Among the proposals that died when the Wisconsin Legislature wrapped up its regular session work in March were efforts to help homeless youth get medical care, among other support services. Advocates said at a briefing Wednesday that they will keep pushing for the changes in the next session.

Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara (R-Fox Crossing) and members of the Wisconsin Association for Homeless and Runaway Services (WAHRS) held a press conference in the state Capitol to call attention to the issue. 

Joli Guenther, the WAHRS executive director, said that expanding outreach and easy access to resources and support is important for helping homeless youth, adding that youth homelessness is different from adult homelessness. She said WAHRS was started in 1982 to raise awareness and provide for the needs of young people.

“We don’t necessarily see young people visibly on the street. They tend to disappear,” Guenther said. “Often when they find informal resources that allow them to find temporary shelter, so even when their families are not able to provide for their needs, we don’t necessarily see them and meet the needs that are there.”

A 2025 Wisconsin Policy Forum report found that student homelessness hit an all-time high after the COVID-19 pandemic. According to DPI data, there were 20,195 students in Wisconsin public schools who identified as homeless during the 2023-24 school year. That marked a 9.1% increase over the previous year even as the number of enrolled students declined by 1.1% that year.

Guenther said that unaccompanied youth tend to be under-identified in her experience. In 2021, during the pandemic, the number of homeless students recorded by DPI hit a low of 13,449. She said this was partially due to fewer students going to schools.

“My hope for today in having this discussion as we reach the end of the legislative session is that maybe we can start to present a package to help people to understand the needs better,’ Guenther said. “If we have this package of interrelated bills related to the needs of unaccompanied homeless young people… maybe people will get it. Maybe people will understand that we don’t see this population but at the end of the day we’re not meeting the needs of our children.” 

Guenther highlighted previous successes, including the passage of 2019 Wisconsin Act 22, which allowed 17-year-old unaccompanied minors to consent to shelter.

“That has been very, very successful in opening up some of our limited resources and removing young people from the immediate dangers of the street,” Guenther said. “We know that if we don’t have ways of better providing for their needs, there are definitely those out there who will do so, and young people will become vulnerable to crime and exploitation as a result of that.” 

However, advocates said, there is still work to be done.

Tim Baack, President and CEO of Pathfinders, said Wisconsin has been falling short for years when it comes to dedicating state funds to address youth homelessness. Pathfinders is a Milwaukee-based organization that provides emergency housing and support for homeless youth. 

“We pale in comparison to the states that surround Wisconsin in our region, and we know we can do better,” Baack said. Focusing on “legal policies and legislation” is necessary, he added, but “what accompanies that is the resources.”

Gov. Tony Evers proposed $10.5 million to expand independent living services for youth who are aging out of the out-of-home care system and a $7.4 million increase in funding for programs that serve runaway and homeless youth in the 2025-27 state budget. However, the proposals were not included in the bill that passed the Legislature. 

“We hope the Legislature will continue to give serious consideration for those recommendations either when the next biennial budget is considered or looking for alternative ways to support the governor and his team to support the runaway youth service providers across the state,” Baack said. 

When policymakers return in January 2027, there will be a new governor and the makeup of the Legislature could look quite different. Many Republican lawmakers are retiring, including both top leaders, and Democratic lawmakers hope to win control of the Senate and Assembly.

Advocates highlighted four failed bills this session that they want to see brought back in the next session. 

SB 70 would have allowed unaccompanied minors age 14 or older to get medically necessary care without a parent or guardian’s permission if they aren’t under the supervision of a public welfare agency or the Department of Corrections. It received a public hearing in the state Senate this session but did not advance further.

Katie Van Groll, the Home Base director for the Boys & Girls Club of the Fox Valley, said many homeless youth are navigating unstable and unpredictable situations that can make it difficult to access medical care.

“Some youth have left unsafe environments that can involve abuse and neglect. Others could be couch-surfing, staying with a relative or a friend and a shelter or a host home,” Van Groll said. “Requiring parental consent assumes access to that adult, which is often not the reality for these young people. When youth can’t consent to the care that they need, they may delay or avoid seeking medical attention altogether, and then minor health concerns escalate to serious conditions and preventable issues.”

Van Groll noted medically necessary care is not referring to elective procedures, but rather to addressing illnesses and chronic conditions, including asthma, diabetes and immune disorders. She said a lack of access to care can increase emergency room use, long-term health complications and lead to increased public assistance costs.

Van Groll said her organization serves about 70 to 80 youths one-on-one each year and between 2,000 and 4,000 each year in prevention and awareness including providing information at schools.

“Not a single one of those youth is able to access the medical health care,” Van Groll said. “And one thing that we can’t ever speak with them about [in school] is the medical care because they can’t access it, and we don’t want to create more frustration.” 

Cabral-Guevara, who coauthored the bill, said she could not speak for her colleagues, but she thinks a lack of understanding and knowledge of the legislation was partially to blame for the failure this session. She said there was not enough support from within her caucus to get it over the finish line in part because some members did not understand what constituted “medically necessary.” 

“That legislation is common-sense legislation for me, but what we find is there’s a lot of individuals within this building that don’t do health care,” Cabral-Guevara told the Examiner. “I would like to bring it back again, and I feel that with more education, I think people would be more apt to support this because it is just basic fundamentals.” 

The other bills highlighted during the briefing include: 

• AB 1196, introduced by Democratic lawmakers including Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee), would have allowed respite care providers who offer emergency services for foster parents to provide housing or services to a child runaway. The current places allowed to provide housing include licensed foster homes, group homes and shelters. 

• AB 1233 would have extended the amount of time before a foster home, group home or shelter must inform child welfare services that they have a minor in their care from 12 hours, as is currently required, to 72 hours. It was introduced by Rep. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire) and other Democrats. 
• SB 73, coauthored by Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp), would have prevented minors from being prosecuted or adjudicated delinquent for committing an act of prostitution. The bill did not receive a public hearing this legislative session. 

“Some of these solutions don’t cost us anything,” Guenther said, “but they remove barriers that make all of the difference in young people’s lives.”

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Wisconsin Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp) is dropping his challenge to Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) — making him the fifth Senate Republican to announce his retirement from office.

James had initially announced that he would be running for reelection in October in Senate District 31, which is currently represented by Smith, saying that he would be coming “home.” James and Smith were drawn into the same district under the legislative maps adopted in 2024, and James moved to continue to represent Senate District 23.

James’ retirement announcement comes after his daughter was charged with stealing funds from his campaign. He turned in his daughter to police in 2024, after discovering that, while  working as his campaign treasurer, she withdrew $32,000 from the campaign account over the year without authorization. She had withdrawn the funds to help with her small business.

James, who was first elected to the Senate in 2022, said in a statement that it has been the “opportunity of a lifetime” to serve in the Legislature, but “this role came at a price, a price of being away from my family.”

“For this reason, and for other personal reasons I have decided to retire from the Wisconsin State Senate,” he said.

James’ departure from the race means Republicans are losing the advantage that comes with having an incumbent candidate in yet another key state Senate district.

Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield) and Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) have both announced their retirements, and Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) is the only incumbent Republican running for reelection in one of the four Senate Districts that Democrats are targeting as a part of their plan to win a majority.

Senate District 31 includes the entirety of Eau Claire County and parts of Dunn, Trempealeau and Chippewa counties. It’s one of 17 odd-numbered districts that will be up for election for the first time under new maps.

Other Republicans not running for reelection include Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) and Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater).

According to a Democratic Party of Wisconsin analysis, Senate District 31 voted in April this year for Justice-elect Chris Taylor, who was backed by the party, by 30 percentage points.

According to an analysis by John Johnson, a research fellow at Marquette University, the current 31st Senate district leaned Democratic in the 2024 presidential election by 2.2 percentage points and went Democratic by 4.7 percentage points in the 2024 Senate race. 

Devin Remiker, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said in a statement that Republicans “know that they’re in big trouble without rigged maps designed to protect them from the outrage voters have about rising prices and the disastrous Trump administration.”

“With last week’s blowout victory, the likes of which this state has not seen for over a decade, we will double down to ensure we can deliver real change for working people in November,” Remiker said. “For the Republicans who are staring down the most competitive elections of their lifetimes, with their leaders and colleagues continuing to flee the sinking MAGA ship, I would urge you to join them in retirement before the wave hits this November.”

Another Assembly Republican declines to run 

Rep. Scott Allen (R-Waukesha) also announced his intentions to not run for reelection on Tuesday, saying he would be taking a “sabbatical” from elected office. Allen lost his bid for the office of mayor of Waukesha last week to Alicia Halvensleben, a Democrat. 

“We are blessed with living in the greatest country of all time. Service is the rent that we pay for such privilege,” Allen, one of the most right-wing members of the Assembly, said in a statement. “Protecting our freedoms and opportunities takes work and when we begin to take them for granted, we run the risk of losing them.”

His campaign statement noted that “this action by Rep. Allen may be the only thing that he has ever done that will thrill liberals.”

Allen joins six other Assembly Republicans, including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), in not running for reelection.

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Wisconsin will officially allow DACA status holders to obtain an occupational license under a bill Gov. Tony Evers signed into law last week. 

AB 759, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 240, allows DACA status holders to apply for and obtain professional credentials from the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS).

Evers said in a statement that it was the right thing to do to help “Dreamers… pursue their higher education and career goals to give back to the communities that raised them” and to help the Wisconsin economy by ensuring “smart, talented and capable people can join our workforce in high-need areas.” He signed the bill while surrounded by advocates at the Nuevo Mercado El Rey in Milwaukee.

“Here in Wisconsin — whether it’s restrictions on obtaining a driver’s license to operate a vehicle or certain work-related credentials — unnecessary barriers are holding hard-working people, as well as our workforce, economy, and communities, back,” Evers said in a statement. “Immigrants play a critical role in our economy and our communities in every corner of our state — and they have for generations. In Wisconsin, we’ve always believed that if you work hard, obey the law, pay taxes, and play by the rules just like everyone else, you should have a fair shot at pursuing the American Dream, including having the opportunity to join our professional workforce.” 

The bill made it through Wisconsin’s Republican-led Legislature and to Evers at a time when the federal government has been cracking down on immigrants, detaining more than 260 DACA recipients and deporting more than 80. 

Proponents of the legislation got it over the finish line using the tag line, “This is not an immigration issue; this is a workforce issue.”

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), adopted in 2012 under President Barack Obama, provides temporary protection from deportation and work authorization to certain undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. The program does not provide recipients with legal status, a path to permanent residency or citizenship. 

According to a September 2025 report by the Migration Policy Institute, there are about 505,000 active DACA recipients from close to 200 different countries of birth in the U.S, about 5,100 of whom reside in Wisconsin.

DSPS issues thousands of licenses for more than 200 types of jobs in the health, business trades and other fields each year in Wisconsin. Nurses, real estate agents, cosmetologists, plumbers, dentists and emergency medical technicians all receive licenses through DSPS.

Without the change in state law, DACA recipients have been ineligible to apply, limiting the types of jobs they can do in Wisconsin. 

Under the law, workers will still be required to have a valid, unexpired employment authorization document issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and as long as the federal work authorization is renewed, their Wisconsin credentials may continue to be renewed. 

Under the law, the bill will only apply to DACA recipients under the original DACA program. President Donald Trump rescinded the DACA program in September 2017. The provision in the state law means that should DACA be reopened to new applicants, they would not be eligible for occupational licenses.

Erika Colón, who has been a nurse for more than 30 years, told the Examiner that the legislation could help relieve the nursing shortages in Wisconsin. Colón, who spoke to the Examiner in her personal capacity, is the president of the Milwaukee Chapter of the Hispanic Nurses Association. 

“I’ve never worked in a hospital where we were fully staffed, and it wasn’t because the hospitals didn’t want to hire. It’s just that the people didn’t exist,” Colón said. 

According to a 2024 Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD) report, the state faces a projected deficit of 12,000 to 19,000 registered nurses by 2040.

In her work with the Hispanic Nursing Association, Colón said that she has met students pursuing nursing who were DACA holders, but had to relocate out of the state to practice. She noted that the shortage issue is a nationwide trend. 

“In the big picture, it does help that they became nurses, and they’re helping other states, but they’re from here. They lived here many years. Their families are here. Their roots are here, and essentially we need them here,” Colón said. “We have so many job openings to fill that people could be filling easily, and unfortunately, because of the licensure barriers, they have to pick up everything and move out.”

Advocates worked hard to push through the new policy allowing DACA recipients to work in Wisconsin, instead of moving and taking their skills to other states.

A bill allowing DACA recipients to get occupational licenses was first proposed in 2023 by former Rep. John Macco, a Republican from Brown County. He worked on a package of bills, including one to allow DACA recipients to become police officers and one to allow DACA recipients to be eligible for in-state tuition at Wisconsin’s universities, with Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez (D-Milwaukee). He had heard from local law enforcement in Green Bay that one of their employees was not eligible to become a police officer due to his status. The bills did not advance that session and Macco opted not to run for reelection in 2024. 

“For me, it was a jobs bill,” Macco told the Examiner in an interview. “We are graduating nurses… They went to grade school here, high school here, college here, and then they have to leave the state of Wisconsin to get a license and to sit for their nursing boards and practice somewhere else. It’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever seen. They can’t even be a barber in the state of Wisconsin.”

This session, Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay) signed on as lead coauthor this session alongside Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp) and Ortiz-Velez. The lawmakers intentionally decided to focus their efforts on just the occupational license bill.

Ortiz-Velez told the Examiner that getting the bill done was a team effort. She said the recent national environment surrounding immigration was in the background as lawmakers and advocates worked on the bill. 

“People have such negative images, and they automatically assume that this is gonna promote illegal immigration and where they don’t understand is this is a finite group of people,” Ortiz-Velez said. “It took a lot of us explaining and educating people and being very precise in the messaging that we were using to make sure that people understood. This is not an immigration bill.”

There were obstacles to getting committee hearings. Rep. Shae Sortwell (R-Two Rivers), the chair of the Assembly committee where the bill got a hearing, is a staunch supporter of Trump’s immigration agenda. He ended up speaking in favor of and voting for the bill, but some Republicans who share his views on immigration were opposed to the measure from the beginning. When it came to the final floor session, the bill was not initially listed on either the Assembly or Senate’s calendars.

Ortiz-Velez said it was helpful to keep the conversation focused on Wisconsin, rather than federal immigration policy.

“As a state, we have to put Wisconsin first, and regardless of what’s going on at the federal level, we have job openings that we have, and we have people that are qualified… I think for Republicans that was important to them — the idea of losing workforce,” Ortiz-Velez said. 

Ortiz-Velez said it was unclear during the Assembly’s last week in session whether the bill would get a vote. But in the end, Republicans and Democrats spoke in favor of the bill and it passed in a bipartisan voice vote.

Macco remained involved in the effort to get the legislation over the finish line including in the Senate. 

“My point to the Legislature was, look, conservative Republicans can walk and chew gum at the same time,” Macco told the Examiner in an interview. “We can both be against illegal immigration and breaking the laws and criminals coming into our country at the same time, we want to make a path for citizenship to all of those DACA recipients, and Congress needs to do that.” 

Macco testified at the committee hearing on the bill. He also made calls to his former Republican colleagues.

“I called a bunch of them. I remember calling [Senate President] Mary [Felzkowski] and she called me back,” Macco said. “I had that conversation with her on how this is so important while I was riding on a ski lift… My request to her was, would you be willing to waive the 17 rule or go to a voice vote.” 

The “rule of 17” is an informal rule sometimes invoked by Republicans in the state Senate, who have insisted that only bills that have the support of the majority of the Republican caucus should be allowed to come up for a vote. This informal rule has stymied bipartisan efforts that could have passed with votes from members of both parties. With an 18-15 Republican majority, any two Republican senators can block a bill from getting a floor vote under the “rule of 17.” 

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg), who is retiring at the end of his term, broke the rule to pass a handful of bills during the Senate’s final floor session this year.

On the last day of the Senate floor session, the DACA licensing bill was still not on the calendar. Ortiz-Velez said that was a purposeful maneuver to avoid any amendments on the bill that could have killed it.

The bill passed in the Senate 31-2. The only opposing votes came from Sens. Andre Jacque (R-New Franken) and Steve Nass (R-Whitewater). 

After the vote, Sen. Tim Carpenter (D-Milwaukee) said in a statement that it was a “great accomplishment” for the state.

“Dreamers came to our nation as children, brought by their parents because America has long held itself to be the land of opportunity,” Carpenter said. “That is the same reason that many proud Americans live freely in our great nation today, because our ancestors once had that same dream of building a better life for their children.”

Colón said her members wrote to lawmakers and Evers as a part of their advocacy efforts and worked to educate and win support of people who wouldn’t be directly affected. Before they heard about the bill, she said, “a lot of people didn’t know that DACA recipients could not obtain the license.” 

“We need this. Licensed professionals are highly needed in the state. It’s not like they’re taking other people’s jobs,” Colón said. 

Colón said she knew of at least two nurses who would be able to move back from Illinois. 

“This will be able to bring two people back to the workforce here and to care for our communities that greatly need it,” Colón said.

Ortiz-Velez said she is hopeful the success of the law could open the door to additional legislation for DACA recipients. She said in-state tuition is one of her top priorities. She said she also hopes that working with others on these issues could also “reinvigorate” a conversation about a path to citizenship for DACA recipients, so that “they can be fully members of our society.”

Macco said that he would like to see the state take more action to address the barriers that DACA recipients face, however, he also called them “Band Aid approaches.”

Macco said he wants to see the federal government allow DACA recipients to apply for a green card. He said that he plans to speak with Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and Rep. Tony Wied about the issue. 

“[It] doesn’t mean they’re going to get it. It just allows them to apply, and so if [the federal government] would just simply do that, to me, I think that’s a win,” Macco said.

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