anesthesia. 

Last year, prosecutors found that Ridglan Farms had violated state animal cruelty laws and ordered the facility to shut down its breeding operation. Animal rights groups, fearing that Ridglan would euthanize the dogs if it couldn’t sell them off, stormed the facility earlier this year, breaking into the farm and carrying off  some of the more than 2,000 beagles housed there. A larger group numbering hundreds of people arrived for a second rescue attempt, but was  confronted by local law enforcement using tear gas and rubber bullets. In the aftermath of the raid, the participants were described as violent burglars by Ridglan Farms and Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett. 

Four activists, including lead organizer Wayne Hsiung, were charged with felony burglary, and Ridglan Farms was cited for filling a trench around the facility with manure to deter the crowd, creating  an environmental hazard. As the activists prepared for court proceedings, animal welfare groups worked out a deal to purchase 1,500 of the dogs to find them new homes and medical treatment. 

The remaining dogs were included in the latest agreement to shut down the farm. In a statement, Ridglan Farms said the dogs were sold to Big Dog Ranch, with the remaining dogs to be re-housed by the end of August. The farm called the dogs “happy, healthy animals,” despite reports of sores and other medical and behavioral issues among the rescued beagles. Ridglan highlights that it passed federal regulatory inspections. “Now that transfer plans have been finalized for the rest of Ridglan Farms’ dogs, we ask that the years-long harassment campaign targeting the research facility’s owners, staff, and neighbors comes to an end,” the facility said in a statement. “We also hope Wisconsin’s legal system will hold accountable the individuals who organized and carried out the repeated violent assaults and thefts that have recently taken place at our facility.”

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This article was produced by the nonprofit journalism publication Bolts, which covers the nuts and bolts of power and political change, from the local up.

The Dane County Sheriff’s Office will stop using dozens of AI surveillance cameras posted up across Madison and surrounding towns, after the county Board of Supervisors pulled funding from a contract with Flock Safety, the latest setback in this state for the Atlanta-based tech company.

Flock has swiftly grown a sprawling, nationwide network of cameras that photograph passing cars and use AI to track their movements with precision, with thousands of law enforcement agencies installing Flock cameras in exchange for access to the company’s database. But many local governments are now breaking off their agreements with Flock after numerous instances where the cameras were misused and breached, or where the data they collected ended up in ICE’s hands. 

Within Dane County, the cascade started when the city of Verona pulled its three automated license plate readers from the Flock network in November, after police officers elsewhere in the country accessed Verona’s cameras on behalf of immigration agents. Bolts previously reported that Flock ignored demands by Verona officials to take down the cameras for months after they ended the contract, and the city eventually covered the surveillance cameras with black plastic bags to protect residents’ privacy. Verona Mayor Luke Diaz told Bolts at the time that the county government’s contract with Flock was “the next big domino” to fall in Wisconsin.

Verona’s representative on the Dane County Board, Supervisor Chad Kemp, then proposed defunding the sheriff’s agreement with Flock, and the board voted 32-1 in April to strip $80,000 from the budget allocated to paying for the cameras. Sheriff Kalvin Barrett’s office confirmed to Bolts via email on April 30 that he will abide by the board’s wishes and cease using Flock. 

Other Wisconsin cities have dropped their Flock contracts since Dane County’s vote, including Monona, a suburb of Madison, and Oshkosh, in Winnebago County, where the police chief not just ended the contract but also covered cameras in plastic bags after Flock allegedly misrepresented how its data was used.

Diaz is heartened by this ongoing domino effect that’s rocking Wisconsin. “If police chiefs are bailing on it, that really shows momentum,” he said in a follow-up interview this month. “I feel like, at least politically, it is a sign that we’re winning.”

“It really shows that local activists can make a really big difference,” he said. “Small communities can be laboratories of democracy, and we can stand up to be an example for other communities.”

Now privacy activists are pushing to remove Wisconsin’s remaining Flock cameras, including those operated by the Milwaukee Police Department and by the University of Wisconsin-Madison police.

But beyond targeting any specific Flock contract, they’re also pressuring local officials across the state to set proactive guardrails around AI surveillance technologies. 

They hope to stop law enforcement agencies from responding to their wins against Flock by just turning to Flock’s competitors to install similar systems of automated license plate readers (ALPRs).

A spokesperson for the Dane County Sheriff’s Office told Bolts that the office is already exploring other vendors to replace Flock.

Law enforcement agencies often deploy invasive technologies like ALPRs without notifying the people being spied on and without approval from elected officials, said Jon McCray-Jones, a policy analyst with the ACLU of Wisconsin. He warns that, without robust protections limiting what police can do, residents will be “playing a game of Whack-A-Mole with surveillance companies” as police seek lesser-known companies like Motorola.

“We’re starting to miss the forest for the trees, where the conversation has been about how bad Flock is,” McCray-Jones told Bolts. “Sure, the headline changes with a slightly better company. But the innate issues around ALPRs don’t. You still have similar cameras, similar databases, similar mass, warrantless tracking. You just have a different logo on the contract.”

The Dane County sheriff was able to install the Flock system initially without getting approval from the board since it was paid for by a $68,750 grant funded by a separate surveillance company, Axon Enterprise. Axon used to have a partnership with Flock but has since severed it. The sheriff’s spokesperson ruled out seeking outside funding again.

Jade, a Madison resident and privacy advocate who created Deflock Dane, a project that maps the cameras that watch over the area, warns that a new technology could just as easily be installed to replace the Flock cameras without any public input. (Jade agreed to talk using only their first name for privacy concerns.)

“Some regulation has to be put in place,” Jade said. “Reacting to whatever secretive contract is signed in the future might work, but it is not ideal to have a revolving door of surveillance companies.”

In the absence of state restrictions, the ACLU of Wisconsin is advocating for local governments to adopt ordinances that give elected officials oversight over police surveillance. A model policy endorsed by the ACLU called Community Control Over Police Surveillance, or CCOPS, would require law enforcement to get approval from a city council or county commission before using new surveillance tools, as well as develop use policies and provide annual reports on them. 

According to the ACLU, 26 jurisdictions nationwide already have a CCOPS ordinance in place, but the city of Madison is the only one in Wisconsin. (Madison police currently have no ALPR contract.) Dane County has no such ordinance, which gives the sheriff a lot more discretion. 

Supporters say CCOPS ordinances allow cities to better vet the vendors that are hired, while also allowing residents to weigh in on what level of surveillance and risk they are willing to accept before the technology is used on them. McCray-Jones says elected officials can make informed decisions “instead of having to look into these technologies on their own and after the fact, in the aftermath when the damage is already done.”

But efforts to curtail AI surveillance in this way are hitting a wall in Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s most populous city, which became a cautionary tale for Flock when a police officer repeatedly used the cameras to stalk a romantic partner. The police chief quickly revoked most officers’ access but the city is continuing to use Flock cameras at this time. 

In March, four members of the common council wrote a letter calling on the city to adopt a CCOPS policy. They also demanded other checks on surveillance, such as a requirement for officers to list a case number to justify searching the network, routine civilian hearings and independent audits, and a ban on ALPRs being used for immigration.

Even as they push for stronger oversight, though, a 2023 state law known as Act 12 has sharply limited Milwaukee’s ability to regulate police surveillance. 

Though primarily a tax bill aimed at stabilizing pension debts, Act 12 forced Milwaukee to abandon civilian oversight in exchange for the funds. It stripped the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission of its oversight authority, gave the police chief broad control over department policy and restricted the city council’s ability to set new rules. 

Until then, the commission had offered a relatively strong model of civilian control, like when it banned officers from using chokeholds and no-knock warrants, putting it in the crosshairs of the local police union. Act 12 made it into a “rubber stamp” for the police.

Several council members told Bolts that Act 12 also interferes with their ability to forbid the Milwaukee Police Department from using Flock cameras, enact a CCOPS policy or set standards for how the city uses surveillance technology. 

“We cannot propose that law here,” said Ald. Alex Brower, who cosigned the letter endorsing CCOPS. “It was extremely frustrating to find that out. There is less democratic control than there should be.”

Another council member who signed the letter, Sharlen Moore, echoed Brower’s concern, saying, “We do not have a lot of power and say-so around how they spend their budget.” 

Moore and Brower are hopeful that the state could eventually restore some level of outside control over Milwaukee police; voters this fall are electing a new governor and Legislature, and Democrats hope to win control of the state government for the first time since 2010. But until the state takes action, the council members say they’ll have to rely on the police to voluntarily restrict their use of surveillance. 

Local activists were able to convince Milwaukee police leadership to ban facial recognition technology this year after a massive show of opposition by residents at a public meeting in February.

Brower told Bolts, “The police chief would not have banned facial recognition technology on his own if it hadn’t been for the groundswell of regular people.”

Now he hopes for a similar public outcry against ALPRs and other AI surveillance. Echoing the Madison-based advocates who say they’ll keep fighting contracts in Dane County, he said, “We need an active and engaged and organized population that is fighting for their liberties.”

Foes of AI surveillance get wins in Wisconsin. But they fear they’re playing Whack-A-Mole. 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.