Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has made its position clear. The agency refuses to require its agents to follow Milwaukee’s law banning masks. Since it is unable to come to this common sense conclusion itself, the remedy is for Milwaukee City Attorney Evan Goyke to sue. This is how we keep secret police at bay.

Goyke has taken the first step. In a July 17 letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, he defends the ICE out MKE ordinance, stating that masked law enforcement “increases the risk of dangerous interactions with the public, undermines accountability and police community relations, and stokes confusions, fear, and intimidation.”

Milwaukee prohibits ICE agents from wearing masks. The Department of Homeland Security staunchly refuses to follow this sensible rule despite a Milwaukee Police Department standard operating procedure that models this basement level of transparency. We need to know what ICE is doing. We need to know who you are. We need to see your faces.

DHS claims that it won’t follow Milwaukee’s ordinance because of the Supremacy Clause. Their claim asserts that municipalities cannot create rules that prevent employees from performing federal duties and, in most cases, the Supremacy Clause makes sense.

We wouldn’t want a city ordinance to keep the U.S. Census Bureau from collecting population data. We wouldn’t want municipalities to prevent the National Weather Service from studying tornados. At the same time, identifiable and transparent federal law enforcement is not at odds with the rule of law. 

Clarity and accountability is at the heart of our Fifth Amendment’s promise of due process. The Supremacy Clause does not supersede our Constitution’s protections. The clause itself is a component of our Constitution (Article VI, Clause 2) and no article or clause may violate the Bill of Rights. 

The Mask-Free MKE ordinance took time to create. Over and over again, our church members returned to the Common Council’s galley seats as the rule was amended, re-written and reviewed by our city attorney, Evan Goyke. Goyke’s job is to make sure that the proposed ordinance is constitutional and enforceable. Goyke’s verdict is that the people of Milwaukee can prohibit masked law enforcement.

Consider the current situation of Giovanni Sosa, a 20-year old with no criminal record. Gio came to the United States when he was 4 years old. Recently, he was snatched by masked ICE agents, leaving his wife Litzy without her husband and his 2 year old daughter without her father.

Gio has worked construction jobs since he was 14 and has never run afoul of law enforcement. Last week, while heading to the barber, his car was surrounded and blocked. His window was smashed and he was handcuffed and dragged to  detention. As he was shoved into a government car, Gio had the presence of mind to yell out his mother’s phone number. Had he not done so, he simply would not have returned home from the errands he was running. Who took him? Where was he? Was his detention legal? Was the use of force necessary?

Our Constitution protects us from having to ask these questions. The Fifth Amendment states that “no person” shall be deprived of life or liberty without protections against arbitrary government actions. Surely, masks cross this line.

DHS claims that it must allow its employees to wear masks for their safety. Lauren Bis, a DHS spokesperson, states, “Sanctuary politicians attempting to ban our federal law enforcement from wearing masks is … a flagrant attempt to endanger our officers.” 

The Trump administration’s immigration enforcers fear that without masks, their employees’ actions would instigate such a strong public outcry that they would be forced to hold officers accountable. They don’t want the public to identify officers responsible for using excessive force. How can DHS officials be opposed to basic transparency before the public it serves?

This is where City Attorney Evan Goyke can help. DHS has convinced itself that the Supremacy Clause supersedes the Constitution. Its insistence that secrecy and obfuscation is a means to serve the people is a slippery rationalization that leads to a secret police force. City Attorney Goyke should sue ICE and require the agency to comply with the law. It is for the good of the residents of Milwaukee, for ICE’s own agents, for MPD officers and for our democratic heritage. This moment of trial will turn our commitment to defend our rights into steel. Our’s is a nation without a secret police. Masks cross a line. At this pivotal hour, Milwaukee must lead.

In a strongly worded letter to federal prosecutors, Milwaukee City Attorney Evan Goyke rejected the U.S. Department of Justice demand that he provide assurances by Friday that neither he, the Milwaukee Police Department nor any other city entity would enforce an ordinance prohibiting law enforcement officers from wearing masks and concealing their identities.

“The only assurances I can offer you,” Goyke wrote in his July 17 letter to Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate and First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin Brad Schimel, “are that [the ordinance] is a vital public safety measure, that I will not advise my clients to exempt federal law enforcement officers from enforcement of the Ordinance against them, and that my office will prosecute any validly issued citation for acts in violation of the Ordinance.”

Masked and unidentified law enforcement officers endanger public safety, Goyke wrote, by undermining accountability and police-community relations, stoking confusion, fear and intimidation and heightening the risk that “bad actors will harm others by impersonating officers” and also that “individuals might resist legitimate law enforcement actions where they otherwise would not due to the fear that they are facing an imposter.”

“You express great concern for the safety of federal law enforcement officers throughout your letter,” he added, “but not once do you express any similar concern for the safety of the public.” 

The ordinance, Goyke wrote, does not restrict the federal officers’ ability to perform their lawful duties while protecting the safety and welfare of residents and visitors of Milwaukee.

“the City and the public have a right to know if masked, armed, and unidentified men seizing people on our streets are who they say they are,” he wrote, objecting to the federal government’s insistence that immigration officers be allowed to conceal their identities “at their discretion.”

“Unfortunately, in the case of federal immigration officers, in particular, that unbounded discretion, coupled with guns and a lack of accountability, has had tragic consequences in cities across the country, most recently in Houston, Texas and Biddeford, Maine,” Goyke wrote, referring to recent fatal shootings by immigration officers in those cities. He also described “unnecessarily aggressive tactics” used by ICE officers in Milwaukee, including “boxing in cars, pointing guns and Tasers at people, breaking car windows, and pinning people on the ground.

“Many drove in unmarked vehicles and wore face coverings,” he added.

Goyke disputed the federal government’s claim that the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution makes ordinances such as Milwaukee’s illegal, citing a 1988 circuit court ruling that held “the Supremacy Clause was not intended to be a shield for ‘anything goes’ conduct by federal law enforcement officers,” as well as the 1920 federal court ruling that held “An employee of the United States does not secure a general immunity from state law while acting in the course of his employment.”

He acknowledged that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently issued an injunction pending appeal of California’s law enforcement identification requirement, but said he does not agree with that ruling, adding that no federal court has issued a final ruling on the matter.

The letter closes by stating “this office approved the Ordinance as legal and enforceable. Neither the preliminary court rulings in other jurisdictions nor your letter convince us to change that opinion.”

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Republicans released their latest budget resolution Wednesday, the first step in a long and complicated process that could allow Congress to approve a third party-line bill. 

The 47-page document, once adopted by both chambers, would send instructions to four House committees to draft bills that would be bundled into a roughly $95 billion package. 

• The Administration Committee could provide a maximum of $10 billion that would likely create a grant program for states that institute voter identification requirements.
• The Agriculture Committee would be able to spend no more than $12 billion for farm aid.
• The Armed Services Committee could write a bill that gives the Defense Department a maximum of $60 billion to account for increased costs related to the war with Iran and other military actions taken by the Trump administration. 
• The Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence would be able to approve up to $13 billion in new spending.

House floor votes as soon as next week

The House Budget Committee is scheduled to debate and vote on the budget resolution Thursday. It’s possible that is followed by floor debate and a vote to send the resolution to the Senate as soon as next week. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., could hold a floor vote on the budget resolution in that chamber before its lawmakers depart for their August recess, though it wasn’t immediately clear Wednesday whether there is enough support among GOP senators to approve the measure. 

Thune has been skeptical about using for a third time the complex budget reconciliation process the party used to enact its “big, beautiful” law last year and provide $70 billion in additional spending for immigration enforcement earlier this year. 

Senate debate on the budget resolution is significantly different than in the House. It requires a marathon amendment voting session that typically lasts overnight and leads to tough votes for Republican senators facing reelection this November. By contrast, House floor debate likely won’t include votes on any amendments. 

Elections and defense

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., posted to social media shortly after the budget resolution was released that the reconciliation process would provide a way for Congress to change how elections work and appropriate more funding for defense. 

“Safeguarding American elections and strengthening our national defense are the most basic responsibilities of Congress and are supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans,” Johnson wrote, before criticizing Democrats for voting against Republicans’ SAVE America Act.

It’s unlikely Republicans will be able to include the full text of that bill, which would require Americans to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID to cast a ballot, given the rules of the budget reconciliation process. 

Every provision in the package must have an impact on federal spending, revenue, or the debt that isn’t deemed “merely incidental” by the Senate parliamentarian.

House Budget Committee ranking member Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., wrote in a statement he plans “to fight like hell to make sure taxpayer dollars are being used to lower costs and make life better for American families, not to bankroll Trump’s giveaways to billionaires and endless wars overseas.”

“Republicans have already made life worse for American families and added trillions to the national debt,” Boyle wrote. “Now, this ‘America Last’ budget would add tens of billions more to the national debt to fund the most unpopular war in American history.” 

A quarter millennium after its founding, the United States faces a stark choice that will define its future.

In the years ahead, the country can continue to follow the path blazed by President Donald Trump, who is attempting to bring states under the authority of a more powerful federal government led by him. Or it can move in a different direction, one where states become a heavier counterweight to an aggressive White House and rebalance the relationship between the states and the federal government.

The United States’ foundations are undergoing a significant stress test, experts say, raising questions about whether a radical reconception of the nation lies ahead. The federalism that has helped bind the states — and therefore, the nation — together is fraying, pulled apart by a president who demonstrates little regard for many of the nation’s core principles.

David Adkins, executive director and CEO of the Council of State Governments, a national group that represents all three branches of state government, said state-federal tensions were escalating long before Trump.

“I wonder if we will come to a breaking point in which the institutions of government no longer serve the society in which we live,” said Adkins, a former Kansas Republican state lawmaker.

“And again,” he said, “we will be required to balance personal liberty and freedoms against what powers we want the government to exercise.”

While a long line of modern presidents have expanded the powers of their office, Trump has wielded the executive branch as a weapon to punish states and those state leaders he views as enemies. Federal dollars and resources have become a form of leverage he has tried to use to pursue his political aims and deliver the retribution he promised to, if reelected. He is trying to assert an unprecedented level of White House control over state-run elections.

How states — and the people — respond will forever shape the nation.

As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding, Stateline has been exploring how the Trump era is transforming the relationship between the states and the federal government. This article is the fourth in an occasional series examining the fraught moment and what evolving — and often deteriorating — state-federal ties mean for the country, now and in the future.

As the Trump administration has been aggressively pursuing its agenda on immigration, election restrictions and other issues, Democratic states have been developing playbooks of resistance that could endure even after Trump’s time in office. They have enacted laws aimed at regulating the behavior of federal agents and preventing any attempts to illegally subvert the November midterm elections, for instance.

At least eight states have adopted laws limiting masking by law enforcement, according to Prosecutors Alliance Action, a nonprofit advocacy group that supports the legislation. The mask restrictions are in response to the widespread use of masks by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol and other federal agents, as well as anger over the deployment of agents in places such as Minneapolis and Los Angeles.

Some states have also taken action to thwart any federal attempt to take over elections, which under the U.S. Constitution are run by the states. Administration officials have refused to rule out sending federal agents or troops to the polls, something already prohibited under federal law except in extremely narrow circumstances.

In late May, California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill that prohibits election officials from providing federal agents with access to voter lists or technology absent a court order. And New Mexico lawmakers earlier this year passed a bill to prohibit troops at polling places.

More recently, officials in some states threatened legislation to undercut Trump’s Anti-Weaponization Fund by taxing payments at 100%. Critics argued that the fund would be used to pay off the president’s allies. The U.S. Department of Justice has said it is backing off plans for the fund amid bipartisan opposition in Congress, but leaders have refused to confirm that in writing and a federal judge has said a lawsuit against the fund can proceed.

Collectively, these efforts offer a window into how states are testing ways to push back against the White House. While the Trump administration is challenging some of these measures in court, Democratic state lawmakers have demonstrated that state-level resistance to increasingly aggressive exercises of federal power is possible.

“It is incumbent upon state legislators and state governments to protect their people from this incredible overreach and this display of horrors and egregious behaviors we are seeing from the federal government,” said Pennsylvania state Sen. Amanda Cappelletti, a Democrat who has been pushing restrictions on ICE.

In response to Stateline’s questions for this series, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement: “The Trump Administration faithfully upholds our Constitution and the immortalized American principles of federalism, the rule of law, and the separation of powers.”

Rethinking the Constitution

Conservatives have long complained that the federal government has grown too large and too powerful. As Democrats fight Trump, some Republicans see an opportunity to forge a new bipartisan consensus in favor of states’ authority.

Pennsylvania state Sen. Cris Dush, a Republican, said the federal government has been overreaching since at least Woodrow Wilson’s presidency in the early 20th century. He argues that too many powers have been ceded to the executive branch that belong to legislators. 

“And that’s why we have a republic, not a democracy and not a king. It’s not supposed to go with the whims of either the public or whoever the chief executive is, and that’s why you’re now starting to see Democrats get on board with this,” Dush said.

“I’m glad to welcome anybody to this party that wants to come, because it’s all about getting the legislative authority back.”

Dush supports a convention of the states to draft proposed changes to the Constitution that limit federal power. The idea of calling a convention has long percolated in statehouses, especially among Republicans, but support for the idea appears to have grown in recent years.

Article V of the Constitution requires Congress to call a constitutional convention if two-thirds of state legislatures demand one but sets out few details about how such a gathering would operate. Any amendments proposed by a convention would need to be approved by three-fourths of the states.

Several different campaigns are pushing states to demand a convention, including one focused on a balanced budget amendment and another that seeks term limits. Collectively, 28 state legislatures have called for a convention, according to the good government group Common Cause, which opposes a convention. Thirty-six states must call for a convention to trigger one.

Former Utah Republican Gov. Gary Herbert has pushed for a balanced budget amendment to rein in federal spending and the ballooning national debt for more than 15 years. He said that states must lead the effort because Congress lacks the courage to confront the issue. 

“The burgeoning debt is just the result of not having appropriate balance between the state and federal government,” he said.

While conservatives and liberals fear a so-called runaway convention that could radically reshape the face of American government, Herbert said those same fears were present 250 years ago as the Founding Fathers met in Philadelphia to reshape the Articles of Confederation into the current Constitution.

“Well, the result was pretty good,” he said. “You know, we got this great Constitution everybody says was really a divinely inspired kind of a thing. … The Founding Fathers were brilliant in putting the Constitution together and said, ‘Here’s a role for the federal government, but here’s a larger role even for the states.’”

Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt said he wants states to have more control of federal spending. Bypassing Washington, D.C.’s bureaucracy would give states more authority and stewardship over federal taxpayer dollars, he said, forcing states to live within their means and end incentives to freely accept federal dollars rather than lose them to another state.

“So we have to change that incentive, and I think that’s a reasonable way to do it,” he said in an interview. “Now, Oklahoma would handle our own roads, bridges, etcetera, and I just think that the incentive would be totally different, and there would truly be 50 laboratories of democracy.”

Stitt is chair of the bipartisan National Governors Association. He’s criticized Trump’s deployment of the National Guard into blue states. But he said presidents of both parties have wielded the growing might of the federal government to influence policies across the country.

He pointed to Trump’s efforts to kill already-approved offshore wind energy projects, and he highlighted the Keystone Pipeline extension, which was thwarted by Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden but embraced by Trump. He called those sorts of turnabouts “un-American.”

“We’re in a terrible situation if this continues to happen in our country,” he said. “This is like what we’ve made fun of in these Third World countries from dictator to dictator.”

Unlike Stitt, critics of a convention of the states fear it could result in a dramatic overhaul of the Constitution that would endanger core liberties and freedoms. And because the Constitution provides few rules for how a convention would work, they worry the process would be susceptible to influence by wealthy interests.

Adkins, the Council of State Governments CEO, said a convention of the states could become more likely as state-federal tensions increase. He said states should begin having dispassionate conversations about how they would respond if a convention is called, what it would look like, and who would be in charge.

“Those are a lot of questions that we just don’t know about,” Adkins said. “But that’s sort of the ultimate nuclear option for the states in a dysfunctional federal system.”

States are ‘better prepared’

Whether a convention of the states ever takes place, the conversation surrounding the idea underscores the depth of frustration with the current state-federal relationship.

Last year a Gallup survey found that 62% of Americans believe the federal government has too much power, the highest percentage recorded since 2002. It was also the first time since 2007 that Democrats were more likely than Republicans to say the federal government is too powerful.

But what happens once Trump leaves office?Will at least some anger at the federal government dissipate?

Trump is a very unpopular president when compared against the past four executives to hold the White House. His disapproval rating stood at 58% on July 2, according to a New York Times daily average of polling on the president. Just 39% of Americans approve of the job he’s doing, down from nearly 50% in the weeks after his inauguration in January 2025.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, said the way Trump has pushed the envelope could become a new normal “if the wrong people get elected.” But few people who run for president want to bully states, she said.

“They’re not looking to be king. They’re not looking to be a dictator,” Kelly said. “And there is plenty to do just with the responsibilities and the authority that the federal government traditionally has that there’s no need to go that way.”

A presidential administration that makes clear it will give states as much leeway as possible as it advances its agenda will go far in rebuilding relationships between the states and the federal government, said former New Jersey Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman.

But if not, states have learned from the Trump era.

“The states know what the potential dangers are,” Whitman said, “and they’re getting better prepared.”

In the birthplace of the nation, Philadelphians this spring were gearing up for a raucous Independence Day celebration. But feelings were mixed in this liberal stronghold, said Pennsylvania House Speaker Joanna McClinton, a Democrat who represents parts of Philadelphia.

She said Trump misunderstands the distinct powers of the states and is “trampling the American order” by seeking to upend American federalism. 

She and other Democrats in the closely divided commonwealth are trying to push back on the federal government through words and deeds.

But she said this administration hasn’t soured the excitement and pride in the American experiment. Republican and Democratic lawmakers were eager to participate in special sessions outside of Harrisburg this year in Philadelphia, where the founders signed both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

“People recognize the challenges of the hour, and they make every effort to engage politically so we can get out of this mess,” she said. “But it doesn’t fully dampen the mood of being grateful for what this country still represents, and the potential that it still has.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to clarify comments from David Adkins, executive director and CEO of the Council of State Governments.

States Newsroom reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@statesnewsroom.com. Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court issued a stay Monday in the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera’s lawsuit against local sheriff’s departments partnering with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declining to hear arguments in the case until a federal appeal is exhausted. 

Voces filed the lawsuit against ICE’s 287(g) agreements with local sheriff’s departments last year and in December, the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed to accept the case as an original action. Across Wisconsin, 23 sheriff’s offices have agreed to assist federal immigration enforcement efforts through the controversial program. 

The Court’s decision to stay the case comes as ICE has become more active across the country in recent weeks, including in southern Wisconsin where dozens of immigrants were arrested by ICE last week. 

After the state court agreed to hear the case, the sheriffs of Walworth, Brown, Marathon, Kenosha and Sauk counties sued to move the case to federal court. U.S. Judge William Conley ruled in May they waited too long to file the petition and sent the case back to the state court.

The sheriffs have filed an appeal of the district court decision. Voces had requested that the Supreme Court set a schedule for filing briefs and holding arguments while the federal appeal is pending. 

In its Monday order, the Court said it wouldn’t move forward with the state case until the federal appeals are exhausted.

“To avoid potential uncertainty and conflict, we decline the petitioner’s request to order a briefing schedule that would allow the case to proceed simultaneously with the federal appeal of the order remanding the case to this court, and we grant a stay pending further order of this court,” the Court ruled. 

According to federal court records, the sheriffs’ briefs to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals are due by August 5 and Voces’ response is due by September 4.

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Tuesday that its agents arrested 39 people across Wisconsin over the final weekend in June — among the largest enforcement operations in the state since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025.

An ICE spokesperson claimed that “many” of those arrested had criminal records, including convictions for sexual abuse, driving under the influence and drug possession; Wisconsin Watch and NNS could not independently verify the agency’s count nor the number of detainees with prior convictions.

“All of the illegal aliens arrested have or will receive full due process. They will remain in ICE custody pending their removal or removal proceedings,” the spokesperson wrote.

The operation sent shock waves through the city’s immigrant neighborhoods as residents shared video and photos of alleged ICE enforcement actions in Milwaukee across social media. 

Immigrant rights advocacy group Voces de la Frontera told reporters at a Tuesday morning press conference that its network of volunteers has recorded more than two dozen arrests over the past week, primarily in and around Milwaukee. Executive Director Christine Neumann-Ortiz interrupted her remarks to share reports of an additional three arrests in Fitchburg, a Madison suburb. Neumann-Ortiz said her team is aware of Wisconsin detainees held as far away as Florida, though many remain in detention facilities in Wisconsin and Illinois.

Neumann-Ortiz, flanked by Milwaukee Ald. Marina Dimitrijevic and Milwaukee County supervisor Juan Miguel Martinez, also noted that ICE agents used the Milwaukee Police Department’s (MPD) District 2 station parking lot as a staging area for operations at least once during the weekend’s operation. MPD has since clarified that it did not give ICE officers permission to use the parking lot and, upon learning of the incident, asked the federal agency not to stage in the lot.

The Common Council voted unanimously in March to bar ICE officers from using city property as staging areas during enforcement operations. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson enacted a similar rule via executive order last fall as ICE mounted a much larger enforcement push in Illinois.

Milwaukee’s policy includes no clear enforcement mechanism, nor does Milwaukee County’s new requirement that immigration authorities secure permission before staging in county parks — a policy Martinez claims agents also violated over the weekend by gathering at Mitchell Park on Milwaukee’s South Side. “It’s not that (the city’s rule) is not working,” said Dimitrijevic. “It’s not being respected.” 

While both MPD and the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office do not conduct immigration arrests as a matter of policy, both agencies have raised questions about their roles in enforcing local laws intended to constrain ICE activity. “No one has given us an answer” as to the circumstances in which local law enforcement officers could arrest a federal counterpart, Milwaukee County Sheriff Denita Ball said during a February town hall on Milwaukee’s South Side. 

“Given the legal questions that have been presented,” an MPD spokesperson wrote in an email on Tuesday afternoon, “the Department has requested a formal written legal opinion from the City Attorney’s Office regarding the ordinance’s applicability and enforceability.” The Milwaukee City Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Martinez suggested that local governments could sue the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — ICE’s parent agency — for violating city and county rules. “Right now, we’re just gathering as much information as we possibly can,” he said on Tuesday.

ICE’s ongoing operation in Wisconsin seems to mark a departure from the agency’s standard operations in the state over the past year. Agency records indicate most of the at least 1,700 immigration arrests in Wisconsin over the past year took place in prisons, jails, courts and the DHS field office in downtown Milwaukee. 

While roughly 80% of those arrested by ICE in Wisconsin between January 2025 and March 2026 had prior criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, most immigrants arrested during check-ins at the DHS office had no prior criminal history.

Daylight arrests in full view of the public have been relatively rare, but relatives of those arrested over the weekend — and some detainees themselves — describe a shift in tactics. 

Galo Suárez, a Nicaraguan asylum seeker detained alongside his fiancee and her brother on Sunday, offered a vivid account of his arrest on Milwaukee’s South Side. An unmarked truck pulled in front of his car along S. 13th Street, and four more appeared to box him in. “An agent broke the window with his gun drawn,” he told reporters. “They didn’t ask for our identification, they didn’t ask for our names. They just took us down violently, and when my fiancee tried to ask why, one of them pushed her against the car (and) said she was provoking him.” 

He also alleged that an agent called his fiancee a “bitch” during the arrest.  

Asylum seekers like Suárez, his fiancee and her brother are eligible for work permits while awaiting rulings on their asylum applications. The agent who found his work permit while searching his wallet insisted it was forged, Suárez said. 

Agents released Suárez later that day, but his fiancee, 25-year-old Reyna Elizabeth Garcia, remains in custody in Kenosha County. He doesn’t know the whereabouts of his would-be brother-in-law, 37-year-old Teodoro Rafael Garcia. “They took the cuffs off and told me to not look back,” he said. Shaken by his run-in with immigration authorities, Suárez said he plans to leave Milwaukee for the time being. 

Friends and relatives of Estenderly Marte Polanco, an undocumented immigrant from the Dominican Republic, shared photographs of bruises, scrapes and cuts on Marte Polanco’s neck, arms and lip — all allegedly left by immigration officers who pulled her out of her car on Saturday morning during a traffic stop on Milwaukee’s South Side. Marte Polanco’s son watched the arrest from the car’s back seat. 

“Our kids are not doing well,” said Frankeli, the father of Marte Polanco’s children. Frankeli, who is undocumented, asked Wisconsin Watch to refer to him by his first name alone while he navigates the aftermath of Marte Polanco’s arrest. 

Wisconsin court records show no prior convictions or citations under Marte Polanco’s name, nor any prior convictions or citations tied to Suárez, his fiancee or her brother.

Olivia Villarreal, the wife and business partner of El Rey grocery store chain co-founder Ernesto Villarreal, said a manager of her store on West Burnham Street saw ICE agents follow a vehicle into the parking lot, arrest a man and leave quickly Monday. An onlooker caught the arrest on video. 

Villarreal’s message for the wary public: “Don’t be intimidated and try to live your normal life.  You have to live and feed your family, attend church and school.”

ICE announces 39 Wisconsin arrests in one of state’s largest immigration enforcement sweeps is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Federal immigration authorities conducted a wave of arrests in greater Milwaukee over the final weekend in June as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched what it called a “targeted operation” in and around the city.

The operation — likely the largest in Milwaukee since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025 — sent shock waves through the city’s immigrant neighborhoods as residents shared video and photos of alleged ICE enforcement actions in Milwaukee across social media. 

Immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera tallied 18 arrests in the metro area within the last week, though Wisconsin Watch and NNS have not yet independently corroborated that total.

Details remain scarce, but an attorney representing several of the arrestees says none of his clients have prior convictions in Wisconsin or outstanding removal orders. 

Milwaukee immigration attorney Marc Christopher cited three examples from the past weekend: a woman from the Dominican Republic arrested in front of her 7-year-old son; twins from Mexico cornered in their driveway on Milwaukee’s South Side; and a Salvadoran man picked up outside the Waukesha County Courthouse after appearing for a traffic ticket. 

ICE activity

ICE officers surrounded Estenderly Marte Polanco near South 23rd and Greenfield streets on Milwaukee’s South Side Saturday morning. 

“There were four of them,” said Frankeli, the father of Marte Polanco’s children. Both Marte Polanco and Frankeli are undocumented; he asked NNS to refer to him by his first name alone out of fear that authorities could target him next.

The pair were running errands with their son when agents stopped their car, shattered a window and handcuffed Marte Polanco, he said. Wisconsin court records show no prior convictions or citations under Marte Polanco’s name. Frankeli said he heard the ICE agents shout that she had an arrest warrant as they took her away. 

“They didn’t give us anything (on paper),” he said. Marte Polanco was in custody at the Waukesha County jail as of Monday, according to Christopher — one of six county detention facilities in Wisconsin that hold ICE detainees. 

Christopher’s client from El Salvador was awaiting a hearing in his ongoing immigration court case at the time of his arrest in Waukesha on Saturday. “He hadn’t even missed a court date,” Christopher said. Federal immigration courts do not hear criminal cases, but the Trump administration broke with decades of precedent last year by requiring detention for any immigrant facing an active removal case.

Court records confirm the 32-year-old has no prior criminal convictions in Wisconsin. His traffic ticket — a May citation for driving without a license — is a common infraction for undocumented immigrants barred from obtaining driver’s licenses under Wisconsin law. Wisconsin Watch and NNS have not been able to reach the man to ask permission to use his name. An ICE detainee locator listed him in custody in Greene County, Missouri, as of Monday morning.

Federal authorities informed the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) that they planned to conduct “targeted enforcement for criminal activity in the area,” according to an MPD spokesperson. Both the police department and the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office referred questions about the operations to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE’s parent agency.

DHS did not respond to questions about the scope of the operation. Instead, a spokesperson offered details about a June 26 traffic stop in which officers “encountered three illegal aliens including some with criminal histories including misappropriating identification to obtain money.” 

The arrests prompted advocacy group Forward Latino to issue a community alert on June 27, and other immigrant rights organizations are still gathering details on the weekend’s events. 

“We know how ICE has arrested people for everything from parking tickets to — whatever — in the past,” said Milwaukee Turners Executive Director Emilio De Torre. “I have no confidence that they’re just seeking people that are under lawful deportation orders.”

Voces de la Frontera, an immigrant rights organization based on Milwaukee’s South Side, issued alerts on Friday and Monday of confirmed ICE sightings in the city and also Waukesha. The group has been canvassing the South Side sharing information with residents on what to do if they encounter ICE agents. 

Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, also issued a video statement, urging residents to stay cautious and know their rights. 

“You are not obligated to answer any questions and should demand to speak to a lawyer before you respond or sign anything,” she said. 

Immigration enforcement records through March 2026 released by the nonprofit Deportation Data Project suggest ICE officers arrested at least 1,700 people in Wisconsin between January 2025 and March 2026. Roughly 20% of immigrants arrested in Wisconsin during that period had neither prior convictions nor pending criminal charges, including more than 100 people arrested during check-ins at the DHS field office in downtown Milwaukee. 

The tactics on display over the weekend — daylight traffic stops and multiple alleged uses of force — have been rare in Wisconsin up to this point. 

Devin Blake and Edgar Mendez of Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service contributed reporting.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correctly identify the gender of the child who witnessed Estenderly Marte Polanco’s arrest.

ICE ramps up operations in Milwaukee while advocates rush to catch up is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

WASHINGTON — Republicans have one more opportunity to use the complex process they relied on to enact their “big, beautiful” law and provide tens of billions in additional funding for immigration enforcement — a chance that becomes less likely the more divisions over a voter identification bill splinter the party. 

Debate over a third reconciliation bill has been simmering in the background for months, though GOP lawmakers have yet to reach consensus about whether they should draft another massive package, like they approved last year, or a more narrow one that could help the party boost defense spending.

That budget reconciliation process gives Republican leaders a way to get around Senate rules that would otherwise force bipartisanship, giving them a loophole out of negotiating major legislation with Democrats. 

But it comes with several hurdles in order to get that special treatment, including that each provision in the bill have an impact on federal revenue or spending that is not deemed “merely incidental” by the Senate parliamentarian. 

Those in-the-weeds restrictions aren’t especially important to President Donald Trump, who wants Republicans in Congress to prioritize a voter identification bill, which cannot move through reconciliation, over everything else.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., tried to find middle ground in late June, proposing lawmakers use reconciliation to create a grant program for states that implement voter identification requirements. 

Johnson acknowledged the challenges to using reconciliation amid narrow majorities in each chamber, but said he thinks Republicans can accomplish their goals if they “stick together.” 

He, however, didn’t have details to share. 

“Stay tuned. We’re working through that,” Johnson said. “Doing a reconciliation bill is a very complicated process of consensus building, where we have a collection of ideas that, I think, every Republican, certainly, agrees with in principle.”

A few hours later, sitting in the Oval Office, the president batted down the idea of any compromise on the elections bill, creating more public disagreement between the top Republicans in the country. 

“Not really. No,” Trump said when asked whether he’d “be open to a compromise measure” moving through the reconciliation process. 

Hardball tactics

Lobbying for the full bill, which would require people show proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID when casting a ballot, isn’t only coming from the president. 

Far-right Republicans in both chambers are using hardball tactics to cajole their leaders to get the legislation to Trump’s desk, even if it means delaying work on their colleagues’ priorities.

Utah Sen. Mike Lee is one of several Republicans posting on social media and holding press conferences. He recently called for Americans to “encourage your senators to resume debate on the Senate floor—with a plan to keep debating it until it passes.”

“Tell your senators: Pass the SAVE America Act,” Lee wrote in another post. “Accept no excuses or half measures.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has become somewhat frustrated with constant pressure from some of his members, who are diverting time and resources to a bill that cannot pass. 

“At the end of the day, I have to deal with reality,” Thune said. “And sometimes the alternative universe that is X doesn’t reflect the facts on the ground.”

Thune said it’s been “very clear” for some time there isn’t enough support among Republicans to change the Senate rule that requires at least 60 lawmakers vote to limit debate on most bills. That legislative filibuster forces bipartisanship and gives the minority party, which could be Republicans as soon as next year, a seat at the table. 

“There are not the votes to nuke the filibuster and there aren’t going to be 10 Democrat votes to all of a sudden support the SAVE America Act,” Thune said. “Those are just hard realities and I think people at some point have to come to grips with that.”

Trump cancels signing for housing bill

West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said that despite months of effort, the voter identification bill doesn’t have the votes to become law. 

“If you can’t get to 60, you can’t pass it. I mean, that’s pretty simple,” she said. “Now, he says talk it to death and people will change their minds. I don’t think that’s a strategy that’s going to be in success. We tried that earlier this year to keep talking, we didn’t get to the end.” 

Capito said voters want to see Republicans focus on issues that can improve people’s lives, like the broadly bipartisan housing affordability bill both chambers approved this month. Trump was set to sign that bill during a ceremony on Capitol Hill but canceled at the last minute to try to push through the election bill. 

“So, yeah, they want to see us do something,” she said. “They don’t want to see us sitting up there yakking all the time.”

Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, wants to use the time to avoid another government shutdown when the next fiscal year begins Oct. 1 — no easy feat following three shutdowns over the last year. 

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., hopes to reach final agreement on the farm bill in the months ahead after years of delays and stopgap measures for those agriculture and food safety net programs. 

He brushed aside demands from some other GOP lawmakers to use the budget reconciliation process to pass another party-line package.

“We had trouble with the one that we just did and that was very, very narrow. I mean, that was strictly Homeland Security,” Boozman said. “When you start doing a bigger package, like they’re talking about and you start involving various committees, it becomes a lot more issues involved that you have to work out. And so it just gets very complex.”

Boozman added that working through the several steps of that process takes weeks, which lawmakers may not have. 

Other priorities

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said the party needs to focus on legislation that would lower “the cost of everything,” in part, by eliminating taxes on gasoline and health care.  

“That’s something that would be a huge benefit to every working person out there immediately,” he said. “Let them take all health care costs off of their federal taxes, so they paid no taxes on it.”

Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy said he thinks lawmakers should use the budget reconciliation process to significantly bolster defense funding. But he said “duh” when asked by States Newsroom whether the limited number of days in session would make that difficult. 

Lawmakers are set to be out of session for nearly all of August and September.

“I think if we want to get more money for defense, we have to do it through reconciliation, which means we need to start immediately,” he said. 

Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno has a lengthy list of issues he wants to see Republicans address before November, including a bill he’s set to release later this summer with Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren that would shore up the Social Security trust fund. 

“It’s not really a third-rail issue, because what we’re saying is that everybody should pay the same amount of money for Social Security,” he said. “When you have something that literally 90% of Americans support, I think we should be able to get something on that across the finish line.”

The two lawmakers wrote in an op-ed published in The New York Times the bill would raise the cap that ensures people don’t pay into Social Security on earnings more than $184,500.

“Since the vast majority of Americans make less than that, most people are paying Social Security taxes on 100 percent of their earnings while the highest earners are paying on only part of theirs,” they wrote.

“Why should a middle-class nurse pay a larger share of her paycheck — than a wealthy corporate lawyer?” they added. “This is doubly unfair in an economy in which top earners’ wages, over time, have pulled far ahead of those of the average worker.”

Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley said he’d like lawmakers to ensure E15 gasoline, a blend that includes 15% ethanol and is usually unavailable in summer, can be sold year-round, though he hadn’t thought about any other issues the party should press for ahead of November. 

“I guess I can’t answer your question,” he said. “I just haven’t thought about it.”

Reading Time: 11 minutes

This story comes to you from Sahan Journal, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering Minnesota’s immigrants and communities of color. Sign up for a free newsletter to receive Sahan’s stories in your inbox.

Linda Yang was driving to work on a cold February morning when a large white van seemingly appeared out of nowhere and cut her off. Other vehicles suddenly rushed in, blocking her on all sides.  

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents jumped out and approached her. They asked if they could go to her home and pick up her husband, Zong.   

@sahanjournal

On Feb. 4, 2026, Immigration and Customs enforcement agents confronted Linda Yang with news to deport her husband Zong a day before he was due for one of his regular check-ins at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minnesota. But Linda refused to turn her husband over, demanding her and their children get one last day with Zong. Read more about their family’s deportation story at the link in bio. Video by Dymanh Chhoun #ice #immigration #deportation #hmong #twincities

♬ original sound – Sahan Journal – Sahan Journal

She refused. He was home with their youngest sons. She wouldn’t let things get messy in front of them. She wouldn’t let them take away the father of her five sons until they could say their goodbyes.

The agents told her they would come for Zong at 9 a.m. the next morning. Linda rushed to pick up her older sons from school. She called Zong. 

“‘ICE is coming to get you,” she said. “They’re going to come tomorrow morning.” 

Until recently, they had never thought Zong, 48, would be deported due to a felony burglary conviction from his 20s, which led to a final order of deportation. The couple felt safe from that possibility most of their marriage. But that sense of security shattered last year when local news outlets reported that Hmong residents from Minnesota and elsewhere were being deported to Laos. 

Federal immigration agents had been watching their South St. Paul home. They confronted Linda on Feb. 4, a day before Zong was due for one of his regular check-ins with the ICE office at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal building.

A few months after agents swarmed Linda’s car, Zong was deported to Laos, a country he had never stepped foot in before. Overnight, Linda, 41, was turned into a single mother of five sons —  King, 3; Titan, 7; Everest, 8; Kenji, 15; Yaay, 17. 

“I guess it was just kind of like, ‘It’s real. It’s happening,’ you know?” a teary-eyed Linda told Sahan Journal. “The day that we thought that would never happen, happened.” 

One last day 

Several relatives trickled through Linda and Zong’s house for hours the day Linda was stopped by ICE, crying and joking at times in an attempt to lighten the mood until 2 a.m. Some of their siblings, cousins and Zong’s son from a previous marriage gave Zong a pep talk, assuring him they would support his family while he was in Laos.

Linda and Zong received several calls from an unknown number throughout the morning after Linda’s encounter with ICE. She finally picked up the call around noon. A federal agent was on the other end. ICE agents would take Zong to his check-in the next morning so he could fill out paperwork, and then he would be “released,” she said the agent told her. They also said they planned to take Zong to a different location instead of the Whipple building because of ongoing protests. 

She let out a sigh of relief — Zong would return home, she thought. Still, questions lingered: Could she trust federal agents to tell the truth? ICE agents had never accompanied Zong to an appointment in the past.

Yaay, who family members refer to by his middle name, Aden, spent most of the day in his room like he would any other day, thinking his dad would return home after his immigration check-in the next day. 

Zong sensed that his three youngest sons felt the heavy atmosphere in their house. They didn’t know why everyone had gathered, and Zong couldn’t bring himself to explain the situation. Instead, he told Everest, Titan and King multiple times that he loved them, and that he had to go away. 

He told his two oldest sons, Yaay and Kenji, that he was facing potential deportation because of a felony conviction. They understood the gravity, having seen news coverage of Operation Metro Surge. He asked all of his sons for forgiveness, explaining that he was being taken away and not leaving them by choice.  

“It’s nothing that you guys or mom did. It’s something I did – a mistake, way back before I met your mom, and now I have to face the consequences of it,” he told them. 

Linda and Zong had discussed the deportation process with their oldest sons in the past year to prepare them for the possibility.  

“I was more aware of it and knew what was going to happen, so I was already able to mentally prepare myself while they still can’t really grasp it,” said Yaay, referring to his younger brothers. “They’ll have to go through a lot more of their lives, compared to mine, without our dad.” 

Part of Linda and Zong held onto some hope that federal agents would take Zong to his check-in the next morning and bring him home instead of detaining him for deportation. The other part slowly began accepting the painful reality that it could be Zong’s final hours with his family on U.S. soil.  

Linda packed underwear, pants, shirts, socks and shorts for Zong. Zong grabbed his essentials: allergy medicine, hydrocortisone cream, contact lenses and his glasses. They laughed later when Zong found that Linda had packed only three shirts.

Thoughts of running away crept into Zong’s mind as family and friends continued arriving to say their goodbyes, but he told himself he couldn’t get away from his past. 

“I just need to take it head on,” he told himself, comforted by the knowledge that Linda and his sons were by his side. 

“That’s what really, really helped me mentally, too, but even at that, we’re all still human — we want to be with family, your kids, your wife, and it was a tug of war,” Zong said later as he reflected on the last night with his family. 

Linda and Zong made breakfast for their sons the next morning. Linda’s phone buzzed again with a call from a federal agent. They wanted to detain Zong before 9 a.m. She refused. She didn’t want her sons’ last image of their father to be of him walking away with federal agents. 

Wait until the boys board their buses and leave for school, she told the agent. 

She felt relieved when the agent obliged. The agent told her they would send no more than two agents to the house and agreed not to put Zong in handcuffs. 

Yaay, Everest and Titan boarded their buses soon after the call as federal agents sat in vehicles idling nearby. Kenji, 15, stayed home to see his father off. About 9 a.m., less than 30 minutes after the last boys left, two federal agents came to the door. Zong grabbed his duffel bag and backpack. Linda and Zong hugged and kissed. 

“What are the chances that you guys are really releasing him back to me?” she asked the agents. 

They brushed her off, she said, saying they needed Zong for paperwork. She pressed on. 

“Can I come with you?” she asked. 

They wouldn’t allow her to get in their vehicle. She worried they would bring Zong to a “random warehouse.” But the federal agent on her front porch told her they were taking him to the Whipple building, contradicting what another agent had told her over the phone the previous day. 

As the two agents drove off with Zong, five other vehicles parked on the same street quickly pulled away, said Linda, who was stunned that more agents had been concealed and waiting.

Linda’s brother sat in a vehicle nearby, ready to give chase. She joined him, eager to see Zong walk out of the Whipple building free to go home. 

The past catches up

Linda and Zong started looking for attorneys early last year as news began circulating that Hmong residents were being deported. They worried that Zong could be next and closely followed news about other cases, comparing them to his case. 

“It (the detention of Hmong residents) didn’t bother me, but maybe it should’ve, but also maybe it was best that it didn’t get to me, because I would’ve ran or hid,” Zong told Sahan Journal in a video interview from Laos. “I didn’t know anything like this would happen. I wasn’t thinking of this side of the consequences.” 

Laos historically refused to accept deportees from the United States, but shifted its stance early last year due to political pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration. It’s unclear how many Hmong and Southeast Asian residents have been deported to Laos. However, several Hmong Minnesotans have publicly documented loved ones’ deportations to Laos through Facebook or GoFundMe campaigns, as did the family of South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, resident Ma Yang after her deportation to Laos in 2025.

Linda and Zong held onto hope after seeing a few cases where Hmong detainees were released from federal custody. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued a pardon last year for Lue Yang, a father of six whose criminal conviction had been expunged, putting a stop to his deportation. Minnesota resident Thi Dua Vang, a refugee, was detained for two weeks in January before being released on bond. 

But attorneys told the Yang family there was nothing they could do. The legal costs and severity of Zong’s criminal conviction made it difficult to change his fate. 

Zong arrived in the United States with his family at age 3 after they fled Laos as refugees in the wake of the Vietnam War. Many Hmong, including children, had been recruited by the United States to serve as CIA-backed soldiers to fight against communists and to rescue downed American pilots and injured soldiers. As the U.S. military fled after the war, the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese militaries retaliated against the Hmong community for aiding the Americans, according to the Minnesota Historical Society.

Zong was born in a refugee camp in Thailand and had never been issued citizenship in Thailand, Laos or the United States. He received a green card when he immigrated to the United States and said he never applied for citizenship because he assumed that since his green card said “Permanent Resident,” it secured his lifelong residency in the country. 

He was convicted of felony burglary in Wisconsin in 1999 for stealing several semi-automatic handguns from the Gander Mountain store in Appleton, Wisconsin, when he was 21. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison, serving about seven years before he was released at the end of 2006, according to court records. His criminal record also includes a conviction for drug possession in 2019. 

The burglary conviction is considered a removal offense by the federal government, stripping Zong of his green card and preventing him from ever applying for U.S. citizenship. It also resulted in a final order for deportation against him that required him to regularly check in with ICE at the Whipple building at the discretion of his immigration officer, or until the government could find a country that would accept him as a deportee.

“I should have not done anything like that, taking somebody else’s stuff. It was wrong,” Zong told Sahan Journal. “At that time, my mind was just, I was away from home, but my mind was just not where it was supposed to be.” 

Zong moved to Minnesota for a job and met Linda in 2007 through a mutual friend. She eventually moved to Minnesota from North Carolina, and the two married about a year later. They bought a house where their sons tussled on the living room floor. 

Zong never kept his past from Linda. He attended his check-ins at the Whipple building for 20 years. Initially, he checked in every three months, but it varied from every six months to twice a year back to every three months.

Their prior sense of security against Zong’s deportation started falling apart when federal immigration agents started flooding Minnesota last year. In an effort to lighten the mood, they started joking about Zong being deported to Laos, imagining him in different careers and soaking up the warm weather, and Linda visiting on vacation. 

She pictured growing old with him in Laos after the children had all grown up. They’d retire and buy a house there. 

Zong makes a plea for his spirit

Zong arrived at the Whipple building for the last time on Feb. 5, 2026, a chilly Thursday morning. Linda and her brother parked outside the building for about an hour and a half, waiting to pick him up after his check-in.

Federal agents put shackles around Zong’s ankles and brought him into a room with other shackled detainees. He knew he would never return home. 

He called Linda, who was still waiting outside. She broke down in tears. He was shipped to Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, a few hours later.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to questions about federal agents’ interactions with the Yang family. 

Zong said there was no time to file any legal challenges in hopes of keeping him in the country or releasing him from custody, or to arrange a visit with an attorney before he was deported. 

Zong met about 50 other Hmong, Lao and Vietnamese men while detained in Texas. They were all later transferred to the El Paso Processing Center, where he said they were held for two months.

“It’s just so many thoughts and emotions running through my head,” Zong said of his state of mind while in federal custody. “It was just more of like, ‘This is it.’”

Zong still gets overwhelmed with emotions thinking about the day he was detained and the three months he spent in federal custody. He’s angry that federal agents tried to pick him up a day before his regular ICE check-in and falsely give his family hope that he would return home after the check-in. But he’s also grateful that he was able to say goodbye.  

“It was better than just getting snatched up and not spending time with my kids and my wife, you know?” Zong said of his last day with his family. 

In many cases, federal agents detained people at work, during traffic stops or while they were fueling their cars at the gas station. Agents detained people at bus stops, and while visiting businesses door-to-door in immigrant-dense neighborhoods. They detained children on their way home from school, broke into homes without warrants and arrested U.S. citizens, chasing and tackling people in the streets and snow. 

Zong, who practices traditional Hmong shamanism, looked out the airplane window on his deportation flight in early May and pleaded to the heavens to allow his spirit to follow him to Laos, and to let his family know that he did not choose to leave them. 

“I would never ever be able to step on this American soil again. I would never ever see my kids on American soil, where we built our home,” he recalled thinking at the time.

The Yang family’s new chapter 

Zong arrived in the Lao capital, Vientiane, on May 9 and was moved into a detention facility for U.S. deportees run by the Lao government. He found a sponsor, who is Hmong and a Lao citizen, to help vouch for him so he could move out into independent housing. Laos requires deportees to find a sponsor, complete multiple rounds of interviews with Lao officials and finish paperwork before leaving the detention facility. 

Zong was intimidated buying food at the local market his first few days because he doesn’t speak the Lao language. But he’s settling in, and making an effort to get to know other deportees. He spends his days going on walks, exploring the city and building up his confidence. 

He now lives in an apartment about 15 minutes from the National University of Laos in Vientiane. He calls Linda and their sons every day on Facebook or WhatsApp around 7 p.m. Minnesota time, or 7 a.m. Lao time, and once more before he goes to sleep.

Zong and Linda are coping with the turmoil of his deportation by documenting their journey on Facebook to help others going through the same experience, and to help their younger sons understand their father’s story one day. They’ve shared more than 50 posts through written entries, videos and photos chronicling their family’s separation.  

Linda, an accountant, has always been the family breadwinner, but Zong’s absence has added financial strain on their family. Zong was working as an overnight freight worker at Home Depot in Inver Grove Heights when he was deported. 

She got rid of one of their vehicles to cut costs and finds comfort in the support she’s received from family members. Her nephew and aunt have helped babysit King. Relatives visit more often these days to check on her family. But there’s only so much other family members can do to shore up Zong’s absence. 

Linda and Zong’s eldest son, Yaay, graduates from South St. Paul Secondary this year and plans to attend Winona State University this fall. 

“It is hard just going through all this without him,” said Yaay, 17. “I was expecting to go through all this with him, and for him to be there during my achievements. But it honestly has pushed me a little in some aspects just to do better, and be better.”

Linda and Yaay sat on a sofa in the family’s home in early May as Everest and Titan played with their cousins upstairs. King napped in another room. They cried and laughed as they recalled the last few months and thought about the year ahead without Zong. They didn’t know what the future would bring, but one thing was certain — they wouldn’t let an ocean keep their family apart. 

When ICE came for her husband, Linda Yang negotiated one more day with him. But their luck wouldn’t last. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Wisconsin dairy farmers may have a new avenue to hire workers under new seasonal labor visa rules the Trump administration announced Wednesday.

The U.S. Department of Labor and Department of Homeland Security will give dairy farmers broader access to the federal H-2A program, through which farmers can secure temporary visas for seasonal agricultural workers. 

The dairy industry has lobbied for years to ease program rules barring visas for ostensibly year-round farm roles like milking; those rules also exclude many livestock and mushroom farms from the program. 

“This is a welcomed policy change for our dairy members, and we are hopeful it is just the beginning of continued H-2A program expansion,” John Hollay, president of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, wrote in a press release. “By opening the door for the dairy industry to take advantage of the only legal program for foreign agricultural workers, President Trump continues to move us in a direction of needed reform.”

The administration’s initial announcement was light on details about which dairy farm roles now qualify for H-2A visas.

The updates to the H-2A program are dairy-specific, and the USDA made no indication of changes to the visa’s one-year duration, or a maximum of three years with extensions.

Wisconsin’s agricultural sector increasingly relies on the H-2A program to meet its labor needs. Wisconsin farmers’ annual H-2A hiring increased at least six-fold over the past decade, and the White House’s ongoing immigration crackdown has amplified the program’s importance as a source of workers with legal status. 

Some dairy farms already hire H-2A workers for non-milking jobs; at least 14% of Wisconsin farms approved for visas this year have dairy herds, U.S. Department of Labor and Wisconsin milk producer license data shows. 

Calumet County dairy farmer Amy Woldt hired three H-2A workers from South Africa this year as heavy equipment operators. “We don’t really need them for working with the cattle,” she told Wisconsin Watch, but they do need a crew to run the farm’s skid steers and other farm machinery.

So far, nearly all H-2A workers on Wisconsin dairy farms are heavy equipment operators, at least according to farmers’ applications to the Department of Labor. Many, including the workers on Woldt’s farm, are from South Africa.

Fellow Calumet County farmer Kurt Schneider also hires South African H-2A workers to harvest his feed crops. “It’s because they speak English,” he said, and the ease of communication justifies the cost of flying in a crew from across the Atlantic. South Africans make up the second-largest cohort of H-2A workers after workers from Mexico, outnumbering the third-largest nationality — workers from Jamaica — more than 3-to-1 in 2024.

Schneider added that he would be thrilled to hire for his milking operations through the H-2A program. His current 35-person milking crew is mostly Spanish-speaking, so Schneider would favor H-2A workers from Mexico to supplement his dairy workforce. “That’s our culture,” he said. “We don’t want to change our culture.”

For Schneider, the H-2A program could offer a more stable workforce than the current cutthroat competition between farms allows. The pool of often-undocumented immigrant dairy workers is shrinking, in part because some workers are opting to return to their home countries amid the immigration enforcement push, and remaining workers can now hop between farms to earn higher wages. “I’m getting really sick of (it),” he said. “Somebody’s paying 50 cents an hour more and they jump ship.” 

The Trump administration cut the program’s minimum wage last year; workers on Wisconsin farms classified as “less-skilled” now receive a minimum $12 per hour this year, down more than a third from their 2025 minimum wage. Woldt says she hasn’t cut her crew’s wages, hoping “to keep the guys we have” rather than competing with other farmers for new workers next season.

The USDA’s announcement didn’t specify where dairy workers will fall on the wage scale.

While a seasonal H-2A crew would also require regular turnover, Schneider said his farm’s current attrition rate justifies the switch. “We’re having bottom 10% turnover anyway,” he said, as new dairy hands move along in search of higher wages. “They’re only there two weeks or a month, and they leave, and you’re constantly training.”

But he isn’t inclined to let go of his current crew. If the new rules allow him to hire dairy hands through the H-2A program, Schneider said he would apply for enough visas to backfill openings as they arise, even if that means some visas go unused. 

That strategy could also limit the risks of relying entirely on the H-2A program. A backlog at an American consulate in South Africa delayed the arrival of Schneider’s harvest crew this spring. Farmers pay steep overhead to secure H-2A visas, and when delays force workers to book last-minute flights, costs often skyrocket. Program rules require farmers to cover workers’ plane tickets and lodging, so delays can inflate the up-front costs of participating in the program — or, if a farm relied entirely on H-2A workers, possibly leave cows unmilked. 

Processing delays also hit Woldt’s team this year, forcing one of her workers to return to South Africa while awaiting approval of his visa extension. She has no immediate plans to hire dairy hands through the program. “We’re good in that department,” she said. 

National agricultural groups also tempered their praise of the new rule change with acknowledgement of the H-2A program’s capacity problems. 

“For this expansion to succeed and the H-2A program to work as intended, our federal agencies must have the resources and regulatory structures necessary to handle the increased volume efficiently,” Hollay wrote. 

Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Von Ruden noted that the policy shift may not benefit all Wisconsin farmers equally.

“I don’t think it’s going to help the small to medium-sized farmers very much,” he told Wisconsin Watch. The visa program can be cost-prohibitive for smaller farms that have survived decades of consolidation in the dairy industry, he said, but the new rules do give farms that can afford H-2A workers more room to maneuver.

Republican U.S Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who represents western Wisconsin, introduced legislation last fall to create an alternative to the H-2A program by allowing some undocumented agricultural workers to self-deport, pay a fine and return to the U.S. through a legal port of entry to resume working in agriculture. “The H-2A program is broken and it sucks,” he quipped during a presentation on immigrant labor at the World Dairy Expo in Madison last fall. Van Orden’s bill did not advance out of committee.

The Trump administration suspended Biden-era rules intended to crack down on abuses of H-2A workers last June. Wisconsin’s migrant labor law preserves some protections the Department of Labor no longer guarantees, including workers’ rights to invite legal aid providers and clergy into their employer-provided housing. 

Editor’s note: This story was updated June 19 to add comment from Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Von Ruden.

Wisconsin dairy farms could gain new hiring option under visa changes is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

The president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque has been released from immigration detention, after a federal judge’s order Thursday.

Salah Sarsour, who has been in custody in Indiana for more than two months, was released on personal recognizance because of “extraordinary circumstances,” wrote Judge James Patrick Hanlon, an appointee of President Donald Trump in the southern district of Indiana.

That includes concerns over Sarsour’s health as well as the possibility, raised by his attorneys, that he was targeted for immigration action on the basis of his pro-Palestinian advocacy.

Hanlon wrote that Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, must be returned to Wisconsin while his broader habeas petition moves through federal court and his immigration case moves through immigration court. In the habeas petition, Sarsour is alleging that his detention is unlawful.

“The Court does not decide the ultimate outcome of Mr. Sarsour’s First Amendment habeas claim or the merits of the charges of removability against him,” Hanlon wrote. “The Court only concludes, on the present record, that Mr. Sarsour has raised a ‘substantial’ First Amendment retaliation claim, which could render his detention unlawful.”

Lawyers for the government argued that, if Sarsour were to be released, it should be on cash bail and with an ankle monitor. Hanlon determined that “(s)uch conditions are not necessary here.”

“Sarsour has no history of non-compliance and is well established in the Milwaukee community,” Hanlon wrote. His “entire family lives in the United States and he has not traveled outside the United States since 1998.”

Sarsour, who has lived in the United States for more than 30 years, was arrested on March 30, and held in the Clay County Jail in Indiana.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security accused Sarsour of lying on his immigration forms after he immigrated from Ramallah in Palestinian territory. In a statement, DHS called Sarsour a “terrorist” who had thrown Molotov cocktails at Israeli military members and lied about it on his green card application.

His lawyers argue that Sarsour is being targeted for protected speech, including being a leader in Palestinian activism in recent years. Sarsour’s supporters acknowledge that he was convicted on those charges as a teenager growing up in the West Bank, but argue that the details were fabricated by the Israeli government.

In his order for release, Hanlon said those long-ago charges do not justify the government’s claim that Sarsour is now a risk to American safety. The government has “known about those charges for decades yet took no action to detain” Sarsour earlier, Hanlon wrote.

“Given Mr. Sarsour’s decades of living a law-abiding life in the United States and the long passage of time between his prior convictions, the Court finds Mr. Sarsour does not present a danger should he be released,” Hanlon wrote.

In a statement, Salah’s legal team said they are “ecstatic” about the decision.

“We will continue to fight the hyperbolic and ridiculous claims against Mr. Sarsour in court,” the statement reads. “But this is a day both to celebrate a family being reunited. It is also a sober reminder that, if the government can do this to Mr. Sarsour, then no one is safe from being punished for their speech.”

Sarsour released as legal cases continue

According to Sarsour’s legal team, Sarsour was released from jail at about 2:40 p.m. local time, about seven hours after Hanlon’s order came down. He was picked up by two of his sons. In photographs shared with WPR, Salah is clad in black and noticeably thinner. His legal team previously alleged that Sarsour, who is diabetic, had lost about 30 pounds while in custody.

Samuel Cole, an immigration attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which has supported Sarsour’s case, said that the judge’s order offers recognition of their argument that Sarsour is being targeted for free speech.

“I certainly think it’s a sobering reminder to all of us that this administration does not feel bound by the Constitution, and anyone who speaks out … is in danger of having their rights taken away,” Cole said.

Hanlon will consider Sarsour’s habeas petition next. He could either issue a ruling on its own, or call for an evidentiary hearing.

Separately, Sarsour’s next hearing in his immigration case is scheduled to take place in Chicago next week. In what Cole described as a highly unusual move, the judge in that case will be Jayme Salinardi, a Kansas City-based Assistant Chief Immigration Judge.

“I’m a former immigration judge myself, and the assignment of a new case to a very senior management judge in a different court — I’ve never heard of anything like this,” said Cole.

This story was originally published by WPR.

Milwaukee Muslim leader released from immigration detention after court ruling is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Salah Sarsour, the leader of Wisconsin’s largest mosque, has lost 30 pounds in the two months that he’s been in immigration detention, his attorneys say.

Sarsour’s federal case, in which advocates say the legal permanent resident is being targeted because of his pro-Palestinian advocacy, proceeded with a status hearing in district court Monday.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has accused Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, of lying on his immigration forms when he arrived from Ramallah three decades ago. He was arrested on March 30 and is being held in the Clay County Jail in Indiana.

Sarsour’s team has filed both a claim that Sarsour should be permanently freed, arguing that Sarsour’s overall detention is illegal, as well as a motion that he should be released sooner because of his deteriorating health. His lawyers also allege that his religious rights as a devout Muslim have been violated while in detention. In a letter filed to the court on May 29, Sarsour’s team said that Sarsour, who is diabetic, is not receiving regular blood sugar tests or medication. They also said that Sarsour’s ability to pray five times a day, in accordance with his faith, has been disturbed by guards.

“The continued detention of Mr. Sarsour—and his separation from his community and family—appears purely punitive; it continues to chill the speech of Mr. Sarsour and others seeking to speak out about Palestinian human rights,” the letter reads.

In a response, lawyers from the Department of Justice called those claims “unfounded.”

“(Sarsour’s) detention pending removal proceedings is entirely lawful and his belated conditions-based allegations do not support his request for release,” they wrote.

Attorneys reiterated these arguments on Monday before U.S. District Judge James Patrick Hanlon, a nominee of President Donald Trump in the Southern District of Indiana.

Sarsour’s advocates said that he has not been provided with halal meals and that one diabetes-friendly snack he’d been offered was barbecue pork rinds, which many observant Muslims do not eat. Under those conditions, they said he had lost 30 pounds.

“Those are simply not adequate accommodations,” said one of his attorneys, Luna Droubi, on Monday.

Lawyers for the government refuted those claims. They said that Sarsour’s glucose had been checked daily for a week, until a doctor determined he only needed monthly checks. The attorney said that Sarsour’s glucose didn’t change in that time, that he is receiving daily diabetes medicine and a diabetes-responsive diet.

They also said that Sarsour was provided with an Arabic-language Quran by outside supporters and that his daily prayers are accommodated, but within “regular security measures within the jail.”

Judge Hanlon on Monday said he was “doing his best” to review those petitions quickly.

Salah Sarsour’s federal and immigration cases

Sarsour was arrested shortly after leaving his home in Franklin on March 30. In a statement, DHS called Sarsour a “terrorist” who had thrown Molotov cocktails at Israeli military members and lied about it on his green card application.

Sarsour’s supporters have said he was convicted of that as a teenager growing up in the West Bank, but dispute the details of the charges, which they argue were fabricated by the Israeli government.

Shortly after he was arrested, lawyers filed a writ of habeas corpus, which argues that Sarsour, a Palestinian native and activist for Palestinian rights, had been targeted on the basis of First Amendment-protected free speech while in the United States.

“It is definitely part of a pattern by this government of pursuing immigration cases against people whose advocacy, whose beliefs, whose activism this government doesn’t like,” said Samuel Cole, chief immigration litigation counsel with the ACLU of Illinois, which is supporting Sarsour’s case.

But in the meantime, Cole argued, Sarsour’s treatment in county jail justifies immediate release.

“There are some pretty extraordinary things going on here that would justify his release before the district judge even makes a decision on the habeas petition,” Cole said. “There’s no way to remedy the fact that he’s now been in jail since March 30, so it’s over two months.”

Sarsour’s lawyers first filed a motion for Sarsour to be released on bail in late April, citing the “extraordinary” nature of his detention, as well as his medical conditions.

“Respondents can point to no act—even a pretextual one—committed in the last 30 years which would warrant his sudden arrest and detention today,” they wrote. “Instead, Mr. Sarsour was whisked away from his wife, kids, grandkids, and mother on a Monday morning while on his way to work.”

In response, the government argued that Sarsour is “deportable for several reasons completely unrelated to his speech.”

Separately, Sarsour’s immigration case continues to unfold. The next hearing in those proceedings will be on June 24.

This story was originally published by WPR.

Milwaukee Muslim leader has unmet medical, religious needs in immigration detention, lawyers say is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Elvira Benitez Suarez stepped out of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) office in downtown Milwaukee on Monday to cheers from a crowd of supporters — her first time leaving the building without handcuffs.

The 51-year-old Sheboygan Falls woman left U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody last week on bond; her daughter picked her up outside the northern Kentucky detention facility where she had spent the previous two months. 

“I didn’t see daylight for 17 days, so I was very, very heartened and excited that I saw my family,” she said. 

The Monday morning check-in in Milwaukee was her first interaction with immigration authorities since returning to Wisconsin. She arrived with her family, attorney and two members of the Milwaukee Common Council in tow. 

Nearly a dozen other immigrants wove through the crowd to line up behind Benitez for their own check-ins; some picked up contact information from her attorney while they waited to enter the building. 

Benitez’s time in Kentucky was her second stint in ICE custody in the past year. Benitez, who emigrated from Mexico as a teenager and lived without legal status for over three decades, first landed in detention after a wrong turn on a family road trip took her across the Canadian border in July 2025. U.S. immigration authorities arrested her when she reentered the country. Benitez had no prior interactions with law enforcement or the federal immigration court system. 

In her absence, Benitez’s two adult daughters, both U.S.-born, took in their school-age siblings and helped manage their parents’ painting and cleaning business. 

A federal district court judge in Ohio ruled last fall that Benitez is eligible for a green card, citing — among other factors — the hardships her children experienced in her absence. After waiting a month for immigration authorities to complete her background check, Benitez returned to Wisconsin in December, only to be arrested again during a check-in at the Milwaukee DHS office in March while the agency appealed the judge’s ruling. 

“We checked in, everything went fine, and we were actually walking out the door when they stopped us,” recalled her attorney, Marc Christopher. 

After stops in Chicago and Indianapolis, Benitez landed in a cell at the Campbell County Detention Center, a northern Kentucky jail that contracts with ICE to hold immigrants facing deportation proceedings. Benitez recounted finding fellow Wisconsinites in her unit; nearly two dozen other immigrants detained in Wisconsin have passed through Campbell County within the last year.

But a recent decision by an Ohio-based federal appeals court opened a door for Benitez to again return to Wisconsin. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last month that a year-old Trump administration policy requiring detention for most immigrants in deportation proceedings amounts to a violation of due process rights, joining federal appellate courts in New York and Georgia. Appellate courts in Louisiana and Missouri have sided with the Trump administration, and the appellate court based in Chicago remains divided on the issue.

The 6th Circuit holds jurisdiction over Kentucky, and its ruling allowed Benitez to file a bond motion in immigration court — an option once available to most immigrant detainees that largely vanished after the Trump administration introduced its mandatory detention policy last year. An immigration court judge in Memphis granted her bond motion on May 21, setting her bond amount at the minimum allowed under court rules: $1,500.

As a condition of her bond, Benitez will continue checking in at the Milwaukee DHS office.

Benitez’s Monday morning check-in was brief and straightforward. Like other immigrants granted bond, she was directed by immigration officers to download a tracking app that will prompt her to take a photograph of her face once a week to compare against booking photos.

DHS is still appealing last year’s ruling that set Benitez on track to secure legal permanent residency. That appeal, currently in the hands of the federal Board of Immigration Appeals, is still pending. 

“I would never put anything past the Board of Immigration Appeals,” Christopher said during a press conference on Monday, alluding to the board’s recent tendency to side with the Trump administration on immigration court rule changes. Nevertheless, Christopher added that he believes Benitez’s case is strong enough to defy the odds.

Benitez herself is still recovering. “I can’t sleep,” she said, recounting the grim details of her latest stint in custody — fellow detainees whose pregnancies ended in miscarriages, late-night bus trips with erratic drivers and no seat belts, and harassment from nonimmigrant inmates with whom she shared a cell in Kentucky. Benitez noted that she is in contact with the families of several fellow detainees who remain in Kentucky.

Her eldest daughter, Crystal Aguilar, also needs time to bounce back. In her mother’s absence, “my life was on hold,” she said. A return to normality still seems far away, she added.

Freed on bond, Sheboygan Falls woman returns to Milwaukee immigration office amid legal limbo is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Los Angeles International Airport customs officers took Everlee Wihongi aside for questioning in April. Her family hasn’t seen her since.

Wihongi, a longtime resident of Hortonville, Wisconsin, was passing through Los Angeles during a return trip from her native New Zealand. The 37-year-old green card holder had made the same trip at least a half-dozen times, even after pleading no contest to a felony marijuana possession charge in Fond du Lac County in her mid-20s. 

But with the White House’s nationwide immigration enforcement crackdown in full swing, customs officers took a new approach to the felony on her record. After a few uneasy hours in a secluded screening room, Wihongi left the airport in shackles en route to an immigration detention center in a desert valley northeast of Los Angeles.

Wihongi is one of hundreds of legal permanent residents federal immigration authorities have detained since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, often while they passed through airports and other ports of entry. Most — like Wihongi — had prior criminal convictions.

Those convictions generally make immigrants “inadmissible,” meaning they cannot freely re-enter the U.S.

Customs officers have “a lot of discretion at the port of entry” when deciding whether to allow green card holders with convictions like Wihongi’s to re-enter the country, Madison-based immigration attorney Aissa Olivarez said. “They have given none lately.”

“Possessing a green card is a privilege, not a right,” a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch. “Our government has the authority to revoke a green card if our laws are broken and abused,” the spokesperson added, and to detain legal permanent residents while they await a decision in their removal case. 

The sharp increase in arrests of green card holders doesn’t stem from a policy change, but immigration attorneys say cases like Wihongi’s are yet another sign that federal immigration authorities are reshuffling their priorities.

Old conviction is grounds for detention

Wihongi has held a green card since childhood, when her father’s career as a locomotive engineer brought the family to northeast Wisconsin. “As the years went by, it was just cheaper to renew (her) green card,” her mother, Betty Wihongi, recalled.

Her 2014 conviction was not grounds for deportation, said Marc Christopher, a Milwaukee immigration attorney representing Wihongi. “She can remain here and become a U.S. citizen,” he said, “but once she crosses the border, she’s governed by the rules of admissibility.”

But family vacations to New Zealand passed without incident over the decade following Wihongi’s conviction. “Normally, they will just look at, look at your passport, look at your green card, you know, ask you, where you’ve been?” her mother said. “And usually it’s like two, three minutes, not even that.” 

“I just don’t think they made an issue of it” in the past, Christopher added. “They weren’t going to detain her for two to three months,” he said, in part because detaining and prosecuting a green card holder is an expensive undertaking. As of May 2025, DHS reported that the average cost to arrest, detain and deport an immigrant was roughly $17,000, though costs vary widely from case to case.

DHS detention records point to a sudden shift in practice after the Trump administration resumed control of immigration enforcement operations last year. Immigration authorities detained an average of at least 100 legal permanent residents each month between January 2025 and February 2026 — five times the monthly average in the final two years of the Biden administration, the only portion of his term for which data is available. 

At least 75% of legal permanent residents detained during the latter half of the Biden administration had prior criminal convictions, compared with at least 66% of those detained since Trump returned to office. 

Only a tiny fraction of detainees’ records from either period list marijuana possession as their most serious criminal charge, though immigration enforcement officers arrested more legal permanent residents with prior marijuana possession convictions in the first year of the Trump administration than in the previous two years combined. 

Wihongi is the second Wisconsin green card holder in ICE custody to join Christopher’s caseload since January 2025. His previous client, also blocked from re-entering the country because of a prior marijuana possession conviction, spent five months in detention before Christopher secured his release. 

Olivarez, the Madison-based immigration attorney, offered another recent example from her own caseload: a legal permanent resident and longtime Milwaukeean detained while returning from his wife’s funeral in Egypt because of a prior felony. That client eventually accepted a deportation order to avoid a lengthy stint in custody.

A stricter standard

The growing cohort of green card holders in ICE custody is still vastly outnumbered by the tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants detained alongside them. 

Federal immigration authorities have arrested more than 400,000 people since January 2025, including roughly 1,700 in Wisconsin. 

Just over half of all immigrants arrested by ICE in Wisconsin during the second Trump administration had prior criminal convictions, as was the case in the latter years of the Biden administration. But the criminal histories of more recent arrestees suggest that the stricter standards that landed Wihongi in custody are reshaping other corners of the immigration enforcement apparatus.

ICE officers in Wisconsin arrested 82 immigrants with prior traffic offense convictions in the first full year after Trump returned to office, up from 19 in the last full year of the Biden administration.

In years past, Christopher said, federal immigration authorities were less inclined to begin removal proceedings solely based on traffic offenses like driving without a license, instead prioritizing immigrants convicted of more serious offenses. 

Immigrants who come into contact with Wisconsin courts after a traffic offense now face a far higher risk of landing in federal custody, Christopher added. 

He attributes the shift in part to dramatic additions to DHS’ budget in the past year and a half. Those funding boosts, including a $170 billion increase last year, lowered the financial barriers that previously made federal immigration prosecutors wary of spending resources on immigrants with lower-priority criminal histories, Christopher argued. 

The U.S. Senate is currently considering an additional $72 billion in new funding for DHS.

Transferred without warning 

Wihongi was the only legal permanent resident in the 46-person cell in Adelanto, California, where she spent her first month in detention, her mother told Wisconsin Watch.

Her visa doesn’t spare her from the unpredictability of the federal immigration detention system. When money disappeared without notice from her commissary account on a Friday in early May, Wihongi called her mother in a panic. “Inmates all know that if that happens to your commissary,” her mother explained, “that means they’re getting ready to transfer you.” 

She resurfaced that Sunday in a detention camp outside El Paso, Texas, reaching her family by phone that evening to recount two mostly sleepless days of travel, including hours spent in shackles. 

Wihongi has since transferred again to a federal contract facility in Eloy, Arizona. An internet outage Thursday pushed her first scheduled court appearance back a week. Meanwhile, Christopher has filed a motion in Fond du Lac County to vacate her 2014 conviction.

Decade-old marijuana conviction prompts ICE detention of Wisconsin green card holder after family trip is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Update, May 21, 2026:

An immigration court judge in Tennessee granted a $1,500 bond for Elvira Benitez Suarez on Thursday morning. Benitez will remain in custody at the Campbell County Detention Center during the 30-day window in which the U.S. Department of Homeland Security attorneys can file an appeal.

Thursday’s bond hearing came just over a week after the Ohio-based 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Trump administration’s year-old policy requiring mandatory detention for most immigrants facing removal. Benitez’s attorney, Milwaukee-based Marc Christopher, told Wisconsin Watch that the short turnaround reflected agreement among Benitez’s legal team, a federal district court judge and DHS itself that her case merited speedy consideration.

Original story, May 12, 2026:

A Sheboygan Falls woman is poised to test a new federal ruling reopening the door for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees to seek release on bond. 

An Ohio-based federal appeals court ruled Monday against the Trump administration policy requiring mandatory detention for most ICE detainees, the latest blow to a rule adopted last summer amid an escalating nationwide immigration enforcement crackdown.  

Detainees “should have a forum to explain that their backgrounds and connections to their communities justify release on bond while they undergo their removal proceedings,” 6th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Eric Clay wrote in the panel’s majority decision. Denying bond hearings, he added, amounts to a violation of their due process rights. 

The court’s ruling sent Wisconsin immigration attorneys scrambling to file bond motions for their clients detained in Ohio, Michigan and Kentucky — all under the 6th Circuit. Among those now able to seek bond: Elvira Benitez Suarez, currently detained at the Campbell County Detention Center in northern Kentucky.

Benitez, 51, has now spent two stints in ICE detention, as Wisconsin Watch has reported. 

She fled an abusive household in Mexico at 15, crossing the border with a younger sibling and settling in the Midwest. Though she remained undocumented for decades, she had no run-ins with law enforcement or immigration authorities until a GPS error on a family road trip through Michigan in July 2025 led her across the Canadian border.

The incident landed her in an Ohio immigration detention facility for six months. In her absence, her two adult daughters — both U.S. citizens — took in their school-age siblings.

A major shift in federal immigration court policy last year left Benitez unable to post bond.

Since 1996, federal law has required immigration authorities to detain — without bond — anyone found crossing the U.S. border without authorization. Prior administrations applied that rule relatively narrowly, meaning immigrants arrested in the interior of the U.S. could often seek a bond hearing in immigration court.

The Trump administration cast that precedent aside in July 2025, when ICE Director Todd Lyons issued a new interpretation subjecting anyone in deportation proceedings to mandatory detention without the possibility of bond. The Board of Immigration Appeals, a panel of judges who set the rules for the federal immigration court system, signed off on the interpretation in September. 

The board has more frequently sided with the Department of Homeland Security than immigrants facing deportation for at least a decade, but the distribution of decisions is more lopsided than ever: The body has favored DHS’s position in more than 90% of decisions issued since President Trump returned to office last year, a recent NPR analysis found.

The rule change triggered an ongoing legal battle over the validity of the Trump administration’s interpretation; more than 400 federal district court judges have ruled against the White House’s position, while roughly 50 have backed the new policy. Judges in Wisconsin’s Western District Court have uniformly ruled against the mandatory detention rule, while those in Wisconsin’s Eastern District are divided.

Federal appellate courts are also split: Aside from the 6th Circuit’s Monday decision, the New York-based 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and the Georgia-based 11th Circuit Court of Appeals have ruled against the mandatory detention policy, whereas the Louisiana-based 5th Circuit and the Missouri-based 8th Circuit have sided with the Trump administration. 

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Illinois and with jurisdiction over Wisconsin, remains divided.

With bond off the table, thousands of immigrants in ICE custody have turned to a backup option: habeas corpus petitions, filed in federal district courts — administered separately from the federal immigration court system — to challenge their detention.

Federal district courts have received tens of thousands of habeas petitions in the past year, including more than 70 in Wisconsin’s Western and Eastern District Courts combined. 

When a federal district court approves a habeas petition, the court generally orders an immigration court judge to hold a bond hearing.

Benitez’s first habeas petition produced a more unusual victory: Judge Richard Drucker of the Cleveland immigration court, citing the emotional toll on her younger children, canceled her deportation and set her on the path to legal residency, though a delayed background check added more than a month to Benitez’s initial stay in a detention facility.

Released in late December, Benitez reunited with her family in Wisconsin while DHS appealed Drucker’s order. She continued attending mandatory check-ins at the agency’s field office in downtown Milwaukee, where ICE agents re-arrested her on March 10. After a stop at an ICE detention facility outside Chicago, the agency transferred Benitez to Campbell County, where nearly two dozen immigrants detained in Wisconsin have spent time within the last year.

Marc Christopher, a Milwaukee immigration attorney who represented Benitez during her first detention, told Wisconsin Watch in March that no statute required DHS to detain her while awaiting the outcome of its appeal. Her arrest, Christopher wrote, served “no legitimate public safety purpose.”

“It separates a mother from her vulnerable U.S. citizen children despite a federal immigration judge already recognizing the extreme hardship her removal would cause them,” he added.

Following the March arrest, an ICE spokesperson told Wisconsin Watch that “being in detention is a choice,” arguing that Benitez could leave custody by agreeing to self-deport.

Benitez’s new Ohio-based attorney filed a habeas petition on her behalf with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky in March. Judge Chad Meredith, a Trump appointee, joined the court’s bench last fall. He has received more than 80 habeas cases involving immigrants in ICE custody since his confirmation, most of which are still active; he has yet to side with an immigrant detainee, but he has denied a half-dozen habeas petitions outright. 

The 6th Circuit’s latest ruling could give Benitez a shorter route out of custody. Christopher filed a bond motion for Benitez “the minute (the ruling) came out,” he told Wisconsin Watch. “Given the unusual circumstances of her case,” Christopher added, he plans to ask Meredith to order a bond hearing on a short turnaround, rather than waiting more than a week. DHS can appeal bond decisions.

Christopher isn’t alone in his haste. Aissa Olivarez, an attorney with the Madison-based Community Immigration Law Center, filed a bond motion for another client held at the Campbell County Detention Center just after the news broke — a first since the Board of Immigration Appeals approved the mandatory detention rule last September. 

“We are now working to identify other people who have reached out in the past,” she added, “to see who might be eligible for bond now.”

Olivarez and other immigration attorneys are still awaiting a decision from the 7th Circuit; the U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion requesting expedited oral argument  on Monday. 

The issue may reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

“It’s up to the justices whether they want to take the case,” Christopher said, “but traditionally on cases involving immigration, cases where there’s been a clear circuit split, and where it affects literally tens of thousands of people, I think it’s going to be near the top of the issues they want to resolve.”

Sheboygan Falls mother granted bond in challenge to ICE detention rule is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.