A section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall near El Paso, Texas, on June 6, 2024. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Among the flurry of executive orders President Donald Trump signed on the first day he returned to the White House are five that lay out the use of military forces within the U.S. borders and extend other executive powers to speed up the president’s immigration crackdown. 

The administration has engendered huge controversy in recent days by employing the orders and a presidential proclamation to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelan migrants. Administration officials described the Venezuelans as gang members, put them on flights and sent them to a huge prison in El Salvador.

The wartime Alien Enemies Act, used only three times before, allows the president to detain and deport anyone 14 and older who is a national from a country the United States deems an enemy.

Together, the interlocking executive orders and proclamation could provide the resources and legal footing needed for the Trump administration’s plans to deploy the military to deport and detain millions of people who are living in the United States without permanent legal status.

National security and military experts interviewed by States Newsroom raised concerns about this domestic deployment of armed forces that could result in violations of civil liberties, as well as the detainment and deportation of immigrants without due process. 

Additionally, the broad actions by the executive branch would test the courts on what guardrails, if any, could be placed on the president. Trump earlier this week  in a social media post called for the impeachment of the judge who questioned his use of the Alien Enemies Act in the case of the Venezuelans, bringing a stunning rebuke by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

Besides the Alien Enemies Act, a second archaic law Trump is gearing up to invoke is the Insurrection Act of 1807. It gives the president the power to call on the military during an emergency to curb civilian unrest or enforce federal law in a crisis.

The Insurrection Act is also a statutory exception in the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which generally bars the use of the military for domestic law enforcement purposes.

Trump vowed to use both the Insurrection Act and the Alien Enemies Act while he campaigned for a second term.

“Invoking the Insurrection Act for immigration enforcement … would be unprecedented,” said Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program. “It would be an abuse, both because it’s not necessary, under the circumstances, and also because this is not what the Insurrection Act is for.”

Nonetheless, one Trump executive order directs the heads of the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense to issue a report by April 20 to the president with recommendations on whether or not to use the Insurrection Act to aid in mass deportations.

Orders woven together into an agenda

Trump’s five executive orders signed on Inauguration Day are:

• Securing our Borders;

• Declaring a National Emergency at the Southern Border;

• Clarifying the Military’s Role in Protecting the Territorial Integrity of the United States;

• Designating Cartels and Other Organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists;

• Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion.

The administration eyes its next moves while apprehensions at the southern border have plummeted to their lowest level in 25 years, with 8,347 encounters for February, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

The last time the Border Patrol averaged roughly 8,000 apprehensions per month in a fiscal year was in 1968, according to historical data obtained by the Texas Tribune.

In the executive order titled Securing our Borders, the Trump administration lays out its objectives for that U.S.-Mexico border, such as building barriers and barring migrants from entering the U.S. To carry that out, the president signed another executive order that declared a national emergency.

Chris Mirasola, a professor and national security expert at the University of Houston Law Center, said for roughly 20 years, there has been a military presence at the southern border assisting the U.S. Department of Homeland Security with immigration enforcement.

“What made the Trump executive orders interesting was the kind of escalation trajectory that they kind of mapped out for us,” Mirasola said, noting the likely use of the Insurrection Act and Alien Enemies Act.

Since Inauguration Day, that executive order has allowed Trump to send nearly 9,200 troops to the southern border.

Emory University School of Law professor Mark Nevitt, a national security expert who also served in the Navy, notes the executive order declaring a national emergency is limited to the geographic location of the U.S.-Mexico border.

“He’s not tasking (Homeland Security Secretary Kristi) Noem to come up with a nationwide immigration enforcement. Having said that, of course, he can change (his mind), he’s the president,” he said.

Sending military to the southern border stretches back to former President George W. Bush in 2006. Over a two-year period, more than 30,000 Army and Air National Guard personnel were sent to the southern border to assist with numerous migrants from Central America.

Northern Command

Continued coordination between Defense and Homeland Security is laid out in another of the executive orders, the one on “clarifying the military’s role,” that reorganizes the U.S. Northern Command to focus on border security.

Northern Command, established after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to coordinate military and homeland security support with civilian authorities, under the Trump executive order has a new mission “to seal the borders and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of the United States by repelling forms of invasion including unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, and other criminal activities.”

The legal underpinnings for Northern Command to carry this out, Mirasola said, are provisions in the Insurrection Act, which he adds is likely to face its own legal challenge.

“I kind of see this, perhaps surprisingly, long ramp up being a way for them to establish a factual record that they could use in litigation,” he said of the executive order that requests a report from DHS and DOD by April 20. 

Trump does not need a report or recommendation to invoke the Insurrection Act. It is an existing presidential authority granting him access to use all federal military forces, more than 1 million members. But his executive orders would undergird his expected use of the act.

“I think it’s no surprise that he’s thinking about using the military for immigration enforcement,” Nevitt said of the president.

The request for a report by April 20, Nevitt said, could be “a way to set up the politics of declaring the Insurrection Act.”

Historically the Insurrection Act, which has only been invoked 30 times, is typically focused on an area of great civil unrest that has overwhelmed law enforcement, Nevitt said.

The last time the Insurrection Act was invoked was 1992, during the Los Angeles riots, after four white police officers were acquitted in the brutal beating of Black motorist Rodney King. 

Federal troops were deployed with local law enforcement to a domestic violence situation. Because of the difference in training between the two, it resulted in soldiers opening fire onto a Los Angeles residence. No one was injured, but more than 200 bullets were fired.

“Soldiers are not trained to do law enforcement,” Nunn, with the Brennan Center, said.

He added that this kind of use could also lead to violations of civil liberties, even though the use of the Insurrection Act does not suspend constitutional rights and he argues is not limitless.

“When the military is operating under the Insurrection Act, they are assisting civilian authorities, not taking their place,” Nunn said.

‘The magic word’

Two of the executive orders — one designating cartels as terrorist organizations and another on protection of the states — could lead to the rapid detention and deportation of immigrants by using the Alien Enemies Act.

“In one of those early executive orders is a magic word that you should be sensitive to,” said Stephen Dycus, a professor in national security law at the Vermont Law School. “And the magic word is ‘invasion.’”

The Trump administration designated the Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, as a terrorist organization in its use in mid-March of the Alien Enemies Act. 

A federal judge has already blocked the use of the law. However, civil rights groups charge that the Trump administration continued to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants, and a federal judge is demanding clear answers from the administration about the deportation flights.

The Trump administration has defended the deportation flights and Trump has cited his duty to protect Americans from an “invasion.”

“The big question, obviously, is, what constitutes an invasion?” Dycus asked. “In the first Trump administration, the influx of immigrants from the southwest were characterized that way. So I think that’s part of the groundwork that’s being laid.” 

Ilya Somin, an expert in constitutional law and professor at George Mason University, disagrees with the Trump administration’s argument declaring the Tren de Aragua gang as an “invasion” in order to form the legal basis for using the Alien Enemies Act.

The use of the act can circumvent judicial proceedings, based on an immigrant’s country of origin. It’s been invoked in the War of 1812, World War I and World War II and most recently led to the Japanese internment camps.

“The attempt to declare them to be terrorist organizations could be part of an effort to sort of get courts to defer and to accept the invasion framing, and possibly also to accept the use of the Alien Enemies Act,” Somin said.

Targeting Venezuela

In speeches, rallies and social media posts, Trump has often accused Venezuela of sending criminals and gang members to the U.S., despite during his first administration granting deportation protections for Venezuelans, citing the political and economic instability of the Maduro regime.

The Trump administration has pressured the Venezuela government to begin accepting deportation flights of its nationals. Noem has already moved to end temporary protected status for one group of 350,000 Venezuelans, subjecting them to fast-track deportations. Noem cited gang activity as one of her factors in not extending protections.

Somin said that for the Alien Enemies Act to be used, an “invasion” needs to be undertaken by a foreign government.

“Even if the cartels are terrorist organizations, which I deny, they are not foreign governments,” he said.

Katherine Yon Ebright, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, said that using the act to go after suspected members of the Tren de Aragua gang could ensnare many Venezuelan immigrants, regardless of legal status. 

“You’re getting the ability, really, to target any Venezuelan, age 14 (and up), who’s not a U.S. citizen,” she said of the Alien Enemies Act. “And you don’t have to explain yourself, you don’t have to prove anything.”

Guantanamo

Using a memo rather than an executive order, although related, the Trump administration has already ramped up use of the military in immigration duties, using military aircraft to return migrants to their home countries or to send immigrants to the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The base was used to house suspected terrorists in the 9/11 attacks. 

“I think it’s actually a bellwether for understanding how far this escalation trajectory the administration plans to go, because the detention that’s happening at Guantanamo Bay is a big concern,” Mirasola said.

The use of the naval base comes as the Trump administration has tried to increase detention bed space capacity, but U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is only funded to hold roughly 41,500 beds across the country.

Trump has instructed his administration to hold up to 30,000 migrants at Guantanamo. There are currently no immigrants detained at the base, though its use has not been ruled out.

But the actions of signing executive orders or memos or proclamations can only go so far, experts say.

“Implementing his commitment to use the military to round up immigrants is not going to be easy,” Dycus, of Vermont Law, said. “Logistically, it’s going to really take a lot of effort and a lot of personnel to do it.”

A Texas National Guardsman observes as Border Patrol agents pat down migrants who have surrendered themselves for processing, May 10, 2023. (Photo by Corrie Boudreaux for Source NM)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is gearing up to militarize a stretch of the southern border, according to a Washington Post report Thursday, raising concerns from experts that the move would put U.S. military members in direct contact with migrants, a possible violation of federal law.

The White House is mulling the creation of a military satellite installation across the 60-foot-deep strip of federal land known as the Roosevelt Reservation, according to the report.

The move would create a military buffer zone stretching across the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, California and New Mexico, and mean any migrant crossing into the United States would be trespassing on a military base, allowing active-duty troops to hold them until border patrol agents arrive.

Nearly 10,000 military personnel have already been deployed to the southern border, but creating the military buffer zone would be an escalation of the Trump administration’s ramp-up of the use of the U.S. military in its plans for mass deportation of immigrants without permanent legal status, which experts say would be illegal.

“The use of active-duty military for what clearly amounts to law enforcement on the border is absolutely, plainly illegal,” Stephen Dycus, a professor in national security law at the Vermont Law School, said during a Thursday interview. “It’s a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.”

The 1878 law generally prohibits the military from being used in domestic law enforcement.

Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight at the Washington Office of Latin America, a research and advocacy group that aims to advance human rights in North and South America, said the escalation of military presence at the border is new.

He added that the military being used to operate deportation flights has “involved an uncomfortable amount of contact between soldiers and migrants.”

“Most of the military that have been sent (to the border) over the years have been a couple thousand National Guard members at a time — a pretty low-level mission,” Isacson said. “So that chance of contact between the soldiers and civilians on U.S. soil (was) very, very, very, very slim. That’s all changing now.”

A Pentagon spokesperson told States Newsroom in an email Thursday that the department has “nothing to announce at this time” regarding the establishment of a base along stretches of the border.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The scenario could spark further legal challenges against the Trump administration, which is already in hot water for potentially defying a federal judge’s order to halt deportation flights of Venezuelans under the wartime Alien Enemies Act.

Transformation of military role

While sending activity duty to the southern border has occurred for more than 20 years in intelligence and logistics roles, military members do not engage in immigration enforcement.

During a visit to the border Feb. 3, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters “guys and gals of my generation have spent decades in foreign countries guarding other people’s borders. It’s about time we secure our own border.”

“All options are on the table,” Hegseth said.

Joseph Nunn, liberty and national security counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice, said during a Thursday interview he would expect the Trump administration to face lawsuits for essentially using the military for civilian law enforcement.

“This is a transparent ruse to try to evade the Posse Comitatus Act by taking advantage of something called the military purpose doctrine,” Nunn said.

Under that doctrine, Nunn said, the military can maintain order or take action to further other military purposes, even if the action does have incidental benefits to civilian law enforcement. For example, if a drunken driver attempts to drive onto a base, military police can detain them before handing them over to civilian law enforcement.

But Nunn said specifically installing a base along the border as a way for the military to detain migrants as trespassers has not been tried before.

“It’s an abuse of the doctrine and one that the courts should reject because in that circumstance the military installation will have been created and the soldiers will have been stationed there for the purpose of assisting with a civilian law enforcement operation,” Nunn said. “That is immigration enforcement.”

Migrant encounters down

Transferring federal land to the Department of Defense, which because it’s fewer than 5,000 acres doesn’t need congressional approval, comes at a time when border encounters are relatively low.

Apprehensions at the southern border have plummeted to their lowest level in 25 years, with 8,347 encounters reported in February, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

The trend started in February of last year due to Mexico increasing immigration enforcement and policies under the Biden administration that limited asylum claims between ports of entry, said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan immigration think tank.

“As with any change in administration, and this was true of the first Trump administration, because of the general rhetoric around immigration, we did see kind of an initial decrease, so it’s not altogether surprising to see that decrease,” Putzel-Kavanaugh, who studies migration trends along the border, said.

“There’s kind of a general wait-and-see period of people trying to figure out what makes the most sense in terms of their own needs and in their journey,” she added.

The sections along the southern border that the Trump administration is eyeing – U.S. Border Patrol sectors based in San Diego; Tucson, Arizona; and El Paso, Texas – are “consistently the busiest,” she said.

Putzel-Kavanaugh added that it’s typical for migration patterns between sectors to change.

“I think it’s certainly plausible to assume that, if they have this militarization campaign across sort of the western side of the border, it’s likely that flows will then start going east,” she said.

Reaction from New Mexico lawmakers

Democrats slammed the idea, questioning why defense funding should be used at the border as global conflict increases.

U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján, a New Mexico Democrat, expressed skepticism about relying on defense resources to solve migration issues.

“Securing our border and protecting the safety of New Mexicans is a top priority, which is why I supported the bipartisan border security agreement — an effort that was ultimately killed by then-candidate Donald Trump,” Luján said in a statement.

“Diverting military resources for this purpose would weaken our military readiness. There is broad bipartisan consensus that we need comprehensive immigration reform and stronger border security, but not at the expense of existing defense missions.”

Rep. Gabe Vasquez, also a New Mexico Democrat, said in a statement the reported plan is “yet another reckless and wasteful proposal that does nothing to fix our broken immigration system.”

“In a time of global uncertainty, our military resources are best used to combat serious international threats abroad,” Vasquez said.

The offices for the Republican-led Senate and House committees on the Armed Forces did not respond to requests for comment.

Source New Mexico editor Julia Goldberg contributed to this report.

Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) (Photo: Screen grab from Senate.gov)

North Carolina lawmakers introduced legislation in Congress Wednesday that would allow the victims of felonies committed by undocumented immigrants to sue cities, counties, and states that did not comply with ICE deportation orders.

Entitled the “Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities Act,” the bill is sponsored in the Senate by North Carolina Republican Senators Thom Tillis and Ted Budd and nine other GOP members. Western North Carolina Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards, who introduced the legislation in the House last year, announced on Thursday that he has reintroduced it.

“For far too long, we have watched local jurisdictions in North Carolina and across the country ignore the lawful notification and detainer requests made by ICE agents and instead release dangerous criminals back into their communities, putting innocent lives at risk,” Tillis said in a news release. “It is time for Congress to step in and hold sanctuary cities accountable.”

“Sanctuary jurisdictions” employ local protocols that restrict or prohibit cooperation with ICE, typically by preventing law enforcement from complying with ICE “detainers” — orders from the agency to hold undocumented immigrants taken into custody until they can be turned over to ICE.

If passed into law, the bill would open up such jurisdictions to civil liability for not complying with ICE detainers for or notifying the agency of the release of undocumented immigrants who go on to commit felonies. The statute of limitations for such claims would be 10 years after the felony or the death of an individual resulting from the felony.

But according to Rick Su, a UNC immigration law professor, states must first waive their “sovereign immunity” to become liable to federal civil lawsuits. Similarly, because of state sovereignty, jurisdictions cannot face federal criminal charges for declining to enforce ICE detainers, which function as requests rather than legal orders.

In an effort to bypass sovereignty immunity, the bill stipulates that recipients of several categories of federal grant programs — centering on economic, community, and housing development — waive that legal immunity for “sanctuary-related civil action,” with an exception for disaster relief grants for housing.

Su said this section of the bill could open it up to constitutional challenges, as federal courts have held that while such requirements are permissible, they cannot be “coercive,” or they may violate the Eleventh Amendment. The Supreme Court struck down a section of the Affordable Care Act that would have required all states to adopt Medicaid expansion or lose all Medicaid funding, for example.

“They have a delicate dance here, right, because they have to make it big enough that essentially everyone will waive,” Su said. “But they might be interested in making it not so big that it will fall for this coercive condition.”

While he declined to predict whether courts would find these conditions coercive should the bill become law, he noted that the funds specified are substantial — covering sweeping grants ranging from public works and research facilities to public housing for low-income families.

It also shields members of law enforcement from legal liability for complying with ICE detainers and classifies them as agents of the Department of Homeland Security — though this does not extend to knowing violations of civil or constitutional rights. Su said cities may find themselves between “a rock and a hard place” under the proposed law because failing to comply with detainers could expose them to liability, but cooperation with ICE could open them up to civil rights lawsuits.

“Sanctuary cities cannot continue to jeopardize Americans’ safety and not be held accountable for their role in the illegal immigrant crime crisis we are facing today,” Edwards said in a news release. “The Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities Act will finally hold these communities responsible when their harmful, often illegal, policies result in a crime against an American citizen by allowing the victim to take legal action against counties, cities, or towns for the dangerous policies that directly led to their harm.”

The bill comes as President Donald Trump prepares to carry out the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants he repeatedly promised to undertake on the campaign trail. But Trump has already faced early obstacles to his immigration agenda: on Thursday, a federal judge in Washington halted his executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship in the U.S., a tenet of immigration law enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment.

It also follows the passage of the “Laken Riley Act,” a bill expanding the mandatory detention requirements for undocumented immigrants arrested for petty crimes, with the aim of facilitating the president’s deportation agenda. That bill passed with bipartisan support, with 46 House Democrats and 12 Senate Democrats joining Republicans in supporting it.

Trump repeatedly sparred with sanctuary jurisdictions during his first term in office, at one point signing an executive order to strip them of all federal funding for resisting his administration’s attempts at immigration enforcement — though this action was struck down as unconstitutional by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

These jurisdictions remained in the political crosshairs of conservatives during the Biden administration, when Republican governors Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas sent migrants to sanctuary cities en masse using chartered buses and planes.

North Carolina state lawmakers enacted legislation targeting sanctuary jurisdictions in November over the veto of then-Governor Roy Cooper. That bill, H.B. 10, requires sheriffs in the state to comply with ICE detainers and shields them from legal liability for holding individuals believed to be subject to detainers for up to 48 hours.

Read the full text of the new Senate bill here:

MDM25065

NC Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. NC Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Rob Schofield for questions: info@ncnewsline.com.

(Photo: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement)

Immigrant rights advocates and attorneys are preparing for how Wisconsin’s law enforcement community might assist federal authorities in President Donald Trump’s proposed mass deportation efforts — warning that the new administration’s policies could lead to profiling and high levels of data sharing. 

Eight counties in Wisconsin currently have agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the agency’s 287(g) program, which state that the counties will hold undocumented immigrants in jail if ICE requests them to do so. Brown, Fond du Lac, Manitowoc, Marquette and Sheboygan counties have a memorandum of agreement with ICE under the Warrant Service Officer program and Waukesha County has an agreement with the agency under its jail enforcement program — which allows local deputies to act as immigration enforcement agents and ask questions about inmates’ citizenship status. 

Tim Muth, a senior staff attorney with the Wisconsin ACLU who has researched how local law enforcement interacts with ICE, says these agreements weren’t used very much under the administration of President Joe Biden but now under Trump, it gives federal authorities a good sense of which departments will be allies in a mass deportation effort. 

“What they do indicate is which are the counties who have already raised their hands and said, ‘we are happy to assist with deporting people from the state,’ and I anticipate that the Trump administration is going to start with that list and say ‘we know who our allies are in this in the state of Wisconsin,’” Muth says. “Let’s see if one: We can get more allies signing these agreements, and, two: For the ones who already have, let’s see what we can do to get them more active in this area.” 

Luca Fagundes, an immigration attorney based in Green Bay, says that under Biden, ICE generally only picked up undocumented immigrants in the Brown County jail if they’d committed serious infractions. Fagundes anticipates that ICE — as it did in the first Trump administration — will use the agreement with the sheriff to send people to deportation proceedings for low-level offenses such as driving without a license or other minor traffic violations.

“If history is precedent, I believe the administration will place detainers on anyone they can, regardless of how minor the offense committed by the individual,” Fagundes says, adding that he doesn’t think local law enforcement should aggressively support ICE efforts in a county that Trump won with just 53% of the vote. 

“Certainly there are concerns that law enforcement will cooperate with more aggressive ICE efforts,” he says. “I have these concerns, and I believe the community also shares these concerns. I personally hope that law enforcement in this area continue to exercise their own level of discretion on who to detain. Given the political leanings or lack thereof of Brown County, I don’t believe a mandate has been established with regards to the incoming administration’s immigration policies.” 

Aside from the eight counties with formal agreements with ICE, dozens of other county sheriffs in Wisconsin are Republicans and likely share Trump’s opinions on immigration. Muth says a big concern is these counties forging informal relationships with ICE that amount to letting the agency know whenever a foreign national is held in a county jail. 

This practice, he says, has historically been common in Walworth County, resulting in a higher per capita number of immigrants removed from the county than anywhere else in the state. 

“Basically every day they would send a list to ICE of every foreign national who had been booked into the jail,” Muth says. “So I think we’re going to see more of that kind of informal information sharing. And then I think the other thing is, even though immigration enforcement is not a state matter, it’s a federal matter, we’ll probably see more local law enforcement, the county level and local municipal level, asking people, what’s their immigration status?”

Muth says the ACLU, community organizations and churches have been working on extensive know-your-rights campaigns in recent months to inform people of what their rights are if they’re stopped by law enforcement and asked these sorts of questions. 

“And our advice is always, you know, you shouldn’t speak to law enforcement without your attorney, and ask for counsel,” he says. “Very often people, especially people from marginalized communities, don’t know that they can refuse to answer questions like, ‘what’s your immigration status?’ And I expect we’re going to see local law enforcement, especially in more conservative counties, asking those questions, even though it is unrelated to enforcing any state of Wisconsin criminal statute.”

But, he adds that many rural sheriffs will be in a bind. They can support Trump and assist ICE in aggressive deportation efforts but that could come with political backlash from an important local voter base — farmers who rely on undocumented labor. 

“I think there are some counties where the local farms are very dependent on undocumented farm workers where the sheriffs recognize that they don’t want to harm the local agricultural community,” he says. 

In the state’s more liberal communities, local officials have promised to do what they can to thwart local ICE efforts. At a news conference last week, Dane County Executive Melissa Agard and District Attorney Ismael Ozanne said the county would continue to offer the area’s immigrant community assistance through programs in the human services department and that the DA would never ask for the immigration status of a victim or witness in a criminal prosecution. 

The Dane County sheriff’s department has also said it would not assist ICE and wants to maintain its relationship with the immigrant community so they report crimes when they happen. But the county has also continued to participate in the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), which provides grants to reimburse local governments for the cost of detaining noncitizens. 

Participation in the program involves regularly sending federal authorities a list of all noncitizens who were held in the jail and convicted of at least two misdemeanors or one felony. Shortly after current Sheriff Kalvin Barrett took office in 2022, the Dane County Board assessed the county’s participation in the program and decided to continue the county’s involvement. 

Elise Schaffer, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office, says the board decided to continue because the reimbursement is based on historical data, not who is currently in the jail. She says the county hasn’t even finished sending all of the 2023 data to the Department of Justice office that operates the program and passes the information along to ICE. 

Muth says that in many ways Dane County and Madison have policies that he believes are good for the local immigrant community, but that even Milwaukee County, with its tight budget, hasn’t accepted this money. 

“The Milwaukee County sheriff’s budget is certainly really tight,” he says. “They’re really suffering, but they don’t pursue that money, which I commend them for. I think in general, other than pursuing this SCAAP funding, I think Dane County and the current sheriff and the Madison police department have a good set of policies that we applaud them for. But ICE’s mass deportation plan ultimately will be necessarily data driven, right? And Dane County has been feeding them data for years.”

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