It’s tempting to begin a story about Emily Sterk with an anecdote about her advocacy around mass incarceration.
Or with her reflections on how her privilege plays into that work. Or with an exploration of how her religious faith intertwines with her concern for those caught up in the criminal justice system.
But she also loves musicals – and is a little embarrassed to admit how much she enjoys “Wicked.” She has a beloved tortoiseshell cat named Stevie and is fond of puzzles.
Having said all that, people are starting to notice how good she is at what she does, said Krissie Fung, associate director of Milwaukee Turners, the state’s oldest civic organization, where Sterk is completing a fellowship.
“People have heard her speak in public, and folks are beginning to look to her opinion,” Fung said.
This ability to gain trust within criminal justice reform circles is especially valuable as the organization grows, said Emilio De Torre, executive director of Turners.
“Having someone who can help us build stronger networks, have an informed leader in these different rooms – it expands our ability to educate others who don’t understand this and to empower people who are impacted but unsure of what to do,” De Torre said.
From the academy
During her final year of graduate school at Pennsylvania State University, Sterk – in her spare time – taught in two correctional institutions.
“That was one of the first times I felt like, ‘Oh, well, I should be doing something about this,’” she said.
Sterk arrived in Milwaukee last fall as a Leading Edge Fellow with the American Council of Learned Societies, a national program that places Ph.D. graduates at justice-focused nonprofits.
At Turners, she conducts research, participates in advocacy and develops policy ideas geared toward confronting mass incarceration.
‘Watching the watchers’
One area Sterk has focused on is civilian oversight of law enforcement.
At an April 15 meeting of the Milwaukee County Board’s Judiciary, Law Enforcement and General Services Committee, Sterk testified in support of a civilian board that would oversee the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office.
She told committee members that, in order to be effective and independent, such a board must have the authority to hire and fire law enforcement officers – including the sheriff – and have policymaking authority.
Sterk pointed to a 2024 audit of the county jail that, she said, “unearthed deeply troubling policies, practices and procedures that have long since been ingrained in the facility and its staff.”
She highlighted an instance in which an officer accused of misconduct was assigned to respond to the grievance filed against them.
With emotion in her voice, Sterk reminded supervisors that the audit devoted just three sentences to a suicide attempt that auditors personally witnessed during their visit.
Two weeks after this committee meeting, Sterk presented to the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission the findings of a six-month monitoring period of the commission’s activity – “watching the watchers,” as Fung put it.
The commission was significantly restructured in July 2023 after Wisconsin Act 12 stripped its ability to shape police policy, shifting that power to police and fire department chiefs.
However, Sterk is not hostile or self-righteous in her criticism. Care and sincerity are at the center of her approach – even for the offices and bodies she’s criticizing.
At the Fire and Police Commission presentation, multiple commissioners thanked the Turners and echoed the call to improve public engagement.
Currently, Sterk is fostering a collaboration on jail-based voting between the Turners and the League of Women Voters of Milwaukee County. Here, too, her thoughtfulness has left its mark.
“The first thing she talked to me about was educating people about having respect for people who are incarcerated,” said Gail Sklodowska, the second vice president of advocacy and action for the league. “Like how we refer to them, how we talk about them. And I went, ‘Wow, I never even thought of that as a place we should start.’
“But she’s right.”
This combination of rigor, respect and resolve is rooted in deeper values, said Carlos de la Torre, Sterk’s partner and a rector at a church in Chicago.
“Amidst the work of justice, of restoration, of reconciliation, of liberation,” he said, “Emily knows that there’s a place for beauty in all this.
“The point of all this work is to offer people access to a good life, to the beauty of this world, to be free in creation.”
Sterk’s fellowship ends September 2026, but she is open to staying in Milwaukee after that – and so are others.
“I would love for us – and for Milwaukee – to keep her,” Fung said.
This story was produced in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Investigative Journalism class taught in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Editor’s note: A UW-Madison police officer is under investigation after a student journalist presented allegations the officer engaged in unsolicited text communications with students and offered to help students avoid underage drinking tickets.
Wisconsin Watch is not naming the officer because he hasn’t been formally disciplined or accused of a crime. The allegations in the following story are based on interviews with 11 students who all spoke on the condition of anonymity, partly for fear of retaliation, but also in order to discuss activities, such as underage drinking and possessing fake IDs, that could result in legal or disciplinary consequences.
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At last October’s bustling homecoming football game at Camp Randall, a University of Wisconsin-Madison police officer approached a sophomore who recognized him from a recent safety presentation he had given at her sorority.
The officer struck up a conversation with the sophomore and her friends, eventually asking Kate — whose name is a pseudonym — for her phone number.
“I don’t know why he needed my number in the first place,” Kate said. “Every time he would walk by us, he’d stop and talk to us — you know how they patrol the bleachers? — he was just always hanging out around us there.”
Minutes later the officer began texting Kate to ask if she and her friends wanted food from the concession stands. The group agreed.
“Free food!” Kate recalled thinking.
He texted again: “Hot chocolate next game (eyes emoji). If you’re nice,” according to text messages Kate shared from the officer.
A UW-Madison police officer sent this text message to a student while on duty at a Badgers football game. The student interpreted it as flirtatious and inappropriate for someone in a position of power.
After supplying the stadium snacks, the officer asked Kate to get coffee with him later that week.
Kate dodged the question, hoping to laugh it off and watch the game. But after the game ended, another text popped up at 11:47 p.m. that night asking if she had chosen her coffee spot yet.
Kate texted her sorority chapter president and asked, “What should I do if (the officer) asked me to get coffee?”
The sorority president texted back, “Just don’t respond.”
“I literally just never responded to that,” Kate said. “It got to the point where he was trying to go on dates … because I was nice to him, he took it too far and wanted to make it more.”
Camp Randall Stadium on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus is shown on June 4, 2025, in this photo illustration. One student said a campus police officer sought her phone number at a football game and eventually asked her on a coffee date. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch) Credit: Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch
Kate was not the only student to experience unprofessional interactions with the same officer.
Accounts from 11 students, all of whom are affiliated with UW-Madison Greek organizations, describe how the same officer instigated texting relationships, asked female sources on coffee dates, relayed confidential police information to assist students in underage drinking and took students for rides in his squad car without first having them sign a liability waiver. Two male students interviewed for this story described their interactions with the officer positively, but female students viewed the contacts as inappropriate.
The officer’s behavior has persisted for at least four years, but was never the subject of a formal complaint, according to the UW-Madison Police Department. None of the students alleged the officer made any physical advances, and none agreed to go on a date with him.
“The UW-Madison Police Department became aware of the officer misconduct allegations when asked by the author for a comment for this article,” Assistant Chief Kari Sasso said in a statement. “We will review and investigate these claims as appropriate. There have been no formal complaints from community members, students or others regarding this officer. We hold our officers to the highest standards and take all allegations of officer misconduct seriously. We are committed to transparency and accountability within legal and policy boundaries.”
A spokesperson for UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin confirmed that an internal investigation is underway at UWPD.
The officer didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Gaining trust at safety presentations
The UW-Madison police officer serves as a downtown liaison community officer for an area that includes Langdon Street, where many of the university’s sorority and fraternity houses are located.
Preliminary communication between the officer and students often began within the bounds of his job description. Student leaders reached out to set up semiannual safety presentations at their organizations, largely for students under the legal drinking age.
The presentations cover campus safety, medical amnesty and behavior-based policing and are discussions intended to help students feel informed and educated from a reputable police source.
While intended to detail the potential consequences of underage alcohol consumption — not encourage it — the officer’s presentations were peppered with advice for students on how to continue illegally drinking without getting caught, according to an audio recording of one presentation.
University of Wisconsin-Madison sorority houses along Langdon Street are shown on June 4, 2025, in this photo illustration. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
In one presentation the officer told students he would alert underage students ahead of time regarding pre-planned bar checks to help them avoid potential citations — a breach of confidential police information.
Bar checks, often called “raids” by students, serve to ensure bars aren’t serving students under the legal drinking age of 21. Police officers enter the premises while others block exits, requesting IDs from all patrons. Underage patrons in the bar face a fine of up to $1,250 for using a fake ID.
The student sources said over the last four years the officer shared confidential police information regarding bar checks with them over the phone, warning them in advance of the bars Madison police would be checking and the general timeline of the check.
One student in a leadership position also said he encouraged them to share the information with their personal contacts.
“It’s helpful to us, obviously — also kind of crazy that he goes behind the police station’s back,” Kate said.
The UW-Madison student who provided this text said she received it from a UW-Madison police officer at 11:47 p.m. the night of the football game where he was on duty.
In audio recorded as part of this investigation during one of the officer’s standard safety presentations this past school year, he told freshmen and sophomores, “I promise you I will always help you. If I’m ever involved in a bar check, it’s because I want to make sure that the city cops are actually treating you all with respect.”
“And every now and then I might hold whatever door I’m manning open for the three or four of you to leave without any real consequences — but don’t tell my boss that. I say that because I’ve actually done it,” he continued. “I don’t like bar checks. I hate the fact that you all are in the safest place to be consuming alcohol, rather than a basement or a house party or an apartment, and we’re jamming you all up by giving you tickets.”
The officer also examined the students’ fake IDs, checking if they are realistic enough to allow access at local bars. Kate was one of the students who offered her ID for inspection.
“That’s how it started,” Kate said. “He was basically like, ‘I owe you a coffee for volunteering.’”
Seth Stoughton, a University of South Carolina law professor and a nationally recognized policing expert, reviewed portions of the audio and said the UW-Madison officer’s presentation is not a standard police presentation on underage drinking.
“What those talks usually look like are how students can avoid breaking the law, how students can avoid trouble — not how students can break the law and not get in trouble for it,” Stoughton said.
Texting relationships with students
The officer only contacted students about bar check alerts over a phone call, multiple sources said.
“This would be the type of evidence that we use to establish knowledge of guilt; when he’s telling folks, ‘Oh no, I don’t want to put any of that in writing, I don’t want there to be a record of it,’” Stoughton said. “Well, that’s because you are aware that the record could be used against you in some way. So that seems problematic.”
A UW-Madison police officer offered to buy drinks for a group of students, including some he had met during a presentation at their sorority on campus safety.
After obtaining students’ cellphone numbers, the officer began reaching out to them outside of professional protocols: regularly checking in, calling and asking them to meet up.
For the nine female students interviewed for this story, his frequent check-ins quickly caused discomfort.
“When you’re in it, you think all these things are to help you, and then the further down in the year it got, when I was working with him specifically, I felt like I was putting myself in danger more than being protected,” said a former sorority executive member. “I didn’t want to work with him ever, and I also warned other people, like do not involve yourself. He’s not doing anything for us.”
Caroline, a pseudonym for a recently graduated senior at UW-Madison, felt similarly.
“I remember us being like, ‘Oh my god, he’s texting you now?’ He went through people, he was always texting different people,” Caroline said.
While females in leadership positions said he straddled the line between a professional and personal relationship, others who didn’t serve on executive boards or in organizational leadership, including Kate, are less certain about why he was texting them in the first place — saying there was no professional justification for his outreach.
“All of our texts are very playful and joke-y in what he was saying — it wasn’t like he was professional,” Kate said.
Offering rides without waivers
Some students and former students claimed that the officer offered them rides in his squad car.
One source took him up on that offer.
Allen, a recently graduated UW-Madison student also identified with a pseudonym, claimed he went for a drive with the officer in January 2023 when he was a sophomore.
“He picked me up in his car and we drove around for like 20 minutes. He asked me about myself. He really made an effort to establish a friendship and a relationship with me, which I really appreciated,” Allen said. “He was just a real beacon of guidance.”
Camp Randall Stadium is shown on June 4, 2025, in this photo illustration. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Records of ride-along waivers signed between Jan. 1, 2022, and Jan. 1, 2025, show only two people signed liability waivers for UW-Madison police ride-alongs over the past three years.
Allen’s name did not appear in any of the signed waivers. He also doesn’t recall signing a waiver.
“I feel like I would remember if I had to sign something,” he said.
Stoughton said it’s a liability issue, should a police officer choose to disregard mandatory waivers. Typically officers will alert dispatchers of a pickup and drop-off to ensure nothing inappropriate happens.
“There are procedures that are in place to help protect everyone’s interest: the police agencies, the individual officers and the community members,” Stoughton continued. “(It) sounds like he is just completely ignoring those standard protocols.”
Male students appreciative, female students uncomfortable
Three UW students, two males and one female, expressed gratitude for the officer’s help in keeping them out of police trouble, especially those who are under 21.
“I do think there is a very deep appreciation for him making himself as available as possible to everyone, in a plethora of different events and situations,” one fraternity leader said.
The UW-Madison student interpreted additional texts from the UW-Madison police officer as overly friendly and unprofessional.
Allen felt similarly. “I was very blown away by his willingness to not just be an administrator, but to be a friend. Not a parental figure — an adviser, but more than that, much more friendly than that,” he said. “We developed a personal friendship.”
But the female students mostly interpreted the officer’s behavior differently.
“His actions blurred the line between authority and familiarity, leaving students unsure of his true intentions,” the sorority leader said. “What I would’ve changed was his approach. Instead of trying to be our ‘friend’ and making us feel like we had an inside connection with campus law enforcement, he should have taken a more traditional and professional role.”
University policy W-5048 covers relationships between those in unequal levels of power, stating that a relationship between an employee and student is “not appropriate when they occur between an employee of the university and a student over whom the employee has or potentially will have supervisory, advisory, evaluative, or other authority or influence.”
Stoughton said there’s a line in policing, with making yourself available on one side, but affirmatively seeking out individuals in a nonorganizational capacity on the other.
“It doesn’t surprise me that the female students have a slightly different perspective than male students because male students may be — for several complicated reasons — just less cognizant of that power dynamic,” Stoughton said. “Female students may be much more aware of that power dynamic. It’s the officer’s job, though, to also be aware of it.”
If you have a complaint about the conduct of a UW-Madison Police Department officer, you can file a complaint online or call the department and speak with a supervisor, according to UW-Madison spokesperson John Lucas. The department typically requires a person’s name and doesn’t accept anonymous complaints.
This is an ongoing story. If you or someone you know has had similar encounters with a UWPD officer, please let us know at tips@wisconsinwatch.org.
Cuban asylum seeker Miguel Jerez Robles returned to family in McFarland on Thursday, a month after ICE agents arrested him following a routine immigration hearing in Miami.
His arrest was one of the first in a wave of courthouse arrests, which appear to be part of a new strategy by President Donald Trump’s administration to send many people who were in legal immigration processes on a fast-track to deportation. Jerez spent the next four weeks at an ICE detention center in Tacoma, Washington, uncertain what his future would hold.
Now, he is home.
“I still don’t believe it. I say it’s a miracle from God,” said Jerez, who got word he’d be released on his own recognizance just minutes before he was scheduled to request a bond before a judge.
Jerez still doesn’t know why he was arrested, or why he’s now been released. Andrew Billmann, a family friend, contacted Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin as soon as Jerez was detained. Jerez said he thinks that effort, along with news coverage about his detention, likely helped.
Miguel Jerez Robles hugs his sister Vivianne at Chicago O’Hare International Airport as his mother Celeste Robles Chacón (foreground) and wife Geraldine Cruz Dip look on. Jerez spent the last month at an immigration detention center in Tacoma, Washington. (Courtesy of Geraldine Cruz Dip)
He was released on Wednesday with just one other person, a fellow Cuban asylum seeker, though he says he met many other immigrants who came to the detention center in similar circumstances.
“They’d been living in the U.S. for three years. They had no criminal record. … Their cases were dismissed, and they were detained outside the courtroom,” Jerez said. “And they’re still detained.”
As he collected his clothes to leave the Northwest ICE Processing Center on Wednesday, an official told him just how unusual his situation was.
“He told me, ‘You’re very lucky because right now we’re not releasing anyone. Everyone who leaves here is going back to their country, or they’ve won an asylum case while detained, or they’ve gotten out on bond,’” Jerez said.
He agrees that he’s lucky. “There are a lot of people who don’t have the resources to pay for a lawyer. It’s very sad, what I saw inside there.”
Before his release, Jerez was connected with a local immigrant aid organization that brought him to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Billmann said.
“We booked a redeye for him, from (Seattle) to (Chicago),” Billmann wrote in a text message to the Cap Times and Wisconsin Watch Friday.
Billmann and his wife, Kathy, joined Jerez’s wife, sister and mother to pick him up at the airport Thursday morning.
Escape from Cuba
When Jerez crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in 2022, he turned himself in to Border Patrol agents and asked for asylum. He’d participated in protests against Cuba’s communist government in 2021 and had been targeted by the police and government ever since, his family said during his detention. Federal and international law requires the United States to allow people to apply for asylum if they fear persecution in their home countries based on their politics or identity.
At the time, Joe Biden was president and border agents routinely allowed asylum seekers to enter the country with temporary legal protections while their cases were pending in immigration court — a process that can take years due to court system backlogs.
Jerez hired a lawyer and followed the steps required by law. Then U.S. voters elected a new president who promised to carry out mass deportations. In January, Trump issued an executive order suspending legal protections for asylum seekers. In May, immigrant advocates say, judges began coordinating with ICE agents to dismiss asylum cases and detain asylum seekers in courthouses.
Jerez was detained in the first few days of that new strategy at courthouses, his attorney said. Jerez had flown to Miami with his wife and mother for the first hearing in his asylum case, usually just a bureaucratic step. Instead, at the request of the federal government’s attorney, the judge tossed his claim without explanation.
During the No Kings protest in McFarland, Andrew Billmann spreads the word about his friend, McFarland resident Miguel Jerez Robles, a Cuban asylum seeker who was detained by immigration officers outside his immigration hearing in Miami. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
Plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents met him outside the courtroom, arresting him and placing him in expedited removal proceedings, where immigrants can face immediate deportation unless they can show a “credible fear” of persecution in their home country for their politics or identity.
ICE gives no reason for release
Just like his arrest, Jerez’s release left his lawyers and family with questions.
Billmann said he received an email from Baldwin’s office informing them Jerez would be released Wednesday.
Ismael Labrador with the Miami-based Gallardo Law Firm, said Friday ICE gave the legal team no explanation for Jerez’s release.
“We didn’t get anything from the deportation officer regarding the reason why he got released. We just got the good news,” Labrador said, noting the legal team got the call on Wednesday.
The Department of Homeland Security claimed Jerez was taken into custody because he entered the U.S. “illegally.”
“Most aliens who illegally entered the United States within the past two years are subject to expedited removals,” the DHS wrote in an email Friday. “(Former President Joe) Biden ignored this legal fact and chose to release millions of illegal aliens, including violent criminals, into the country with a notice to appear before an immigration judge. ICE is now following the law and placing these illegal aliens, like Miguel Jerez Robles, in expedited removal.”
“(Homeland Security) Secretary Noem is reversing Biden’s catch and release policy that allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens to be let loose on American streets,” the DHS wrote in the email.
Jerez arrived in the U.S. more than two years ago and has no criminal record.
The department did not respond to follow up questions on why Jerez was released.
Baldwin played role behind the scenes
Baldwin confirmed Friday her office pushed for Jerez’s release.
“From day one, the Trump Administration has sought to divide our communities by attacking immigrants – from executive orders to new policies,” Baldwin wrote in an emailed statement.
The senator became involved after Billmann contacted her office in May.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin pushed for the release of asylum seeker Miguel Jerez Robles, who was arrested in an apparent Trump administration strategy to send many people who were in legal immigration processes on a fast-track to deportation. Baldwin is shown on Sept. 4, 2024, in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Her office contacted ICE, requesting information on the reason behind Jerez’s detention and the status of his case.
“After that they checked in with us from time to time,” Billmann wrote in a text message to the Cap Times and Wisconsin Watch. “(But) Wednesday was a total surprise.”
The senator’s office said it followed up multiple times with the ICE’s Seattle field office seeking more information on Jerez’s request for release. On June 24, ICE officials told Baldwin’s office they had no record of a request for release, at which point the senator’s office connected with Jerez’s legal team and re-sent the request to the Seattle office.
“I am glad to have been able to help Miguel reunite with his family and stand ready to continue to fight for Wisconsinites facing similar situations,” Baldwin’s statement said.
Billmann said he and his wife, Kathy, postponed a planned vacation this week after hearing Jerez was coming home.
“This was a better way to spend the (days),” Billmann said.
Future remains unclear
Despite the family’s joyous reunion, Jerez’s future remains shrouded in uncertainty.
Geraldine Cruz Dip and husband Miguel Jerez Robles sleep in the car on the drive from Chicago to McFarland Thursday morning after Jerez was released from immigration detention. (Courtesy of Geraldine Cruz Dip)
On June 12, while at the detention center in Tacoma, Jerez completed an interview to assess the validity of his fear of persecution in Cuba.
Jerez’s attorney said the law firm has not yet received the results and does not know when it will receive that information.
“We should have gotten that by now,” Labrador said.
Labrador said Friday he and other lawyers had appealed Jerez’s expedited removal as soon as he was arrested in May. If Jerez wins that appeal, they will file a second asylum request. If he loses that appeal, he may be forced to return to ICE custody.
For now, Jerez said, it looks like he may be back where he was before his month-long imprisonment. When he was released from detention on Wednesday, he was handed the same I-220A form he’d received when he crossed the U.S. border.
He and his wife, Geraldine Cruz Dip, said they’re glad for a fresh chance to make his asylum case “in freedom.”
Reading Time: 10minutesClick here to read highlights from the story
Last month, a McFarland man who arrived in the U.S. three years ago from Cuba attended what he thought would be the first hearing in his asylum case. Instead, in what appears to be a nationwide trend, a judge dismissed his case and ICE arrested him.
Miguel Jerez Robles was among the first people swept up in a recent wave of arrests inside immigration court buildings, a place considered off limits for such enforcement until the Trump administration loosened restrictions.
His story illustrates the volatility and randomness of the country’s immigration processes. While Jerez is now imprisoned in a Tacoma, Washington, detention center, his sister — who arrived in the U.S. just days later and was given different paperwork — has a green card.
Editor’s note:A day after this story was published Miguel Jerez Robles was released from an ICE detention center in Tacoma, Washington. Read an update here.
When McFarland resident Miguel Jerez Robles boarded a plane to Miami last month, he thought he’d be attending a routine immigration hearing about his asylum application and enjoying a rare vacation with his wife and mother.
The 26-year-old and his family had come to Wisconsin in 2022, fleeing political persecution from the Cuban government. They moved to the village just outside Madison, home to a friend his brother-in-law met while driving a taxi in Santiago de Cuba.
Jerez rented an apartment near the high school and got a job delivering packages all over southern Wisconsin, first for FedEx and later for an Amazon subcontractor. He and his wife started a popular YouTube channel, Cubanitos en la USA, where they shared videos about what it was like to work as a delivery driver, buy a car or shop for groceries in Wisconsin.
The Florida trip was Jerez’s first vacation since arriving. Jerez planned to go to the May 22 preliminary hearing in his asylum case, then take his family to the beach and explore the city.
Instead, immigration authorities arrested Jerez and sent him to a detention center, sweeping him up in what appears to be a coordinated strategy to fast-track deportations.
When Jerez appeared in the Miami courtroom, a federal attorney asked the judge to dismiss his asylum claim. According to Jerez’s family, the judge agreed without explanation, then wished him luck.
Jerez headed to meet his wife, Geraldine Cruz Dip, and his mother, Celeste Robles Chacón, who were waiting just outside the fifth-floor courtroom.
Miguel Jerez Robles and Geraldine Cruz Dip met while working at a Chinese restaurant in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba. They came to the United States seeking asylum in 2022 and married in Fitchburg in 2023. (Photo courtesy of the couple)
Plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were waiting too. They handcuffed and arrested him before he could reach his family, his mother said.
Three days later, Jerez was shackled and flown to a detention center in Tacoma, Washington, through a process called expedited removal, which allows the government to deport certain immigrants without first hearing their cases in court.
His wife and mother returned home to McFarland alone.
“The vacation turned into a nightmare,” Cruz said. “Everything fell apart in a moment.”
Jerez was among the first people swept up in a recent wave of arrests inside immigration court buildings, a place considered off limits for such enforcement until the Trump administration loosened restrictions earlier this year. Some, like Jerez, report judges unexpectedly dismissing their cases in what some immigrants and attorneys believe is a coordinated effort to quickly detain large numbers of people as soon as they lose legal immigration status — including those who, like Jerez, have no criminal history.
“It’s easier to go to a courthouse and pick up everyone there than go searching for them at home,” Cruz said.
These arrests, which appear to have begun in late May, are part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown, some of which he promised on the campaign trail. The scale and methods reach far beyond what many expected from an administration that has vowed to prioritize removing people who threaten public safety. Recent ICE raids at schools and other sensitive locations have sparked multi-day protests in Los Angeles and other major cities.
For asylum seekers like Jerez, who followed steps laid out by the previous administration, the policy shift means they’ll now likely have to make their cases from behind bars.
His story illustrates the volatility and randomness of the country’s immigration processes. Had Jerez arrived five years earlier, before President Barack Obama ended the “wet foot/dry foot” policy that applied to Cuban immigrants since the 1960s, he and his family would have immediately qualified for legal status and a pathway to citizenship. And if he’d only been given the same paperwork as his sister — who arrived for the same reasons just days later — he may have a green card today like she does.
Attorneys: Judges and ICE collaborate in courthouse arrests
Jerez’s arrest shocked his attorneys too. For much of the past two decades, officials reserved the expedited removal process for immigrants arrested near the border within two weeks of arriving in the country.
Former President George W. Bush first implemented these guidelines in 2004. However, during his first term, Trump expanded use of expedited removal procedures to include immigrants anywhere in the United States who have spent less than two years in the country. Former President Joe Biden rescinded that expansion, only to see Trump restore it in January through one of the first executive orders of his new term.
People who are convicted of certain felonies can face expedited removal outside of normal parameters.
“But these people, they are clean. They have no crimes, no record, no nothing,” Ismael Labrador, an attorney with Miami-based Gallardo Law Firm who is representing Jerez, said of those affected by Trump’s latest tactics.
Jerez has been in the country longer than two years. But the Trump administration argues expedited removal should apply to similarly situated immigrants, as long as immigration authorities processed them within two years of their arrival.
“He had everything in order, and he was arbitrarily arrested and placed in expedited removal when he doesn’t qualify to be in expedited removal,” Labrador said.
Geraldine Cruz Dip, left, and Vivianne Jerez show a screenshot they took during a video call with their husband and brother Miguel Jerez Robles, who’s been detained at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, since May. They say detention has made him depressed. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
The American Civil Liberties Union of New York sued the Trump administration in January, arguing Trump violated the rulemaking process and the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause in expanding the scope of expedited removal.
Now, the administration is further accelerating removals by dispatching ICE agents to courthouses to immediately arrest following the dismissal of immigration cases.
Labrador isn’t surprised immigration judges, government attorneys and ICE agents appear to be collaborating on the plan. While the federal government’s judicial branch houses most judges, immigration judges are part of the executive branch, employed by the Department of Justice.
“They work for the same boss,” he said, referring to Trump.
In light of the new practice, the nonprofit National Immigration Project recommends immigration attorneys consider requesting virtual hearings to protect clients from courthouse arrest.
“Unfortunately, if I remember correctly, he was imprisoned on the second day this new (courthouse arrest) strategy had begun,” Labrador said. “It was a surprise to all of us.”
Some of Labrador’s other clients have been detained in similar ways, prompting him to begin requesting virtual hearings.
He followed the rules. Then the rules changed.
Jerez sought asylum in the United States after mass demonstrations in his homeland in 2021, when people in dozens of Cuban cities took to the streets to protest shortages of food and medicine, as well as their government’s strict response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jerez had spoken out against Cuba’s communist government and refused to perform his mandatory military service, putting him and his family in the crosshairs of the authorities, Cruz said. She recalled a time when police interrogated him for six hours and broke his cellphone.
“They told him that the same thing would happen to us as to that phone,” Cruz said. Another time, she said, the police chief came to the family’s home ahead of another round of protests and told them that if they wanted to live, they’d stay home.
The couple lost their jobs at a Chinese restaurant, she said, after police threatened to shut it down if they weren’t fired. The pressure wouldn’t let up, Cruz said, so Jerez and three family members flew to Nicaragua in separate trips and then spent two months traveling by land to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Jerez and his family followed all the government’s requirements while pursuing permanent legal status, his immigration attorneys said.
That included presenting themselves to Border Patrol agents and requesting asylum when they arrived in Nogales, Arizona, in 2022. Jerez was handed an immigration form called an I-220A, allowing immigrants to be released into the United States as long as they stay on the government’s radar — following certain rules and appearing at all court hearings.
Vivianne Jerez, sister of Miguel Jerez Robles, holds a letter from the Madison Police Department verifying that her brother has no criminal record in the jurisdiction. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
Celeste Robles Chacón, mother of Miguel Jerez Robles, was waiting for him outside his asylum hearing when he was arrested by plainclothes immigration enforcement agents. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
After the family settled in McFarland, Jerez drove to Milwaukee every year for a check-in with immigration agents. He never missed an appointment, his wife said. The government issued a work permit that authorized him to work in the U.S. until 2029.
In 2023, Jerez’s sister Vivianne received a green card, making her a permanent U.S. resident. That’s because she received different paperwork upon her release at the border. It placed her on humanitarian parole, which provides temporary legal status to people from certain countries.
The 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act allows Cubans to apply for permanent residency after having lived in the United States for more than a year. But Jerez was not eligible while his asylum case was pending in immigration court. The U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals ruled in 2023 that immigrants with I-220A status could not apply for green cards.
Meanwhile, a Trump executive action ended humanitarian parole for people arriving from a slew of countries, including Cuba.
Border agents’ choice to nudge a brother and sister toward divergent immigration pathways appears to be random, the family said. That fits a trend, said Labrador, as border agents receive little to no guidance — and wide discretion — on what paperwork fits each situation.
Seeking asylum a second time
Once in expedited removal proceedings, immigrants can be immediately deported unless the government determines they have “credible fear” that they would be persecuted in their home country because of their political views or identity.
On June 12, guards at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma told Jerez to get dressed to go to the library, his sister said. When he got there, he learned this would be his official interview about why he’s afraid to return to Cuba — determining whether he’ll get a chance to bring his asylum case.
No one has told Jerez when he’ll learn the result, Cruz said, so she asked ChatGPT.
“It says it takes three to five business days, so I think it would be this week,” Cruz said in a June 17 interview. As of Friday, she was still waiting for news.
Based on Labrador’s experience, it can take up to a month.
If Jerez passes the interview, his lawyers will file a second asylum application. But that wouldn’t prompt Jerez’s release.
“He will have to defend his case in custody, unfortunately,” Labrador said.
Jerez’s mother calls uncertainty “psychological torture” for detainees.
Guards have offered Jerez and other detainees the chance to sign papers consenting to be deported, Cruz said.
“From the time they arrest them, the first thing they say is, ‘Sign this and you’ll go to your home country, or prepare to be detained here for up to two years,’” Cruz said.
Jerez and his family are still trying to understand why the government detained him after he did everything it asked, including attending immigration and court appointments, working and paying taxes.
“He doesn’t have so much as a traffic ticket,” his sister, Vivianne, said.
But they know he’s not alone. On TikTok, they see one woman after another “crying because they took their children or their husbands,” Cruz said.
They know others who voted for Trump, thinking he’d only deport criminals, only to have their loved ones detained too, Cruz added.
“He just wants white Americans who speak English when really Latinos are this country’s main workforce,” she said. “If they said they were going to search for people with criminal records, why are they arresting people who don’t have any kind of criminal record?”
In a recent New York Times interview, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, claimed the administration is prioritizing “the worst first” for deportation but acknowledged other immigrants may get swept up in the fray.
“We’re prioritizing public safety threats, people who have committed crimes in this country or who have committed crimes in their home country and came here to hide,” Homan said. “But I’ve also said from Day One, if you’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to questions about Jerez’s detention.
‘A total disaster’
To talk to his family from the Tacoma detention center, Jerez waits his turn to make video calls on a tablet shared by around a dozen detainees.
On those calls, he usually looks sad, Cruz said. She thinks detention has made him depressed.
Labrador also tries to speak with Jerez as often as possible. The conditions at the facility, one of the country’s largest, are “a total disaster,” he said.
“They are sleeping on the ground. They are being moved constantly. They are waking up in the middle of the night for (head) counting,” he said, adding that fights occur regularly and detainees get little to no medical treatment.
But Jerez’s mood was better last Saturday. When he called his family that day, his sister had just returned from protesting the Trump administration at the “No Kings” rally in McFarland, where she’d carried a hand-written sign covered with family photos .
“Freedom for Miguel,” it read. “He is not a criminal. He is a husband, a son and brother.”
He smiled as they showed him photos and told him about the people who approached her to express sympathy or outrage. Some hugged her and cried. Some said they would pray for her brother.
Cruz saved screenshots from that call. In the three weeks since his detention began, Vivianne said, it was the first time she’d seen him looking happy.
Andrew Billmann, the friend her husband met in his taxi years before, protested alongside Vivianne Jerez, carrying a sign that included a QR code with more information about the detention.
During the No Kings protest in McFarland, Andrew Billmann spreads the word about his friend, McFarland resident Miguel Jerez Robles, a Cuban asylum seeker who was detained by immigration officers outside his immigration hearing in Miami. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
“This is not someone that snuck in. This is not someone who’s trying to conceal their location. He’s been completely forthcoming from the beginning,” Billmann said in an interview.
Billmann and his wife, Kathy, have helped the family settle in McFarland, find housing, set up bank accounts and stay on top of their immigration paperwork.
“They’ve literally done everything right,” Billmann said. “I helped Miguel get his driver’s license. He’s got a Social Security number, a work permit. This is all as it’s supposed to go.”
Instead, the arrest has upended life for the whole family. Vivianne canceled her June 9 wedding ceremony. That cost the couple $1,000, but they couldn’t stomach trying to celebrate. Their loved ones cried as the couple quietly signed their marriage license at the McFarland apartment they share with her mother.
And now? The family waits.
Vivianne, who worked as a doctor in Cuba, recently finished training to become a U.S. registered nurse. Her graduation photo sits in her living room, but she hasn’t celebrated that feat either. On the coffee table sit the now-shriveled roses Jerez gave his mom for Mother’s Day. She can’t bring herself to throw them out.
On the couch, Cruz sorts through the evidence she’s marshaled as proof of her husband’s good character: the letter from the Madison Police Department saying he had no record with the department, the awards he received from his delivery jobs, the letter in which his boss called him “an exemplary employee” and said he was “praying for his eventual return.”
Geraldine Cruz Dip, Vivianne Jerez and Celeste Robles Chacón discuss the status of their family member, Miguel Jerez Robles, a Cuban immigrant and refugee, who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers after a scheduled immigration court hearing in Miami. (Ruthie Hauge / The Cap Times)
Cruz, who drives for the same company, has continued delivering Amazon packages to pay the bills.
Billmann set up a GoFundMe page where community members can donate money to help Cruz cover living expenses while her detained husband can’t work.
If the court gives Jerez another chance at release, she plans to use that money to pay his bond.
“They’re just wonderful, wonderful people,” Billmann said. “It’s just absolutely crazy what they’re putting this family through.”
The story was co-produced by The Cap Times and Wisconsin Watch.
As Wisconsin’s prison population climbs toward pre-pandemic levels, Senate Bill 153 seeks to expand alternatives to incarceration.
Wisconsin’s Treatment Alternatives and Diversion program was established in 2005 to provide counties with funding to create programs to divert adults with nonviolent criminal charges into community-based treatment for substance abuse.
Senate Bill 153 would formally expand the scope of these programs to explicitly include individuals with mental health issues.
Access to more funding
While some counties, including Milwaukee, already provide some diversion options for individuals with mental health needs, Senate Bill 153 could allow Milwaukee County to access funding not currently available.
“The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office has always supported the expansion of the Treatment Alternatives and Diversion program to include those individuals with severe and persistent mental health issues in addition to those with alcohol and drug dependency issues,” said Jeffrey Altenburg, Milwaukee County’s chief deputy district attorney.
He added that such an expansion would allow the district attorney’s office to focus most of its traditional prosecutorial resources on violent crime.
Bipartisan support
State Sen. André Jacque, R-New Franken, who co-authored the bill, said that the legislation enjoys broad bipartisan support as well as backing from those who work inside the criminal justice system.
“Folks that I’ve talked to – whether it’s probation and parole, law enforcement more generally – these are folks that see that it works because you don’t see repeat involvement in the criminal justice system,” he said.
“It is transformative and uplifting when you see the changes that people are able to make in their lives.”
Marshall Jones, currently incarcerated at Fox Lake Correctional Institution, hopes more lawmakers have that sort of mindset.
“If politicians were more proactive in helping people in the system address the underlying issues they have, then more people will be in a position to experience lasting, genuine change,” Jones said.
Research shows that treating the underlying causes of criminal behavior helps individuals rebuild their lives after incarceration and prevents future offenses.
“Most people who have mental health issues are already running or hiding from a fear they have,” said Aaron Nicgorski, a patient at a Wisconsin Department of Health Services facility.
“Providing treatment says ‘Hey, we understand you have an issue, here are some programs to get you on a path to a better future’ versus ‘Hey, we’re gonna put you in a cage to think about what you’ve done.’”
Diversion vs. incarceration
Over time, the criminal justice system has recognized that many people commit crimes because of economic or psychological factors rather than some sort of character flaw.
Diversion – the process by which people get “diverted” into voluntary programs and away from formal prosecution – has been used to address these factors.
“The whole idea is to divert them from the traditional system and get them placed with, hopefully, programs that can break the cycle of any criminal behavior,” said Nick Sayner, co-founder and chief executive officer of JusticePoint, a Milwaukee-based nonprofit organization that provides diversion-related services among other criminal justice programs.
Breaking that cycle is better for the public’s safety as well as the safety of the person being diverted, said Mark Rice, coordinator for the Wisconsin Transformational Justice Campaign at WISDOM, a statewide faith-based organization.
It’s also much more cost-effective to treat people in communities rather than to incarcerate them, Rice added.
Incarceration is not an experience that lends itself to improving a person’s mental health, he said.
“One man attempted to commit suicide; several other men had to be put on suicide watch; others mutilated themselves,” said Rice, referring to his time in the special needs unit at the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility.
What’s next?
On May 8, the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety unanimously recommended Senate Bill 153 for passage. It is now awaiting scheduling for a vote by the full Senate.
As the Milwaukee Police Department moves to expand its use of facial recognition technology, a June report from the federal government finds this technology continues to disproportionately misidentify people of color.
Elected officials and civil rights groups have been raising this concern as a clear reason why MPD’s plan should be paused or rejected entirely.
MPD says there are ways to address this limitation.
The Milwaukee Equal Rights Commission on Wednesday, June 18, will hold a public meeting to assess potential discrimination-related risks.
The report
In 2019, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology released a major report evaluating how demographics affect outcomes in facial recognition systems.
The report found skin color and ethnicity often had an effect.
With domestic law enforcement images, for example, the system most often led to false positives – when someone is incorrectly identified – for American Indians. Rates were also elevated for African American and Asian populations.
On June 2, the agency issued a report showing that facial recognition systems were more likely to mistake people from predominantly darker-skinned regions for someone else. This included people from sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Caribbean, compared with people from Europe and Central Asia.
Higher rates of misidentifications for people of color raise concerns that facial recognition could lead to more wrongful stops and arrests by police.
MPD’s plan
MPD Chief of Staff Heather Hough, speaking during an April meeting of the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission, said the department has used facial recognition technology in the past in coordination with other police departments.
She stressed its crime-fighting benefits.
“Facial recognition technology is a valuable tool in solving crimes and increasing public safety,” Hough said.
Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson supports the use of this technology for the same reason, Jeff Fleming, spokesperson for the mayor’s office, wrote in an email.
“Identifying, apprehending and bringing to justice criminals in our city does reduce crime,” Fleming wrote.
During the commission meeting, Paul Lau, who oversees MPD’s criminal investigations bureau, said the department is considering an official agreement with a company called Biometrica.
“We anticipate this usually being used by our detective bureau in the investigation of major violent felonies,” Lau said.
Community response
Emilio De Torre, executive director of Milwaukee Turners, cited some of the 2019 federal findings in an op-ed, arguing that “entrusting facial recognition to routine policing is not public safety; it is an avoidable risk that history shows will fall hardest on Black Milwaukeeans.”
Milwaukee Turners is one of 19 organizations that sent a letter to the Milwaukee Common Council expressing concerns about surveillance technology. The letter urges the council to adopt an ordinance ensuring community participation in deciding if and how it is used.
Some members of the Common Council have come out in strong opposition to MPD’s plan as well.
“It’s both embarrassing and dangerous for false positives to occur at such a high rate,” Alderman José G. Pérez, Common Council president, told NNS.
Such flaws would likely lead to due process violations, he said.
Addressing flaws
Hough said MPD knows there are people in the community who are “very leery” of police using this technology, adding that their “concerns about civil liberties are important.”
“I want to make it very clear: Facial recognition on its own is never enough. It requires human analysis and additional investigation.”
MPD is committed to a “thoughtful, intentional and mindful” policy that considers community input, Hough said.
Lau said MPD will look into racial bias training provided by Biometrica, and people using the technology will need to have training on best practices.
The company says errors identified in 2019 stemmed from several flaws that can be countered with, for example, anti-bias training for analysts who review facial recognition alerts.
Who gets to decide?
Since Wisconsin Act 12, Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman is free to develop any official policy he chooses. The Common Council has the only formal check that exists.
By a two-thirds vote – or 10 of Milwaukee’s 15 aldermen – the council can block or modify MPD policies. But it must wait for a policy to be officially implemented.
The state Legislature could pass a statewide ban or restrictions, and the Common Council could adopt an ordinance regulating or banning its use.
Alderman Alex Brower told NNS he will be doing everything in his power, as a member of the Common Council, to oppose MPD’s acquisition of facial recognition technology.
What residents can do
People will have an opportunity to share their opinions about MPD’s plan – for and against – at an upcoming meeting of the Milwaukee Equal Rights Commission.
Commission members will use testimony about facial recognition to help determine the discrimination-related risks it may pose, said Tony Snell, chair of the commission.
“We want to listen to as many people as possible,” Snell said.
The commission can make recommendations to the Common Council, the mayor, MPD and the Fire and Police Commission.
The commission meeting will be held at 4 p.m. Wednesday, June 18, at Milwaukee City Hall, 200 E. Wells St.
Those who wish to speak must register by emailing ERC@milwaukee.gov. Each speaker will have up to three minutes. People can also send written testimony to this email address so it can be included in the public record.
A police officer forced out of a suburban Milwaukee department for appearing to skip a lot of work and claiming many questionable comp days is now working for a small-town department in Waukesha County.
Amanda Lang resigned from the Glendale Police Department in 2021 after an internal investigation found she had more than 230 paid hours unaccounted for between 2019 and 2021. At her wage of $40 an hour, those hours added up to $9,300, the investigation noted.
“Based on the discovery of leaving early, along with the substantial number of full shifts not accounted for, one can only wonder how many other times she has left significantly early without documentation,” then-Captain Rhett Fugman wrote in his investigation, which The Badger Project obtained in a records request.
Amanda Lang worked for the Glendale Police Department for more than 13 years before an investigation into her work hours led to an internal investigation and her resignation. (Photo obtained through a records request)
The captain recommended Lang be fired, and she resigned in April of 2021.
She worked for Glendale in the Milwaukee suburbs for more than 13 years, rising to the level of sergeant, before her resignation.
“As a sergeant, additional responsibility and trust was provided to Sgt. Lang,” Fugman wrote. “Her actions and inactions displayed regarding leaving early and posting off time over the last two plus years have displayed a lack of integrity, honesty and trustworthiness.”
“These characteristics are the foundation of what we are as police officers,” he continued.
Lang was hired by the Lannon Police Department later in 2021 and has worked there since.
Lannon Police Chief Daniel Bell said his department “follows rigorous background checks and screening procedures for all new hires to ensure they align with the standards and integrity expected of our officers,” including for Lang.
“During the interview process, we were satisfied with her explanation of the situation,” Bell said of her resignation.
Lang is “consistently demonstrating professionalism, dedication and a strong commitment to community policing,” he added.
She has been promoted to lieutenant, the second in command of the 12-officer department.
Another officer employed by the Lannon Police Department, Nathaniel Schweitzer, was forced out of the police department in the town of Waterford in Racine County late last year. Like Lang, he “resigned prior to the completion of an internal investigation,” according to the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s database on officers who left a law enforcement position under negative circumstances.
Number of wandering officers in Wisconsin continues to rise
Unsurprisingly, the number of wandering officers, those who were fired or forced out from a previous job in law enforcement, continues to rise. Nearly 400 officers in Wisconsin currently employed were fired or forced out of previous jobs in law enforcement in the state, almost double the amount from 2021. And that doesn’t include officers who were pushed out of law enforcement jobs outside of the state and who came to Wisconsin to work.
Chiefs and sheriffs can be incentivized to hire wandering officers, experts say. Hiring someone new to law enforcement means the police department or sheriff’s office has to pay for recruits’ academy training and then wait for them to finish before they can start putting new hires on the schedule.
A wandering officer already has certification and can start working immediately.
Nearly 2,400 officers in the state have been flagged by their former law enforcement employers as having a “negative separation” since the state DOJ launched its database in 2017.
Most are simply young officers who did not succeed in a new job during their probationary period, when the bar to fire them is very low, experts say. But some have more serious reasons for being pushed out.
Law enforcement agencies can look up job applicants in that database to get more insight into their work history. And a law enacted in 2021 in Wisconsin bans law enforcement officers from sealing their personnel files and work histories, a previously common tactic for officers with a black mark on their record.
About 13,400 law enforcement officers are currently employed in Wisconsin, excluding those who primarily work in a corrections facility, according to the Wisconsin Department of Justice. Wandering officers make up nearly 3% of the total.
At least one major study published in the Yale Law Journal has found that wandering officers are more likely to receive a complaint for a moral character violation, compared to new officers and veterans who haven’t been fired or forced out from a previous position in law enforcement.
Sammie Garrity contributed to this report.
This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.
Despite arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the Milwaukee County Courthouse complex, many county officials want residents to know that courthouse services remain available regardless of citizenship status.
Israel Ramón, the Milwaukee County register of deeds, sees access to his office at the courthouse as a fundamental right of every resident in the county.
“I work for 950,000 people,” Ramón said.
What is a register of deeds?
When people think of essential county services, the register of deeds might not come to mind. But Ramón has a way of making his office sound impossible to live without.
If people want to drive a car, prove legal identity, apply for Social Security or access food benefits in Milwaukee County, among other tasks, they need documents maintained by Ramón’s office.
When Wisconsin became a state in 1848, the register of deeds was established as one of a handful of constitutional county offices – positions created by the state constitution and filled by local elections.
Like a sheriff or a judge, people needed a register of deeds to help organize aspects of their daily lives.
It’s the same today, Ramón said.
“Most of the time, people don’t think that my office impacts their lives. But from birth to death and throughout their tenure in the county – my office does it all.”
Ramón’s office issues birth, death, marriage and divorce certificates – documents known as vital records.
His office also records and archives real property documents for Milwaukee County. Real property includes real estate – the physical land and buildings – as well as the legal rights associated with owning, using and transferring it.
Altogether, Ramón said his office maintains an archive of about 12 million documents.
Access to courthouse complex
All residents of Milwaukee County, Ramón argues, deserve access to these records – regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or immigration status.
If, for example, an undocumented mother needs to obtain a birth certificate for her U.S.-born son to enroll him in school, she has the same right to that document as any other parent, according to Ramón.
These arrests also threaten access to the full range of services offered in the complex, said Alan Chavoya, outreach chair of the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racism & Political Repression, a community group critical of the immigration policies of the Trump administration.
“People don’t realize that this complex actually houses so many different services,” Chavoya said. “The county supervisors are here. People pay some taxes here. I served jury duty here.”
“A restraining order – you’re supposed to be able to get help here to file one,” he added. “People who might need one but have mixed status probably aren’t going to come here to get one, right?”
ICE at the courthouse
The Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution on April 24 calling on the county executive, chief judge and sheriff to work together to ensure access to courthouse services.
However, the resolution does not impose any new restrictions on immigration enforcement.
Ramón remains focused on what he can do. He said he will ask anyone not conducting official business in his office to leave, including ICE agents without a judicial warrant.
A judicial warrant allows officers to make arrests in both private and public areas, while administrative warrants – typically used for immigration-related arrests – permit arrests only in public areas.
As a constitutional officer, the register of deeds has authority over how services are provided, in accordance with state and federal laws, said a spokesperson from the Milwaukee County Executive’s Office.
Failing to remove barriers that prevent people from accessing his office, including fear of immigration enforcement, would mean failing to uphold the oath of office he took, Ramón said.
This includes legal documents such as power-of-attorney forms, which people fearing family separation can use to ensure someone else is able to legally care for their children or manage their finances.
But, again, Ramón makes clear that this service is for every resident of the county.
In addition to what he sees as his public duties, he draws on his personal background to underscore his commitment to accessibility.
He told NNS he is a U.S. citizen born in Mexico, the first Latino constitutional officer in Wisconsin and one of the first openly LGBTQ+ ones.
Gesturing to the LGBTQ+, U.S. and Mexican flags displayed on his bookshelf, Ramón said, “That’s who I am.”
For more information
Milwaukee County residents can request records in person, online or by phone, depending on the type of record.
As they hit the streets, members of 414LIFE, a community and hospital-based violence intervention program, know their efforts could literally mean the difference between life and death.
That theory was put to the test recently when 414LIFE members showed up to diffuse a neighborhood dispute that also involved law enforcement officers on Milwaukee’s North Side. If not for that intervention, Lynn Lewis, executive director of 414LIFE, believes the incident could have ended in tragedy.
“Frontline workers go into situations where emotions are high, where people are riled up and thinking about retaliation,” Lewis said.
As temperature rises, so can violence
Lewis said her 414LIFE team of 15 violence interrupters and outreach workers has hit the streets hard in recent weeks, responding to an uptick in violence.
“There have been about seven shootings and four homicides in the last 72 hours,” Lewis said during a community pop-up recently near Milwaukee Fire Station 5 on the North Side.
Reggie Moore is the director of violence prevention policy and engagement at the Comprehensive Injury Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin, which implements the program for the city of Milwaukee.
He said shootings over the past three weeks have kept the 414LIFE team busy.
Many of the shootings, he said, involved interfamily conflict or intimate partner violence. And while the violence typically rises with the temperature, Moore said, it’s the sheer volume of guns on the streets that presents the biggest problem.
“The presence of a firearm increases the risk of arguments or conflicts resulting in serious injuries or death,” he said. “People are losing their lives and freedom over a moment of anger.
“Our team along with our partners have been working around the clock responding to scenes and hospitals to support impacted families and neighborhoods.”
‘Life is bigger than just the hood’
Lewis said the group held several pop-ups recently along with staff from Credible Messengers, a Milwaukee County violence intervention program. One was at Tiefenthaler Park, 2501 W. Galena St., where a shooting occurred after a vigil recently.
“We talk to people in hot spots like that about the need to change up before they end up incarcerated or dead,” Lewis said. “We need to stop the bleeding.”
The interrupters are well versed in the street lifestyle, having lived through the same challenges that people in the community face now.
One message they share, whether it’s with youths or adults, Lewis said, “is that life is bigger than just the hood.”
They talk about goals and share resources such as information on jobs, food and other programs to help the people they serve build social capital and eventually change their attitudes toward gun violence, she said.
“Milwaukee, we need to stop shooting and start healing,” Lewis said.
Community violence intervention programs like 414 LIFE take a public health approach to reducing violence and improving community safety, Moore said.
He said the 414LIFE program, which was inspired by the Blueprint for Peace, is the longest community violence intervention program in Milwaukee.
“Our colleagues at Froedtert Hospital are also feeling the weight of these shootings just as much as our street teams on the front line,” Moore said. “Working in the streets and hospitals, 414LIFE has been engaging with families and others impacted by shootings across the city.”
The 414LIFE community team was involved in 49 conflict mediations in 2024, with nearly 90% being resolved, Moore said during a May 22 presentation on the program to the Common Council’s Public Safety and Health Committee.
The team spent 1,388 hours on conflict resolution activities and 2,678 hours on behavior and community norm change activities and worked with 25 youths in 2024.
Aside from mediations, team members also have active caseloads of individuals referred to them by hospitals, the Office of Community Wellness and Safety and individuals they’ve met during outreach.
Data from 414LIFE’s April monthly report shows that caseloads have increased recently, from 36 in January to 50 in April. The team has logged more than 1,200 hours so far this year on behavior change and public accompaniment efforts and more than 100 hours on direct violence intervention.
Evidence of the program’s effectiveness, according to Moore, is that last year’s 414LIFE priority neighborhood, Old North Milwaukee, experienced a 31% decrease in homicides and a 6% decrease in nonfatal shootings in 2024, based on data from the Milwaukee Police Department.
So far this year, homicides are down 50% and nonfatal shootings 43% in Old North Milwaukee.
During his presentation to the Public Safety and Health Committee, Moore said each homicide in Milwaukee costs the city more than $2 million in hospital, criminal investigation, incarceration and other costs, while each shooting costs the city over half a million dollars.
Who are 414LIFE members?
While lived experience helps 414LIFE’s street team talk the talk and walk the walk, it’s the extensive training the members receive that gives them the tools to walk into a volatile situation to prevent bloodshed.
Lewis said her team operates under the Cure Violence model, which works to reduce the risk of retaliation, revictimization and other community violence through credible messengers.
To strengthen those skills, each member goes through the Academy for Transformational Change training, which uses a community asset approach to serve neighborhoods most impacted by crime and incarceration.
Members also receive shooting response, Narcan, Stop the Bleed, Mental Health First Aid and other training, she said.
“The team is highly trained,” Lewis said. “They also have passion and grit.”
Challenges for violence interruption programs
While violence interruption efforts continue in Milwaukee, funding cuts, particularly at the federal level, threaten the future of violence prevention programming.
According to a report by the Council on Criminal Justice, the Trump administration has cut federal funding for community safety and violence intervention programming by more than $168 million.
David Muhammad, deputy director of the Department of Health and Human Services for Milwaukee County, addresses a crowd last month. (Edgar Mendez / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)
“This work is under attack,” said David Muhammad, deputy director of the Department of Health and Human Services for Milwaukee County, during a pop-up event. “We have to fight for the resources we have.”
In addition to 414LIFE and other local community violence intervention programs, a key to help maintain the reduction of violence that Milwaukee has experienced over the past two years is residents, Moore said.
“Peace starts with the people, and we must ensure that firearms are securely stored and not accessible to individuals prohibited from having them,” he said.
It’s the kind of exchange that criminal justice data is meant to clarify: a police official insisting that law enforcement practices are fair and targeted, while a city commissioner questions whether those practices contribute to racial disparities.
“If I’m understanding what you’re saying correctly, it’s the police department position – not that you are policing in a racially motivated way, but just that it’s Black youth that are committing more crimes,” asked Krissie Fung, a commissioner on the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission during a recent meeting.
“I would not say Black youth are committing more crimes,” responded Heather Hough, chief of staff for the Milwaukee Police Department. “I would say that when we are arresting suspects, we are ensuring reasonable suspicion or probable cause, whether or not the identity of those youth is one race or another.”
Such misinterpretations have been common, said Kelly Pethke, administrator for Milwaukee County Children, Youth and Family Services, which hosts the dashboard.
“There’s been a lot of misunderstanding,” Pethke said. “We are in the process of making some changes.”
The point of the dashboard
The dashboard was designed to provide real-time transparency about Milwaukee County youths in secure custody.
“We didn’t have a good, single place to go to really look at the scope of the child incarceration problem,” said Rep. Ryan Clancy, D-Milwaukee, who helped move the dashboard through the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors when he served as a supervisor.
But the dashboard doesn’t yet offer a complete picture, including when it comes to race.
Because of this limitation, conversations about racial disparities in Milwaukee’s youth justice system – like those during the Fire and Police Commission meeting – are incomplete.
What’s missing?
To understand what’s missing from the dashboard, it helps to know that Milwaukee youths in secure custody can fall into three categories.
Some youths are held at the county-run Vel R. Phillips Youth and Family Justice Center for lesser offenses, remaining fully under Milwaukee County’s responsibility.
Others, deemed serious juvenile offenders, are in the custody of the state and housed at state-run youth prisons such as Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls.
A third group consists of youth who are the county’s responsibility but are housed in state-run facilities. The dashboard currently only shows racial data for this third group.
Pethke provided NNS with point-in-time data that helps fill out the racial picture of youths in county custody. As of May 19, there were 113 youths in the county detention center: 92 were Black, 12 were Hispanic, seven were white, and two were Asian.
Persistent problem
Even with the updated county data, overrepresentation of youths of color – especially Black youth – in the criminal justice system continues, said Monique Liston.
She’s the founder and chief strategist of UBUNTU Research and Evaluation, a Milwaukee-based strategic education organization.
“The disproportionality is still the same for me. Still the same flag,” she said.
Liston doesn’t dispute Hough’s claim that Milwaukee police are acting legally and fairly. Still, she argued, the city’s criminal justice system is structured in such a way that disproportionately targets Black youths.
“Black youth are more surveilled. That means you’re going to end up with more incidents.”
It’s a cycle, Liston said – data collected on these incidents presents an imbalanced picture of who is committing crime.
That picture reinforces the notion that more money and policing are needed to address crime by Black youths, resulting in continued – or escalated – monitoring, she said.
Yes, Liston wants to see clearer and more complete data from the dashboard. But she also wants that data to be used for real accountability and change.
“Whatever we measure becomes a priority,” she said. “The cycle is not disrupted if we don’t think about the data.”
MPD and root causes
Hough does not dispute the county’s data and acknowledges that racial disparities exist in Milwaukee’s criminal justice system. But she told NNS she is confident the city’s police department is not the source of those disparities.
“We get a call for service, and we respond,” she said.
Hough emphasized that the department holds officers accountable if they fail to meet standards of reasonable suspicion and probable cause.
She also said that the police department – and Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman – are committed to working with the community to address the root causes of the disparities highlighted by the county’s dashboard.
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People cannot send money to Wisconsin prisoners directly. They can instead transfer funds through a company called Access Corrections.
The private company’s website, app, phone and in-person delivery systems are no longer working across the state.
Access Corrections is part of the conglomerate that also runs the prison’s phone system, which has failed in recent months.
Editor’s note, May 27, 2025: The Access Corrections website was back online on May 26. Multiple people told WPR and Wisconsin Watch they could transfer funds to Wisconsin prisoners following the restoration.
The online system Wisconsin prisoners rely on to receive money from loved ones recently crashed, leaving them unable to pay for items like extra food and hygiene products.
The Wisconsin Department of Corrections contracts a private company, Access Corrections, to allow people outside of prison to transfer funds to those inside. Those transfers occur through the company’s app, website, phone system, mail and in-person options. But multiple people told WPR and Wisconsin Watch they could not make deposits beginning this week.
A screenshot of the Access Corrections website is shown on May 22, 2025. The Wisconsin Department of Corrections contracts with the private vendor to allow people to send money to prisoners, but the system is not working.
The Access Corrections website and app display nothing more than a white screen and the message: “Sorry, the service you’re looking for is currently unavailable.”
Those who dial an Access Corrections phone number hear a recorded message saying the company can’t take deposits online or over the phone and that it is working to resolve the issue.
In-person deposits at locations throughout Wisconsin are also unavailable, according to an affiliate’s website. It is unclear whether physical mail deposits still work.
A Department of Corrections spokesperson said she was working on a response, which did not arrive by this story’s deadline.
The Keefe Group did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Robin Guenterberg typically sends his daughter at Taycheedah Correctional Institution $300 a month, with Access Corrections collecting a fee.
His daughter, who he requested not be publicly named, uses most of that money to buy items from the prison’s commissary. She has a chronic health condition and relies on commissary chicken and tuna packets to supplement regularly provided meals, Guenterberg said.
The daughter has lost more than 20 pounds since entering prison late last year, Guenterberg said, adding that he and his wife purchase vending machine items during visits and make additional deposits to help their daughter maintain a healthy weight.
If Access Corrections fails to quickly restart deposits, she may lack funds to place a commissary order for next week, Guenterberg said.
Sarah Liebzeit successfully added funds to her incarcerated son’s account late Monday night. But issues with his prison-provided electronic tablet have prevented him from spending it at Stanley Correctional Institution, she said.
“This is now another issue because the tablets have been just horrible,” Liebzeit said.
Some incarcerated people work low-wage jobs inside their prison. Their pay falls short of covering phone calls, extra food, hygiene products and medical co-pays without outside deposits, multiple family members told WPR and Wisconsin Watch.
Nicole Johnson said her incarcerated boyfriend earns $20 every two weeks at his Dodge Correctional Institution job. Wisconsin’s typical copay charge of $7.50 per face-to-face medical visit is among the highest in the country — more than half of his weekly earnings.
Johnson said she tries to add $50 to her boyfriend’s account twice a month so he can purchase rice and beans to supplement regularly provided meals.
“It’s just how I take care of him right now,” she said.
The Access Corrections crash, she added, “makes me sad because I don’t want him to be hungry all freaking week.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, left, leaves the federal courthouse after a hearing Thursday, May 15, 2025, in Milwaukee. (Andy Manis / Associated Press)
A Wisconsin judge pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges accusing her of helping a man who is illegally in the country evade U.S. immigration authorities seeking to arrest him in her courthouse.
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan entered the plea during a brief arraignment in federal court. Magistrate Judge Stephen Dries scheduled a trial to begin July 21. Dugan’s lead attorney, Steven Biskupic, told the judge that he expects the trial to last a week.
Dugan, her lawyers and prosecutors left the hearing without speaking to reporters.
She is charged with concealing an individual to prevent arrest and obstruction. Prosecutors say she escorted Eduardo Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer out of her courtroom through a back door on April 18 after learning that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were in the courthouse seeking to arrest him for being in the country illegally. She could face up to six years in prison if convicted on both counts.
Her attorneys say she’s innocent. They filed a motion Wednesday to dismiss the case, saying she was acting in her official capacity as a judge and therefore is immune to prosecution. They also maintain that the federal government violated Wisconsin’s sovereignty by disrupting a state courtroom and prosecuting a state judge.
A public backlash
Dugan’s arrest has inflamed tensions between the Trump administration and Democrats over the president’s sweeping immigration crackdown.
Dozens of demonstrators gathered outside the courthouse ahead of Thursday’s hearing, with some holding signs that read “Only Fascists Arrest Judges — Drop the Charges,” “Department of Justice Over-Reach” and “Keep Your Hands Off Our Judges!!” The crowd chanted “Due process rights,” “Hands off our freedom,” and “Si se puede” — Spanish for “Yes, we can” — which is a rallying cry for immigrant rights advocates.
One man stood alone across the street holding a Trump flag.
Supporters of Judge Hannah Dugan protest outside the United States Federal Building and Courthouse in Milwaukee on Thursday, May 15, 2025, ahead of Dugan’s arraignment on charges that she helped a man in the country illegally evade arrest by immigration authorities. (Todd Richmond / Associated Press)
Nancy Camden, from suburban Mequon north of Milwaukee, was among the protesters calling for the case to be dismissed. She said she believes ICE shouldn’t have tried to arrest Flores-Ruiz inside the courthouse and the Department of Justice “overreached” in charging Dugan.
“How they handled this and made a big show of arresting her and putting her in handcuffs, all of that was intimidation,” Camden said. “And I’m not going to be intimidated. I’m fighting back.”
Esther Cabrera, an organizer with the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, said the charges against Dugan amount to “state-funded repression.”
“If we are going to go after judges, if we’re going to go after mayors, we have to understand that they can come after anybody,” she said. “And that’s kind of why we wanted to make a presence out here today is to say that you can’t come after everyone and it stops here.”
According to court documents, Flores-Ruiz illegally reentered the U.S. after being deported in 2013. Online court records show he was charged with three counts of misdemeanor domestic abuse in Milwaukee County in March, and he was in Dugan’s courtroom on April 18 for a hearing in that case.
According to an FBI affidavit, Dugan was alerted to the agents’ presence by her clerk, who was informed by an attorney that the agents appeared to be in the hallway. Dugan was visibly angry and called the situation “absurd” before leaving the bench and retreating to her chambers, the affidavit contends. She and another judge later approached members of the arrest team in the courthouse with what witnesses described as a “confrontational, angry demeanor.”
After a back-and-forth with the agents over the warrant for Flores-Ruiz, Dugan demanded they speak with the chief judge and led them from the courtroom, according to the affidavit.
After she returned to the courtroom, witnesses heard her say something to the effect of “wait, come with me” before ushering Flores-Ruiz and his attorney out through a door typically used only by deputies, jurors, court staff and in-custody defendants, the affidavit alleges. Flores-Ruiz was free on a signature bond in the abuse case, according to online state court records. Federal agents ultimately detained him outside the courthouse after a foot chase.
The state Supreme Court suspended Dugan last week, saying the move was necessary to preserve public confidence in the judiciary. She was freed after her arrest.
How the case might play out
John Vaudreuil, a former federal prosecutor in Wisconsin who isn’t involved in Dugan’s or Flores-Ruiz’s cases, said the Trump administration seems to want to make an example out of Dugan. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi or Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, rather than the U.S. attorney in Milwaukee, are likely making the decisions on how to proceed, making it less likely prosecutors will reduce the charges against Dugan in a deal, he said.
Her attorneys will likely try to push for a jury trial, Vaudreuil predicted, because they know that “people feel very strongly about the way the president and administration is conducting immigration policy.”
Dugan is represented by some of Wisconsin’s most accomplished lawyers. Biskupic was a federal prosecutor for 20 years and served seven years as U.S. attorney in Milwaukee. Paul Clement, meanwhile, is a former U.S. solicitor general who has argued more than 100 cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Both were appointed to jobs by former Republican President George W. Bush.
Associated Press reporters Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, and Laura Bargfeld contributed to this report.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
When he leaves the office at the end of the week, James Hutchinson, captain of the Milwaukee Police Department’s Homicide Unit, can’t wait for Monday so he can get back to work solving murders.
“I could have retired six months ago,” he said. “But I know that the work we do really makes an impact on people’s lives.”
That work doesn’t always go as planned. Last year Milwaukee homicide detectives cleared 78% of the 132 murder cases they investigated — the highest rate in years. From 2020 to 2023, when murder rates soared during the pandemic, clearance rates fluctuated between 50% and 59%, leaving many families without closure.
For those awaiting justice, Hutchinson said he wants them to know that his team of 33 investigators remains committed to solving their case.
“From the first two weeks to a month, or months or years down the line, we’re equally as committed to solving a murder as we were today.”
That work begins as soon as a homicide is reported, he said.
Homicide investigations in Milwaukee
Typically, said Hutchinson, uniformed officers are the first to arrive on the scene. They work to establish an incident command area, set parameters using police tape, control crowds and prevent any disruption of evidence.
Patrol officers are also the first to seek out witnesses and spot cameras.
Detectives are not far behind. As soon as a homicide is reported, Hutchinson said, a team of detectives and supervisors will immediately head to the scene and start their investigation.
Once they arrive, they assemble the information that’s already been collected, gather more clues, find additional witnesses and hopefully identify suspects. Investigations take place in homes, city streets and hospitals or even at the medical examiner’s office.
Critical, Hutchinson said, is the early stages of that investigation.
“Those first moments, those first hours, those first minutes are very important. Evidence starts to disappear. People go to different places. It could be as simple as video evidence being recorded over. We focus and attack an investigation very fast, very intensively,” he said.
When homicides happen in bunches, as was often the case during the pandemic, resources are pulled from other units to help.
Friends and family of Nelson Manuel Lopez Correa, a 15-year-old boy who was shot and killed on Milwaukee’s South Side, created a memorial in his honor. (Edgar Mendez / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)
The team approach
Hutchinson said MPD investigates homicides differently from any other large city in America, using a team approach rather than dedicating detectives to specific cases. Homicide investigators working that shift will begin the investigation and then debrief the next shift before handing off the case.
“They brief the incoming shift on what occurred, what was accomplished and what still needs to be done,” Hutchinson said. “That cycle continues until we run out of things we need to do right now.”
Utilizing this method allows for a continuous investigation, but it also creates some problems, acknowledges Hutchinson.
“Because there is this team concept, you have a potential for having not as much accountability per person,” he said.
He said his division works to alleviate that problem by relying on sergeants and others, including himself, to oversee investigations and follow-ups.
Communication challenges
Another issue with not dedicating specific investigators to specific cases is communication.
“We love to get information, but we are not good at checking back in with the family and letting them know we haven’t forgotten,” he said. “We acknowledge that we have room for improvement.”
Not receiving regular updates from homicide investigators is a common complaint among family members of victims, especially those whose cases remain unsolved.
Brenda Hines, whose son Donovan was murdered in 2017, tracked down officers in person when they wouldn’t respond to her calls.
“It’s a bad process,” she said.
She founded the Donovan Hines Foundation in honor of her son and to help other families by providing grief support, mental health and other resources to residents.
Hines said she believes police can still solve her son’s murder if anything should come up.
“They just don’t have enough evidence yet,” she said.
Janice Gorden, who created Victims of Milwaukee Violence to help families access funeral support and other services, said she believes police are doing what they can to solve homicides and work with families.
But families, she said, will not be satisfied until they have answers. Often it gets to the point where they become focused on investigating the case themselves.
“They have way more information than sometimes the detectives do,” Gorden said. “They drive themselves crazy trying to find answers to who killed their loved one.”
Both Hines and Gorden have worked with mothers to arrange meetings with police and the district attorney’s office to get information about homicide cases.
Hutchinson said two new victim support positions were created recently to help improve communication with families.
Notifying the family
Hutchinson worked his way up the ranks of MPD, first as a patrol officer, then gang squad, detective, robbery and vice squad, and as a homicide detective from 2008 to 2020.
James Hutchinson became captain of MPD’s Homicide Division in 2020. (Edgar Mendez / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)
Before becoming captain, he has often taken on the grim task of letting a family member know a loved one was killed.
“Making a death notification is one of the hardest parts of this job. It’s incredibly heartbreaking,” he said. “The range of reactions, you can’t even anticipate. There are completely stoic people that accept what you’re telling them, to some incredibly violent reactions.”
A much better feeling, he said, is when they are able to notify a family that an arrest has been made. But even that’s a struggle.
From investigation to charges
Although police might make an arrest in a homicide case, that doesn’t mean that charges will be filed.
Police, Hutchinson said, only need probable cause to make an arrest. The burden of proof at the district attorney’s office, which files homicide charges, is higher.
“The DA’s office has to be able to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said. “Many times we will make an arrest for probable cause, but we can’t get to that level.”
What often happens, Hutchinson said, is that officers will bring a case to the DA’s office or discuss what evidence they have and then talk about whether more is needed to file charges.
While that does bring some frustration, admits Hutchinson, it’s better than arresting the wrong person.
“My worst nightmare I would have in the world is to have the wrong person held accountable for a crime,” he said.
Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern acknowledges that the work to hold someone accountable for murder can be burdensome on families seeking justice.
“Obviously, there is a significant gap between the evidence needed to make an arrest versus the evidence needed to successfully prosecute a case,” Lovern said.
The reason for caution and continued dialogue with officers in hopes of building a strong case is because there’s no room for error.
“We really have one opportunity with a particular suspect to bring forward charges and we want to get it right. Not only for the person charged, but the victim’s family and the integrity of the system,” he said.
‘We never forget about the victims’
Depending on the time of year and other circumstances, homicide investigation units can get extremely busy, Hutchinson said. Even when pulling resources from other units, it can still impact the amount of time investigators have for each case.
On the flip side, he said, sometimes they’ve hit the point where they don’t have anything left to do at the moment. But, he said, he wants families to know that victims are more than just a name to them.
“They are someone’s family member or friend, and the day they died is probably the worst day of many people’s lives,” he said.
Whether it’s been days, months or years, he wants family members to know his unit remains committed to solving their murder.
“Everyone can be assured that we never forget about the victims,” he said. “There is no replacement for their loved one, but it feels great to be able to notify the family that we have made an arrest.”
How you can help
Anyone with information on homicides is asked to contact Milwaukee police at 414-935-7360, or to remain anonymous, contact Crime Stoppers at 414- 224-TIPS.
A federal grand jury on Tuesday indicted a Wisconsin judge accused of helping a man evade immigration authorities, allowing the case against her to continue.
The arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan escalated a clash between President Donald Trump’s administration and local authorities over the Republican’s sweeping immigration crackdown. Democrats have accused the Trump administration of trying to make a national example of Dugan to chill judicial opposition to the crackdown.
Prosecutors charged Dugan in April via complaint with concealing an individual to prevent arrest and obstruction. In the federal criminal justice system, prosecutors can initiate charges against a defendant directly by filing a complaint or present evidence to a grand jury and let that body decide whether to issue charges.
A grand jury still reviews charges brought by complaint to determine whether enough probable cause exists to continue the case as a check on prosecutors’ power. If the grand jury determines there’s probable cause, it issues a written statement of the charges known as an indictment. That’s what happened in Dugan’s case.
Her team of defense attorneys responded to the indictment with a one-sentence statement saying that she maintains her innocence and looks forward to being vindicated in court.
Dugan was scheduled to enter a plea on Thursday.
No one immediately returned a voicemail left at the U.S. attorney’s office in Milwaukee seeking comment on the indictment.
Dugan’s case is similar to one brought during the first Trump administration against a Massachusetts judge, who was accused of helping a man sneak out a courthouse back door to evade a waiting immigration enforcement agent. That case was eventually dismissed.
Prosecutors say Dugan escorted Eduardo Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer out of her courtroom through a back jury door on April 18 after learning that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were in the courthouse seeking his arrest.
According to court documents, Flores-Ruiz illegally reentered the U.S. after being deported in 2013. Online state court records show he was charged with three counts of misdemeanor domestic abuse in Milwaukee County in March. He was in Dugan’s courtroom that morning of April 18 for a hearing.
Court documents suggest Dugan was alerted to the agents’ presence by her clerk, who was informed by an attorney that the agents appeared to be in the hallway. An affidavit says Dugan was visibly angry over the agents’ arrival and called the situation “absurd” before leaving the bench and retreating to her chambers. She and another judge later approached members of the arrest team in the courthouse with what witnesses described as a “confrontational, angry demeanor.”
After a back-and-forth with the agents over the warrant for Flores-Ruiz, Dugan demanded they speak with the chief judge and led them away from the courtroom, according to the affidavit.
She then returned to the courtroom and was heard saying words to the effect of “wait, come with me” and ushered Flores-Ruiz and his attorney out through a back jury door typically used only by deputies, jurors, court staff and in-custody defendants, according to the affidavit. Flores-Ruiz was free on a signature bond in the abuse case at the time, according to online state court records.
Federal agents ultimately captured him outside the courthouse after a foot chase.
The state Supreme Court suspended Dugan from the bench in late April, saying the move was necessary to preserve public confidence in the judiciary. A reserve judge is filling in for her.
The father of a Wisconsin teenage girl who killed a teacher and fellow student in a school shooting was charged with felonies Thursday in connection with the case, police said.
The shooting occurred at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison last December.
Jeffrey Rupnow, 42, of Madison, was taken into custody around 3:45 a.m. Thursday, police said.
Rupnow was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a child and two counts of providing a dangerous weapon to a person under 18 resulting in death. All three charges are felonies, punishable by up to six years in prison each. He was scheduled to make an initial appearance in court on Friday.
Rupnow’s daughter, 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, opened fire on Dec. 16, 2024, at Abundant Life Christian School, killing a teacher and a 14-year-old student before killing herself. Two other students were critically injured.
Jeffrey Rupnow did not immediately respond to a message The Associated Press left on his Facebook page. No one immediately returned voicemails left at possible telephone listings for him and his ex-wife, Melissa Rupnow. Online court records indicate he represented himself in the couple’s 2022 divorce and do not list an attorney for him in that case.
According to a criminal complaint, Rupnow told investigators that his daughter was traumatized by her parents’ divorce and got into shooting guns after he took her shooting on a friend’s land. He said he bought her two handguns and told her the access code to his gun safe was his Social Security number entered backward.
Investigators discovered writings in her room in which she describes humanity as “filth,” hated people, got her weapons through her father’s “stupidity” and wanted to kill herself in front of everyone. She built a cardboard model of the school and developed a schedule for her attack that ended just after noon with the notation: “ready 4 death.”
Police recovered a 9 mm Glock handgun that her father had bought her from a study hall where she opened fire and another .22-caliber pistol that her father had given to her as a Christmas present in a bag she had been carrying through the school.
Twelve days after the shooting, a Madison police detective received a message from Jeffrey Rupnow saying his biggest mistake was teaching his kid safe gun handling and urging police to warn people to change the codes on their gun safes every two to three months.
“Kids are smart and they will figure it out. Just like someone trying to hack your bank account.’ I just want to protect other families from going through what I’m going through,” he said.
Jeffrey Rupnow is the latest parent of a school shooter to face charges associated with an attack.
Last year, the mother and father of a school shooter in Michigan who killed four students in 2021 were each convicted of involuntary manslaughter. The mother was the first parent in the U.S. to be held responsible for a child carrying out a mass school attack.
The father of a 14-year-old boy accused of fatally shooting four people at a Georgia high school was arrested in September and faces charges including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for letting his son possess a weapon.
In 2023, the father of a man charged in a deadly Fourth of July parade shooting in suburban Chicago pleaded guilty to seven misdemeanors related to how his son obtained a gun license.
Abundant Life is a nondenominational Christian school that offers prekindergarten classes through high school. About 420 students attend the institution.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
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We spoke to more than 25 people who reported problems connecting via phone calls in Wisconsin prisons. The problems began intermittently after prisons began distributing free electronic tablets in March 2024, and they have worsened more recently.
Tablets were supposed to improve communication and give prisoners more flexibility to call loved ones, but the private contractor who runs the prison’s communication system has failed to keep up with increased call volume.
Wisconsin prisoners have struggled to connect with loved ones for weeks and even months as a state contractor fails to keep up with increasing demand for its call and messaging services.
The Department of Corrections last year began working with Texas-based ICSolutions, the prison system’s phone provider, to make electronic tablets free for every state prisoner. The state allocated $2.5 million to cover some of the cost. The program aims to boost quality of life behind bars by making it easier for incarcerated people to connect with their loved ones and access resources.
Intermittent problems began after some prisons began distributing the tablets in March 2024. The issues worsened this spring, prisoners and their family members say, spreading across institutions that imprison more than 23,000.
WPR and Wisconsin Watch heard from more than 25 people experiencing connection difficulties at multiple prisons. Incarcerated people described dialing a number multiple times before getting through and waiting more than an hour for calls to connect. Family members described hearing their phones ring but receiving no option to connect with the caller; some calls have dropped mid-conversation.
Family members are airing frustrations in a nearly 300-member Facebook forum launched specifically to discuss the phone problems.
Brenda McIntyre, incarcerated at Robert E. Ellsworth Correctional Center, traditionally calls her grandchildren every weekend. But the overwhelmed system blocked a recent check-in.
“‘Grandma, why didn’t you call me? You said you’re going to call me,’” McIntyre recalled one grandchild asking when they finally connected.
Phone services somewhat improved late last week, McIntyre said. But she worries about missing updates about her sister’s cancer treatment.
“It’s been a living hell,” she said.
(Photo: Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch, Audio: Addie Costello / WPR and Wisconsin Watch)
Neither ICSolutions nor its parent company responded to requests for comment. But in an undated statement on its website, the company promised improvements in the “coming weeks,” with “significant optimization coming this summer.” The statement recommended shifting calls to “off-peak hours” — before 5 p.m. or after 9 p.m. But family members say they are not always available at such hours.
Corrections spokesperson Beth Hardtke squarely blamed ICSolutions, saying state-run infrastructure and Wi-Fi access played no role in the issue.
“To be very clear, the quality of service that ICSolutions is providing is not acceptable to the department. If reliability and customer service do not improve, the department will be forced to reevaluate our contract,” Hardtke wrote in an email.
The statement from ICSolutions blamed “unexpected challenges” from increased demand for calls. But Hardtke said the company previously assured the department it could handle higher call volume during the rollout.
Prisoners in nine of Wisconsin’s 36 adult institutions — including all three women’s facilities — still lack tablets. The glitches affect them, too, because ICSolutions services the entire phone system, not just tablets.
The corrections department is pausing tablet distribution while trying to fix the reliability problems, Hardtke said.
Tablets mean more calls
Emily Curtis said she was cautiously excited when her incarcerated fiance gained access to a tablet at Stanley Correctional Institution.
Emily Curtis, director of advocacy and programming for the prisoner advocacy group Ladies of SCI, is shown with her fiance Martell and teenage son Brian. (Courtesy of Emily Curtis)
He previously could call only from the prison’s landlines and during limited hours. The tablet enabled calls most anytime, even during lockdowns. For about two months, the two talked daily — right before Curtis fell asleep and right after she woke up.
“It was great,” Curtis said. “Until everything kind of hit the fan.”
Wisconsin is not the only state prison system that has issued tablets.
Unlike some states, however, Wisconsin allows people to make calls from their cells and doesn’t limit the number of calls they can make, Hartdke said via email. That policy, which the department communicated to ICSolutions during contract negotiations, naturally increased call volume, she added.
Calls from Green Bay Correctional Institution, for instance, increased by nearly 200% after the tablet rollout, Hardtke wrote.
Curtis now hears from her fiance just once daily, usually very early in the morning. Their 14-year-old son has gone weeks without talking to his dad, Curtis said, because the phone lines are too jammed once he’s home from school.
Prison phone calls: costly for families, profitable for providers
ICSolutions and the prison system make millions each year from phone calls. The company charges six cents a minute and shares revenue with the state, adding nearly $4 million to its general fund in recent years.
Curtis said she spends roughly $250 a month on calls.
Tablets present new revenue opportunities for prison contractors. An ICSolutions affiliate sold them to incarcerated Wisconsinites before the state made them free. And even with free tablets, prisoners pay for calls, messaging and other applications.
The high cost of phone calls has long burdened the incarcerated and their families. The Federal Communications Commission last year responded by capping fees. Apps for TV and music aren’t subject to the same regulations. That makes tablets a safer investment for prison telecommunication companies, said Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative, which focuses on solutions to mass incarceration.
Incarcerated people often greet the rollout of tablets with excitement, Bertram said. But the attempt to improve virtual communication comes as Wisconsin, like other states, has restricted other communication — like physical mail.
In December 2021, the corrections department began rerouting all prisoner-bound mail to Maryland, where a company called TextBehind scans each piece of mail and sends a digital copy to those incarcerated. The controversial effort aims to reduce the flow of drugs into prisons.
The change delays access to mail and boosts reliance on tablets. As a result, technology glitches have bigger consequences, Betram said.
‘We’re helpless’: Blocked calls mean lonely holidays
Charles Gill is incarcerated at Oshkosh Correctional Institution. His fiance lives in New York, and his adult son lives in New Jersey, too far to visit in person. Gill relies largely on his tablet for communication. But online texts have been delayed by two to three days, Gill said.
“We’re helpless,” Gill said.“To be a father, not knowing what’s going on with your child, to be in a relationship with someone and not knowing what’s going on with them. God forbid something happens and somebody goes to the hospital, somebody gets hurt. We don’t know about it, and we can’t reach out to nobody and talk about it.”
Gill felt particularly helpless on Easter weekend, the anniversary of his brother’s death. He couldn’t reach any family members.
“The phones were just destroyed on (Easter) weekend, ” he said. “You could really feel the tension in the air because people weren’t able to call their families.”
He worries about a repeat around Mother’s Day.
“Having that ability to speak to someone who still sees you as a human being and not a number is vital,” said Marianne Oleson, the operations director for Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing of Wisconsin.
Shawnda Schultz, left, is shown with her mother Marcella Trimble, who has been incarcerated for about nine years. Schultz said glitches in the state prison phone system have brought her to tears. (Courtesy of Shawnda Schultz)
That’s especially the case for mothers who are incarcerated. The majority of women in prisons nationally have children under the age of 18, according to a 2016 U.S. Department of Justice report. Phone calls offer incarcerated women their only chance to act as parent, wife or daughter — ensuring their loved ones are safe, Oleson said.
The faulty phone system leaves incarcerated people with tough choices.
“We even have to choose to try the phone over going to meals,” Christa Williams, who is incarcerated at Ellsworth prison, wrote in an email.
Shawnda Schultz said phone failures have left her incarcerated mother in tears during recent calls.
“It bothers me because their phone calls are the one thing that (prisoners) have to keep them going in there, and it keeps us going too, because that’s our mother,” Schultz said.
Schultz’s sister recently delivered her first baby. If the phones don’t improve, she worries her mother will miss hearing updates, like when her grandchild says his first word.
“I found myself actually in tears because I’m just like, ‘what if something happens to my mom?’” Schultz said.
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The recent arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan – who is accused of obstructing a federal immigration arrest inside the Milwaukee County Courthouse – has intensified concerns over immigration enforcement and sparked questions about what rights individuals have when encountering federal agents.
Here’s what to know.
What is obstruction?
Obstruction occurs when a person prevents or makes it more difficult for officers to perform their duty – a definition that covers a broad range of actions, said Benjamin Van Severen, a Milwaukee-based criminal defense attorney and founder of Van Severen Law Office.
Obstruction can include physically interfering with an arrest, such as refusing to comply during a traffic stop.
“Let’s say you’re in a vehicle, and law enforcement does a traffic stop and then you refuse to unlock the doors – that could be obstruction,” said Van Severen.
Obstruction also includes providing false information to law enforcement.
According to the criminal complaint, Dugan obstructed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents by escorting the individual they intended to arrest into a nonpublic area of the courthouse after requesting the agents go to the chief judge.
A related but distinct offense from obstruction is known as harboring.
Harboring generally refers to knowingly assisting someone to remain in the United States unlawfully – typically by hiding, transporting or supporting the person in order to help avoid detention.
Knowledge and intent are critical components of the charge.
“You have to be acting with the conscious purpose of aiding their intention to remain here illegally,” said Ronald Kuby, a civil rights attorney familiar with similar cases.
“If, let’s say, Ahmed says to his neighbor, ‘Look, I need $150 to get a bus ticket to go to Canada because ICE is going to arrest me,’ it’s perfectly fine to give Ahmed that 150 bucks to go to Canada,” he said. “He may not buy that bus ticket to Canada. He may buy a bus ticket to, you know, Indianapolis, but that’s not on you.”
Different types of warrants
Understanding the difference between types of warrants is crucial in understanding immigration enforcement, particularly when it comes to where these warrants permit officers to go.
An administrative warrant permits immigration officers to arrest someone in a public place, such as a sidewalk or bus station. However, it does not allow entry into a private residence without consent.
Judicial warrants, by contrast, are signed by a judge and can authorize arrests in both public and private spaces.
Despite the differences, both administrative and judicial warrants are lawful tools that permit arrests in immigration cases, Van Severen said.
However, there are different rights that can be asserted depending on the type of warrant.
If law enforcement presents an administrative warrant, people inside a private residence have the right to refuse entry.
“If it’s not signed by a judge, they can’t come into your home without permission,” said R. Timothy Muth, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, of Wisconsin. “Ask to see the warrant. Have them slip it under the door or show it to you at your window. Look at the signature line – does it say ‘magistrate judge’?”
Other rights
Regardless of citizenship status, everyone in the U.S. has certain constitutional protections, including the right to remain silent and to speak to an attorney.
However, if the arrest is for an immigration violation and not a criminal offense, the government does not have to provide a lawyer, explained Ruby De León, staff attorney at Voces de la Frontera, an immigrant advocacy organization in Milwaukee.
Documenting activities related to immigration enforcement, such as filming and noting names and badge numbers, is also legal so long as it does not interfere with law enforcement actions, said Muth.
If people are not citizens but have documentation that permits them to stay in the country – such as a green card – they are required to keep that documentation with them, Muth said.
Muth recommends carrying documentation showing continuous presence in the country for more than two years, such as a lease agreement, pay stubs or utility bill in the person’s name.
Individuals who cannot prove they’ve been physically present in the U.S. for at least two years may be subject to expedited removal – a process that allows the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, to deport someone without a hearing before an immigration judge.
Advocates recommend ensuring documentation is current, applying for passports for U.S.-born children and pursuing citizenship or legal status if eligible, perhaps through an employer or family member.
Voces suggests completing power-of-attorney forms to prepare for potential family separation. If a person is detained or deported, these forms allow a designated individual to make medical, financial or child care decisions on the person’s behalf.
Forward Latino, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the civil rights of Latinos throughout the country, has created a tool kit regarding potential family separation.
Other resources
A city of Milwaukee municipal ID can serve as a form of identification for city residents who cannot get state identification.
Voces maintains a list of immigration, workers’ rights and family attorneys it deems trustworthy.
Voces also provides various workshops and clinics, including Know Your Rights training, citizenship classes and legal clinics. For citizenship classes, call (414) 236-0415 or email newamerican@vdlf.org. For other services or questions, call (414) 643-1620.
When a journalism nonprofit asked the Wisconsin Department of Justice in 2020 for the names and work histories of all law enforcement officers in the state, the agency initially appeared ready to grant the request.
But the department received pushback from law enforcement groups, and the records were not released.
This new information came to light in documents recently obtained by The Badger Project in its lawsuit against the state DOJ. The suit is seeking the names and work histories of most law enforcement officers in Wisconsin. The Badger Project’s co-plaintiff in the suit is the Invisible Institute, the journalism nonprofit that made the 2020 request.
Other news organizations, including the Washington Post, had seen similar requests rejected by the Wisconsin DOJ in preceding years.
In 2024, after the state DOJ denied another request for police names and work histories, this time from both the Invisible Institute and The Badger Project, the organizations sued for access.
In March, as part of the regular evidence exchange in the case, called discovery, the state DOJ released hundreds of documents to the two journalism nonprofits.
Among the documents was a letter sent by Assistant Attorney General Paul Ferguson, who heads the state DOJ’s Office of Open Government, to every police chief in the state. The letter indicated that the state DOJ intended to fulfill the request and release a list of all law enforcement officers in the state, but asked the individual agencies to identify any undercover officers who should not be included in that list.
The Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association responded with a letter to Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul the next day and urged the department to reverse itself, according to the documents obtained by The Badger Project.
Kenneth Pilegge, the association’s vice president, wrote that he had “significant concerns” in the letter.
“We have had contacts with members within our membership that have very serious concerns with this release and adamantly oppose this release without a court review,” he continued.
Neither the state DOJ nor the Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association gave a comment for this story when offered the opportunity to do so.
Kaul assumed the position of attorney general, the head of the Wisconsin Department of Justice, in 2019. The department previously rejected the request for a full list of law enforcement officers’ names and work histories several times before he became AG, according to the released documents.
Dozens of states — including Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa — have released a full list of their law enforcement officers to a nationwide reporting project, which includes the Invisible Institute and The Badger Project.
The Wisconsin DOJ has, in response to repeated requests, released a list of “flagged officers,” those who lost their jobs due to termination, resignation in lieu of termination, or resignation prior to completion of an internal investigation.
This list, however, does not include officers who were fired or forced out of law enforcement jobs in a different state before taking a position in Wisconsin.
In previous denials, Ferguson has cited concerns that a complete list could “endanger” undercover officers and pose a general risk to officers and their families in a “volatile environment.”
The state DOJ says it isn’t able to identify undercover officers and redact their names.
Wandering officers
In Wisconsin, police and jailers who were fired or forced out of a previous job in law enforcement only to get hired at another one, called wandering officers, increased by 50% from 2021 to 2024.
The total number of law enforcement officers in Wisconsin is sitting near record lows, according to investigations by The Badger Project. So the pressure to hire previously fired or forced-out officers can be high, experts say. Chiefs and sheriffs need to fill positions, and officers fired or forced out from previous jobs already have their certification, which costs law enforcement agencies and new recruits time and money to obtain. Wandering officers are more likely to again commit misconduct on the job, studies have suggested.
A full list of names of law enforcement officers, including those separated from jobs outside of Wisconsin who now hold positions in the state, would alleviate a considerable information gap, the Invisible Institute and The Badger Project argue in their lawsuit.
The records requested would not include home addresses or family information.
The lawsuit
The Badger Project’s lawsuit is being funded by The National Freedom of Information Coalition, through grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Society of Professional Journalists’ Legal Defense Fund.
The Wisconsin Transparency Project, a law firm dedicated to enforcement of the state’s open records laws, along with the University of Illinois First Amendment Clinic, filed the suit on behalf of the plaintiffs.
The parties are submitting written arguments, called briefs, to Dane County Circuit Court, and then the judge will likely rule on the case, said Tom Kamenick, lead attorney for the Wisconsin Transparency Project.
This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.
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Prosecutors nationwide must provide the defense with information that could call into question the credibility of police officers or anyone else who might testify — whether that’s a history of criminal activity, dishonesty or some other integrity violation.
In many cases, prosecutors track such information through what’s called a “Brady list” of officers. No clear Wisconsin or federal standards exist for when officers should be listed for disclosure.
The consequences for failing to disclose Brady material can be dire, even leading people to be incarcerated for crimes they didn’t commit.
Brady list policies elsewhere range widely, with some jurisdictions more meticulous than others. Such policies should consider the rights of police and citizens, experts say.
Arizona and Colorado have developed statewide disclosure systems.
When someone is charged with a crime, law enforcement testimony can play a crucial role in court, even determining whether the defendant lands in prison.
That’s why prosecutors nationwide must provide the defense with information that could call into question the credibility of officers or anyone else who might testify — whether that’s a history of criminal activity, dishonesty or some other integrity violation.
But how do prosecutors determine what to disclose about whom?
That’s where it gets complicated, and it’s the subject of an ongoing investigation by Wisconsin Watch, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and TMJ4 News called Duty to Disclose.
Many district attorneys maintain lists of officers accused of acting in ways that erode their credibility. These are often called Brady or Giglio lists, named for two U.S. Supreme Court rulings related to disclosure.
How do prosecutors across the rest of the state and country disclose such information and what best practices do experts recommend?
Here’s what to know.
What are the standards for Brady lists in Wisconsin?
No clear state or federal standards exist for when officers should be listed for disclosure.
It’s up to district attorney’s offices, which are responsible for prosecuting crimes, to maintain such records.
The district attorney should know when an officer is referred for potential criminal charges. But when officers face non-criminal internal violations, prosecutors rely on law enforcement to share that information for consideration. That’s the case in Milwaukee County, according to District Attorney Kent Lovern. If such sharing doesn’t happen, his office may be left unaware.
Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern makes decisions about which officers to put on — or take off — his Brady list. He is shown being interviewed by reporters for Wisconsin Watch, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and TMJ4 News in January 2025. (TMJ4 News)
The accuracy of a Brady list hinges on clear communication between law enforcement departments and prosecutors, said Rachel Moran, an associate law professor at University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis who has researched Brady systems nationwide.
“That is where a lot of the sloppiness happens is that prosecutors don’t set up a good system with the police for even learning about the information,” Moran said.
In Duty to Disclose, reporters asked 23 law enforcement agencies in Milwaukee County for policies governing how to handle Brady material.
Only seven provided a written policy. The Milwaukee Police Department and eight other agencies said they lacked a written policy, while the remaining seven did not respond.
What do Brady lists look like in Wisconsin?
A 2024 Wisconsin Watch investigation found some of Wisconsin’s counties keeping spotty Brady records. Records requests to 72 counties turned up more than 360 names of officers on Brady lists. The tally was incomplete since 17 counties either denied a records request or said they didn’t keep track.
Another 23 district attorneys said they had no names on file, although some said they would reach out to local agencies to update their list.
Milwaukee County disclosed incomplete information at the time. But after TMJ4 News made its own request and threatened to sue, the county released a full list of 192 officers listed for a wide range of conduct — from a recruit who cheated on a test to officers sentenced to federal prison for civil rights violations. Some officers were listed multiple times.
Of more than 200 entries on the Milwaukee County list released in September, nearly half related to an integrity or misconduct issue, such as officers lying on or off duty. About 14% related to domestic or intimate partner violence, and nearly 10% related to sex crimes, including sexual assault or possessing child pornography. Another 14% involved alcohol-related offenses.
What can go wrong if Brady disclosure doesn’t happen?
The consequences for failing to disclose Brady material can be dire, even leading people to be incarcerated for crimes they didn’t commit.
In one extreme case in 1990, an Arizona woman was convicted of kidnapping and murdering her 4-year-old son based largely on the testimony of a Phoenix police detective who had a history of lying under oath — details prosecutors did not disclose. As a result, Debra Milke sat on death row for 22 years before a judge vacated her conviction in 2014.
What are other benefits of consistent Brady list disclosure?
The lack of consistent disclosure has prompted some defense attorneys to maintain their own internal Brady systems based on information they learn, said Alissa Heydari, director of the Vanderbilt Project on Prosecution Policy and a former prosecutor.
That extra scrutiny makes it even more important for prosecutors to be aware of witness credibility issues.
“From a strategic point, you want to know the weaknesses in your own case and in your own witnesses,” Heydari said.
Consistent, transparent tracking of Brady information could also improve trust in police, Moran said.
“I don’t think this is an attack on police,” she said. “If anything, I think it could help the credibility of law enforcement to be more transparent about the officers with histories of misconduct.”
Some police unions have sought to influence how Brady lists are created or maintained — including in Los Angeles, Brooklyn and Philadelphia, according to Moran’s research.
Little federal enforcement and a lack of political incentive to challenge police power often prevent state or local tightening of Brady standards.
“Police misconduct disproportionately impacts communities that are often not heard and not represented in media investigations and not represented as well in politics and in places of power,” Moran said.
Following publication of the first Duty to Disclose installments, the Wisconsin Fraternal Order of Police criticized Milwaukee County’s Brady list release, saying officers could face “significant career and reputational damage.”
“We appeal to the legislature to establish a standardized, transparent process that ensures the protection of officers’ due process rights, while maintaining the public’s trust in the integrity of our law enforcement agencies,” the police group said in a March 4 statement.
What are best practices for maintaining Brady lists?
Brady list policies elsewhere range widely, with some jurisdictions more meticulous than others. Such policies should consider the rights of police and citizens, Heydari said.
Prosecutors are increasingly recognizing the importance of crafting such policies, but “my guess is that it’s a pretty small minority of offices that are doing it,” Heydari added.
John Jay University’s Institute for Innovation in Prosecution in 2021 highlighted 11 jurisdictions nationwide —from San Francisco to Philadelphia — that clearly spell out their policies.
The institute offers a variety of recommendations, including collecting as much information as possible from police departments about misconduct, providing staff with training, designating a group of people responsible for deciding when to list officers and crafting clear criteria for additions.
The lack of consistent disclosure by prosecutors has prompted some defense attorneys to maintain their own internal Brady systems based on information they learn about law enforcement officers’ histories. (Andrew Mulhearn for Wisconsin Watch)
“You don’t want to be frivolously adding police officers who, for instance, have unsubstantiated allegations against them,” Heydari said.
Moran cautions against making that criteria too narrow.
The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office uses strict criteria, listing officers only when they have a pending criminal charge, a past conviction or an internal investigation “that brings into question the officer’s integrity.”
That has left off, for instance, some officers who a judge found to lack credibility.
Last year, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis expanded the type of conduct
that may qualify as Brady material, announced specialized training for attorneys, created a new tracking system for judicial orders related to witness credibility and hired staff to exclusively focus on Brady compliance.
Are there any statewide Brady disclosure systems?
Arizona and Colorado have developed statewide disclosure systems, although government watchdogs have called them imperfect.
Colorado became the first state to mandate standards for tracking dishonesty in law enforcement in 2019. But a Denver Post investigation later found inconsistencies in the tracking system.
A bipartisan bill in 2021 expanded disclosure requirements, making Brady list policies and mechanisms transparent to the public. The legislation requires minimum disclosure standards for counties, with options to disclose more than is required.
Colorado maintains a searchable Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) database that includes decertifications and disciplinary files including untruthfulness. The 2021 law required dishonesty flags be made public. However, the POST website emphasizes that the database itself is not a Brady list.
Arizona lacks state mandates for tracking and disclosing Brady lists. The Arizona Prosecuting Attorneys’ Advisory Council does, however, publish a statewide database of listed officers — an effort that followed a 2020 investigation by ABC15 that found some prosecutors failed to keep accurate Brady lists. The council also publishes best practices for such disclosure.
Milwaukee County Supervisor Justin Bielinski said a statewide Brady standard and database could help the county manage liability in hiring. As Milwaukee County police departments aggressively recruit officers from other jurisdictions, those with a history of questionable policing may slip under the radar, he said. The problem of “wandering officers” is well documented.
“A state law change that would centralize this kind of record keeping or at least standardize the process for how the locals go about doing it could be helpful,” Bielinski said, adding that the county board lacks power to craft such standards for the sheriff’s department.
But Bielinski, who also serves as the communications director for state Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, doubts legislation to create Brady list standards would advance in a Legislature controlled by Republicans who more often back police groups and “tough on crime” platforms.
Larson has a different view, saying that legislation for consistency standards across law enforcement agencies and a statewide database housed at the Wisconsin Department of Justice could garner bipartisan support.
“Even Republicans would want to have consistency with their law enforcement so that they’re held to the highest standards,” Larson said.
Wisconsin state Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, is photographed during a state Senate session on June 7, 2023, in the Wisconsin State Capitol building in Madison, Wis. (Drake White-Bergey / Wisconsin Watch)
Asked if he supports statewide Brady standards, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said district attorneys should retain their discretion, which depends on a range of factors and the circumstances of the cases.
“It’s not as simple as whether somebody is on a list or not,” the Democrat told the Journal Sentinel. “There’s more analysis that needs to go into it.”
Still, Kaul said any Brady lists should be accessible and include “as much consistency as possible.”
Ashley Luthern of the Journal Sentinel and Ben Jordan of TMJ4 News contributed reporting.
This story is part of Duty to Disclose, an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 News and Wisconsin Watch. The Fund for Investigative Journalism provided financial support for this project.
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Led by Dane County, the state’s most-used criminal charge — bail jumping — is becoming far more common, even as crime falls.
Wisconsin is one of seven states that allow prosecutors to file additional charges if people violate a wide range of pretrial release conditions while a case is pending in court.
Some prosecutors say defendants are to blame for the spike, while other attorneys say prosecutors are using the charge to pad the case numbers or as leverage to secure guilty pleas.
Most states issue criminal charges only for a narrower set of violations, resulting in exponentially fewer charges.
Following a decades-long explosion of Wisconsin prosecutors charging people for violating court-ordered rules, defense attorneys and civil rights advocates are raising alarm and calling for new limits on the practice.
Wisconsin is one of seven states that allow prosecutors to file additional charges if people violate a wide range of pretrial release conditions while a case is pending in court. These rules can include avoiding certain places, abstaining from alcohol, taking drug tests or obeying a curfew.
Neighboring Minnesota is among the majority of states that issue criminal charges only for a narrower set of violations, resulting in exponentially fewer charges. But in Wisconsin, the number of charges filed by prosecutors has grown dramatically over the past two decades and has accelerated further in recent years — even as crime rates fell.
Prosecutors filed more than four times as many of these charges in 2024 as they did in 2000, making these violations by far the most common criminal charge in Wisconsin’s courts. The charges appeared in one of every four felony cases opened last year, and one in every seven misdemeanor cases, according to court system reports.
Some prosecutors say defendants are to blame for the spike, while other attorneys say prosecutors are using the charge to pad the case numbers. In funding requests to state lawmakers, prosecutors have long cited growing caseloads — driven in part by violations of release conditions — to justify needing more resources.
Defense attorneys and civil rights advocates say prosecutors are also exploiting Wisconsin’s laws to amp up pressure on people to plead guilty. Under state law, a single violation of release conditions can lead to multiple new charges being filed if the person has multiple cases pending.
Wisconsin’s public defender’s office has struggled for decades to recruit enough staff and private attorneys to take all of its cases. The office argues the growing number of charges related to court-order release conditions is now further exacerbating that challenge.
Deputy State Public Defender Katie York said her office has seen individual cases with dozens of counts — sometimes 70 or more — creating complexity that discourages private attorneys from accepting indigent clients’ cases, which could lighten the load for public defenders.
Michael Rempel, who studies the effectiveness of criminal justice strategies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, was stunned to learn from the Cap Times that violating release conditions was the most common charge in Wisconsin. Most states allow these charges only in more limited circumstances.
“I’m shocked,” Rempel said. “It sounds like it would be worth evaluating this practice, and my hypothesis would be that it might have some unintended negative consequences.”
Criminal justice research supports the practice of imposing “intermediate sanctions” on people who violate release conditions, but those sanctions need not be severe, Rempel said. In fact, “overly onerous supervision” can be counterproductive — exposing people to more charges and making them more likely to be charged with a crime again in the future, he said.
In Dane County, prosecutors filed more than twice as many of the charges in 2024 as in 2018. Ismael Ozanne, the county’s district attorney, has defended his office’s increasing use of the charges as an important tool to help keep the community safe. Last year, the county’s prosecutors filed more felony-level charges over release conditions than prosecutors in any other Wisconsin county. That includes Milwaukee County, where the population is about 60% larger.
Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne has defended his office’s increasing use of charges for violating release conditions as an important tool to help keep the community safe. Last year, his office filed more felony-level charges than prosecutors in any other Wisconsin county. Ozanne is shown in his office at the Dane County Courthouse in Madison, Wis., on Feb. 1, 2024. (Ruthie Hauge / Cap Times)
“The real question is, why are people violating their conditions of bail?” Ozanne said. “If someone is violating their bail — basically disregarding the order of the court — how would the community want us to address that?”
Still, Ozanne said he’s open to considering changes. He said Dane County is already evaluating other law enforcement practices through a Community Justice Council, which includes a committee examining pretrial release.
“This topic does come up every so often, and it’s something that we should actually look at,” Ozanne said.
“Are there conditions or things that we can do in the community that may help an individual not violate their bail conditions?” Ozanne added. “But I don’t think we’re in a position to say that they can have no bail conditions.”
‘Racking up felony counts’
In Wisconsin courtrooms, the charge for violating court-ordered release conditions is called “bail jumping.” Though the term may call to mind images of criminals skipping town to evade justice, state law uses a far broader meaning.
In most other states, bail jumping applies only to people missing their court dates. In some states, the law is even narrower, limiting the charge to people who intentionally skip court dates or don’t return to court within a set amount of time.
On the books since 1969, Wisconsin’s law says prosecutors may charge people with felony-level bail jumping for violating release conditions that stemmed from another felony-level charge. They may file misdemeanor-level bail jumping charges for violations related to a misdemeanor case.
From 2020 to 2024, Wisconsin prosecutors filed nearly 250,000bail jumping charges, according to state court system figures. During the same period, Minnesota’s court system reported prosecutors filing 336 charges for failure to appear and 636 charges for willfully disobeying a court mandate, the only potential charges for violating bail conditions in that state.
Elena Kruse, left; Jennifer Bias, middle; and Katie York are leaders of the Wisconsin State Public Defender’s Office. Bias, the agency’s top official, said the growth of criminal charges for violating release conditions is a great overreach by prosecutors. (Beck Henreckson / Cap Times)
York, the Wisconsin public defender, said some of her office’s clients have dozens of pending bail jumping charges. Those charges don’t necessarily send people back to jail or in front of a judge, though.
“You’re not so dangerous that your bail needs to be revoked, but yet you keep on racking up felony counts for either non-criminal behavior or low-level (criminal) behavior,” York said.
In 1998 and 2008, Wisconsin courts twice confirmed that prosecutors may file multiple bail jumping charges for violating the conditions of a single bond — if the defendant violated multiple conditions or had multiple pending cases. Since those rulings, bail jumping charges have proliferated in the state.
In the last three years, Wisconsin prosecutors have filed an average of nearly 50,000 charges a year for misdemeanor or felony bail jumping. That’s about twice the rate of another commonly charged crime in the state: disorderly conduct.
Three years ago, the nonprofit Wisconsin Justice Initiative found that in most of the counties it studied, more than a third of felony cases included at least one bail jumping charge.
‘Weaponizing our statutes’
Amanda Merkwae, advocacy director at the ACLU of Wisconsin, said some court-ordered release conditions are worth enforcing but only in limited situations, like when the conditions aim to protect a victim.
“There is a clear, good public policy reason why that could be a condition of bail,” Merkwae said. “I just wish that … as prosecutors wield the enormous power that they have in making charging decisions under our existing statutes, that those narrowly tailored decisions could be made instead of just weaponizing our statutes into forcing folks to plead to underlying charges they otherwise wouldn’t.”
Defense attorneys say bail jumping charges give prosecutors more leverage to pressure a defendant to plead guilty since the new charges can come with more jail or prison time than the original charges. Under state law, each felony bail jumping conviction may result in up to six years in prison.
“We’ve seen cases where a person goes to trial on the underlying case and gets a not guilty (verdict), but they still are saddled with a felony because of the felony bail jumping,” York said. “That feels inherently unfair, especially when you’re talking about a felony. Now you can’t possess a firearm. Now you have all of the other restrictions that come along with being a felon.”
Bail jumping charges can be easier to prove than underlying charges, depending on the evidence or witnesses needed in the original case. Presented with all their charges, some defendants plead guilty to an underlying charge in exchange for prosecutors dismissing some or all of the bail jumping charges, Ozanne said. In Dane County, more than eight in every 10 bail jumping charges are dismissed.
While about 96% of Dane County criminal cases are resolved by plea deals, Ozanne disputes that bail jumping charges are driving those pleas.
“I think there is, frankly, a high frequency of people accepting responsibility and looking to get on with their lives and hopefully, at some level, looking to repair harm,” he said.
Wisconsin State Public Defender Jennifer Bias disagrees with that view, calling the growth of bail jumping charges “great overreach” by prosecutors.
“They do dismiss an inordinate number of them, but I feel like that’s because they’re charging an inordinate number,” Bias said. “How much work would we take out of the system if we could find a different way to deal with that alleged behavior?”
‘I have not trumped out more bail jumping’
Ozanne disputes that prosecutors are filing more bail jumping charges in an effort to inflate their case counts when requesting funding, a concern raised by the state Legislature’s nonpartisan auditing agency.
“I’ve been indicating that we are understaffed since I took office in 2010. I have not trumped out more bail jumping as an indication … that we need more prosecutors,” Ozanne said. “We don’t have the time to generate more cases just to show that we have a need for bodies.”
Source: Wisconsin Court System (Brandon Raygo / Cap Times)
Ozanne said a more likely reason for the spike in bail jumping charges is the COVID-19 pandemic, which shuttered the county’s courthouse for more than a year and delayed many trials. At the height of the backlog, the average time to resolve a felony case grew to 11 months, nearly twice the average before the pandemic.
Craig Johnson, board president of the Wisconsin Justice Initiative and longtime Wisconsin defense attorney, said Ozanne’s explanation is plausible, though it’s hard to know without examining individual cases.
“It’s somewhat common sense that if a person is out on bail for two years, and it takes that long to get their case resolved, there’s a higher possibility that they will violate a condition of release here or there than if their case is resolved in a shorter period of time,” Johnson said.
Still, he said, the reason could be that prosecutors discovered “a very potent tool.”
“It’s sometimes too good for them to pass up,” Johnson said. “For a prosecutor, it’s a way to make sure that they’re going to bring that case to a close and not have to get contested at a jury trial.”
Bias doesn’t buy Ozanne’s pandemic explanation. She questioned why the number of bail jumping charges would remain at elevated levels in 2023 and 2024 after the court cleared its backlog of cases.
“If that’s true, we would absolutely see the trends going back down,” Bias said.
‘Maybe this isn’t working’
Vernell Cauley and Tyrees Scott have each been charged with multiple bail jumping charges in Dane County. They now work in jobs supporting other formerly incarcerated people and view the surge in charges over release conditions as exploitative.
Cauley is a peer support specialist with EXPO Wisconsin, an advocacy group made up of formerly incarcerated people. Cauley said many people sign release agreements without realizing how many rules they must follow. Cauley said the additional charges were enough in some of his cases to convince him to plead guilty.
“The stack of charges creates the sense of more fear, more thoughts of not being able to get out of the situation,” Cauley said. “It’s a way to keep people oppressed.”
Scott, a peer support specialist with Madison nonprofit Just Dane, said Dane County prosecutors are “notorious” for filing bail jumping cases to pressure defendants.
“When they get to adding up all that time, you get a little nervous and scared so then you’ll take whatever they give you,” Scott said.
The Dane County Courthouse in Madison, Wis., is pictured on Sept. 30, 2024. Wisconsin is one of seven states that allow prosecutors to file additional charges if people violate a wide range of pretrial release conditions while a case is pending in court. (Ruthie Hauge / Cap Times)
For a 2020 report on the rise in bail jumping charges, the Cap Times spoke to a Madison man who, as a teen, racked up around nine bail jumping charges for missing court-ordered appointments or getting caught with drugs. He said he didn’t have a car to get from Stoughton to his appointments, and he wasn’t offered drug treatment until he was later transferred to drug court.
Sometimes the new charges would send him back to jail. Nearly everyone he met in jail had been charged with bail jumping too, he said.
It’s a familiar scenario to York, the deputy state public defender. She said the reason many people violate conditions of their release is because they’re poor, dealing with addiction or don’t have adequate transportation.
“A lot of the bail jumping (charges) stem not from this intentional thwarting of the rules, but from the realities of the place in the world that our clients live in,” York said. “We’re filling up jails and prisons and putting in more roadblocks for our clients to get into a successful place.”
Bail jumping has twice drawn attention from state lawmakers in recent years but led to no changes in state law either time.
In 2019, a bipartisan group of legislators proposed eliminating felony-level bail jumping and reducing the maximum penalty for a misdemeanor bail jumping conviction. The bill would also have limited the charge to intentionally missing a court date, or violating an order to avoid a certain place or person.
Four years later, Republican lawmakers called for setting a minimum bail amount of $5,000 for people previously convicted of bail jumping. That legislation followed a high-profile attack in Waukesha. A man who had been previously charged with bail jumping plowed his SUV into the city’s Christmas parade, killing six.
Neither the bipartisan bill nor the Republican legislation gained enough support to pass the Legislature. In the coming months, the Legislature will be back in Madison debating the state’s next two-year budget, including how much funding toallocate for prosecutors and public defenders.
York said she’s holding out hope that state lawmakers could one day narrow the scope of bail jumping to reduce how often it’s filed or reduce the severity of charges.
“It’s probably costing taxpayers a lot of money to do all of these additional prosecutions,” York said. “So I’m hopeful that people will realize maybe this isn’t working and we need to rethink it.”
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