After nearly 30 years in prison, Derek Williams appreciates the progress he’s made in his pursuit of parole. 

NNS previously reported that Williams’ 180-year sentence for a string of armed robberies was reduced after he protected a correctional officer during a stabbing. 

The sentence reduction made him eligible for parole decades earlier than he would have been otherwise. 

He said he’s been doing all he can to go from parole eligibility to freedom.

Right now, he’s housed at the Sturtevant Transitional Facility, a minimum-security prison. 

Five days a week, he is transported to the Racine Correctional Institution for his job in the gatehouse. 

“I walk around freely,” Williams said. “I see every staff member and every visitor that comes through.”

But what he wants is work release, something fundamentally different. 

Williams, 51, said he has always understood that a key way to demonstrate readiness for parole is doing work release – in which the Wisconsin Department of Corrections allows incarcerated people to leave a prison for a job in the community and return after their shift. 

Williams said his pursuit of parole hit a major setback because his pursuit of work release has hit one. 

In February, the Wisconsin Parole Commission deferred Williams’ parole for six months and withdrew its endorsement for work release, citing concerns that he was dishonest during his January parole hearing. 

It is a setback driving Williams, his wife and other loved ones crazy.  

“I’m literally being held in prison because the prison is not letting me out to do work release,” he said.

A Wisconsin Watch investigation found that work release opportunities in the state were limited and that prison officials weren’t tracking participation rates.

Accusation of dishonesty

The commission said Williams falsely claimed during his January hearing that at a previous hearing a commissioner had discussed initiating a pre-release investigation. 

A pre-release investigation is conducted by correctional staff to verify housing, employment and public safety before parole is granted.

After reviewing the audio and transcript from the earlier hearing, the commission wrote that there was no mention of a pre-release investigation. 

Williams’ “willingness to be dishonest during a parole review (and about another parole commissioner) heightens the commissioner’s stated reservations,” the Wisconsin Parole Commission said in its Feb. 2 decision.  

Williams disputes this characterization, saying he was attempting to explain prior discussions, not mislead the panel or manipulate the parole process.

He also said he was not provided an opportunity to clarify his comments before the Wisconsin Parole Board made its decision.

‘Not an entitlement’

Despite the different claims about what happened, the effect on Williams’ prospects is clear. 

Robert Miller is the warden of the Racine Correctional Institution, who oversees off-site authorizations for people housed at Sturtevant. Miller told Rikki Williams in an email that because the Parole Commission no longer endorses work release, her husband’s anticipated release date could be “significantly in the future.” 

Beth Hardtke, director of communications for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, said in an email that work release decisions are made on a case-by-case basis. 

“Work release placement decisions and approvals may vary based on the individual and the types of conviction(s),” Hardtke said. “The individual’s conduct and work history … may be considered.”

In its decision, the Wisconsin Parole Commission also cited Williams’ criminal history and public safety concerns but did not elaborate on them.

A spokesperson for the commission previously told NNS that “a parole grant is not an entitlement.”

For now, Williams remains in the gatehouse.

Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

What do you do when the Parole Commission says you’re lying? Following up with Derek Williams 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.

Editor’s note: This story was updated March 13 to include a comment from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested a Sheboygan Falls woman during a routine check-in this week, taking her back into custody just months after an immigration court judge canceled her deportation order and began the process of securing her a green card.

Elvira Benitez, 51, spent six months in ICE custody last year after accidentally crossing the Canadian border during a family road trip in Michigan. Benitez fled an abusive home in Michoacán, Mexico, as a teenager and lived without legal status for 35 years, her family said. She first entered the immigration court system after last year’s arrest. 

She was among more than 25,000 people arrested by ICE in July 2025 alone. Roughly a third of immigrants arrested by the agency nationally between January and mid-October 2025 had neither a prior criminal history nor pending criminal charges, including Benitez. 

In her absence, her two adult daughters — both U.S. citizens — took in their school-age siblings. Judge Richard Drucker of the Cleveland immigration court cited her younger children’s struggles during Benitez’s initial detention as a reason to cancel her deportation and set her on the path to legal residency. 

Drucker initially signaled a willingness to grant Benitez relief in early November, but the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) delayed her background check — necessary for her path to a green card — for over a month, eventually releasing her in mid-December. 

The agency soon appealed Drucker’s order, stalling Benitez’s green card process. She continued attending mandatory check-ins at the Milwaukee DHS office, where ICE agents arrested her Tuesday morning before transferring her to a holding facility outside Chicago.

ICE arrested at least 107 people at the DHS office in downtown Milwaukee between January and mid-October 2025 — more than at any other Wisconsin site named in ICE arrest records. Three-quarters of those immigrants  had no pending criminal charges or past convictions, compared with just 17% of all immigrants arrested by ICE in Wisconsin during the same period.

Benitez had no other run-ins with law enforcement that could have triggered her recent arrest, said Crystal Aguilar, her eldest daughter. In Aguilar’s view, the arrest calls into question “whether families who follow the rules can rely on the decisions made in immigration court,” she added.

She complied with all requirements following her initial release, including attending every ICE supervision appointment, according to her attorney, Marc Christopher. DHS was not legally required to arrest her while its appeal is pending, he added. 

Benitez’s detention serves “no legitimate public safety purpose,” Christopher wrote in a Tuesday press release. “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.”

An ICE spokesperson told Wisconsin Watch that Benitez will remain in custody “pending further immigration proceedings.”

“Being in detention is a choice,” they added, suggesting that undocumented immigrants should self-deport or face arrest and a permanent ban on re-entering the U.S.

ICE re-arrests Sheboygan Falls mother after judge halted deportation and cleared green card path 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.

The nonprofit Center for Self-Sufficiency closed in September as federal investigators audited its use of $750,000 in government funding. 

The organization focused on supporting residents reentering society from the criminal justice system and strengthening families. Services included financial and employment coaching, parenting support and restorative justice. 

The center was based for years out of the Community Advocates headquarters at 728 N. James Lovell St. before moving to the YWCA building on King Drive in May. 

The government audit found that the use of $749,000 of the federal funds was unsupported by documentation.

“It’s kind of shocking because it’s portrayed as if there was no information that backed up spending, and that definitely wasn’t the case,” said Maudwella Kirkendoll, chief operating officer of Community Advocates and former vice president of the Center for Self-Sufficiency’s board of directors. 

Despite the audit, two former employees who were working at the center when it closed said the main reason the organization dissolved was a gradual dwindling of funding opportunities. 

Kirkendoll agreed. 

“The funding,” Kirkendoll said, “was just drying up.”

The employees asked to remain anonymous to avoid any negative impacts to future work opportunities.

The federal audit

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs oversees Second Chance Act grants, which are generally meant to support people as they reintegrate after incarceration and help reduce recidivism. 

The Center for Self-Sufficiency was awarded nearly $750,000 to provide case management and employment services to men returning to Milwaukee after incarceration from 2021 to 2024, its third time receiving the grant. 

The office approved an extension to continue the grant with no additional funding until September. 

The Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General launched an audit in May into the center’s program. The office conducted a site visit, interviewed staff, reviewed policy and procedures and requested accounting and financial records.

The audit, which was released in September, indicated the Center for Self-Sufficiency could not demonstrate compliance with certain grant requirements because it did not provide the accounting documentation needed to show how funds were spent to support its program performance. 

“While we determined that a majority of (Center for Self-Sufficiency’s) policies aligned with important conditions of the laws, regulations, guidelines, and terms and conditions applicable to the award, we found critical issues with (Center for Self-Sufficiency’s) grant financial management,” the report reads. 

The audit also found the grant’s financial activity was mixed together with activity from other sources in the organization’s accounting records for most of the time frame that was examined. 

The report recommended that the Office of Justice Programs review and “remedy” the spending, find a better use for the remaining $1,000 that was not used and make sure the Center for Self-Sufficiency has proper systems in place to track how it spends grant money before receiving any future funding. 

According to the report, the center notified the office that it was considering dissolving in July and that its board ultimately voted to close the organization by Sept. 30, 2025.

What former staff and board member are saying

Kirkendoll and the two former employees said the Center for Self-Sufficiency did not misallocate any funds.

It could verify grant program expenses with receipts and paper and computer records, but it had a past accounting system that was not clear, they said. 

When Dafi Dyer became president and CEO of the Center for Self-Sufficiency in late 2022, she and the board implemented a review of the center’s outside accounting firm after noticing some problems and switched to a new accounting firm and system in mid-2023, according to Kirkendoll.

During the audit, the center provided the records from its updated system, as well as the records from the previous accountant, according to Kirkendoll and the former employees. 

“So all that stuff is substantiated, it was there, it just wasn’t in the format that they would have expected from the accounting firm,” Kirkendoll said. 

The audit also reported that the center did not complete single audits for 2021, 2022 and 2023.

The Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs did not respond to questions about the services and documentation provided by the Center for Self-Sufficiency. 

The Office of the Inspector General did not attempt to collect the spent money, according to the former employees and Kirkendoll.

Shutting down

Kirkendoll said the board was having conversations with the center’s leadership about potentially dissolving the organization in the first quarter of 2025. 

As limited-term grants ended, according to Kirkendoll and former employees, leadership and the board were not sure if the organization would be able to receive enough funding from other grants to support its operations. 

“When we dug deeper, it just got to a point where, as a board, we decided having even one or two grants remaining just didn’t make sense,” he said. 

The center moved out of the Lovell Street building into the YWCA Southeast Wisconsin building at 1915 N. Martin Luther King Drive in May.

The Center for Self-Sufficiency made efforts to downsize by reducing employee hours and salaries, according to a former employee. It cut its staff of 10 in half in June.

The organization’s total public support dropped from $3.46 million in 2015 to $2.2 million in 2019 to $1.3 million in 2023, according to the center’s tax filings.

It also did not have much private funding – in 2023, it reported $55,054 in other gifts or contributions. 

Kirkendoll said concerns about grant funding are not specific to the Center for Self-Sufficiency. 

“Over the course of the last five-plus years, I think this funding overall for organizations that are doing the work has decreased substantially,” he said.

Impact

Both former employees said the center had a great working environment and a staff dedicated to the people they served. 

One former employee said success stories from past clients, such as staying at a job for two years or having relationships with their children or families that they couldn’t maintain before, might not be reflected in data reports but can make a big difference in a person’s life. 

Another former employee said they gave their contact information to the final participants in the reentry program and still tries to connect them with other resources. 

“They did great work, and this is the nature of nonprofits,” Kirkendoll said. “It’s, of course, always my hope that the work continues, whether it be with another organization, because there’s definitely a need in the community.” 

Meredith Melland is the neighborhoods reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.

Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

Milwaukee’s Center for Self-Sufficiency closes after federal audit finds unsupported grant documentation 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.

Credibility is central to the criminal justice system.

Who is telling the truth? Who do jurors and judges believe? 

A year ago, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 News and Wisconsin Watch published the Milwaukee County district attorney’s list of law enforcement officers with integrity violations, allegations of dishonesty or bias, and past criminal charges. 

It was the first time the full list had been made public. 

Prosecutors must share information about witness credibility, including that of police officers, with defense attorneys. Then the attorneys decide if they want to try to raise those credibility concerns in court. 

Often called the “Brady/Giglio list” because of landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases, the list is meant to help ensure people get a fair trial and prevent wrongful convictions. 

Since the list was published last year, local defense attorneys say they’ve noticed prosecutors giving more frequent Brady notifications. But they argue that Milwaukee County’s criteria of what gets an officer on the list remains too narrow – excluding officers who should qualify – and that there is still too much inconsistency among county prosecutors about when and how they share Brady material. 

District Attorney Kent Lovern said his office has always fulfilled its legal and ethical obligations, but he acknowledged making changes to improve the list’s accuracy. The most significant was appointing two executive staff members to help maintain the list.

The first list his office released to reporters in September 2024 had inaccurate, incomplete and outdated information.

Some examples: an officer wrongly described as involved in a custody death, another listed for a criminal case that had been expunged, and others listed with the wrong agency. A handful of officers were deceased.

A new list, released in October 2025, did not have those kinds of problems.

“We put more eyes on the list that were beyond my two eyes,” Lovern said, adding: “We think that’s enhanced, at least, the information, making it as current as possible.” 

In the last year, the District Attorney’s Office added 13 officers and removed two. Most of those officers were added because of internal, not criminal, investigations, and about half remain employed with their agency, according to public records. 

For Caitlin Firer, a defense attorney, the public list has served as a backstop.  

“If I’m watching a body camera and it’s striking me as something’s not right, I will run that officer’s name on the Brady list,” she told TMJ4 News, later adding: “It’s a resource now where we see those names, and we know they’re on the Brady list.” 

Last year, the city’s largest police union, the Milwaukee Police Association, criticized the district attorney’s decision to release the list and news organizations’ decision to publish it. Others in policing praised the transparency. 

“We’re given so much more credibility and respect when we take the stand as opposed to the average citizen,” said David Thomas, a Maryland-based policing consultant and expert.

The Brady list, he said, “goes to the very question of integrity.” 

District attorney’s office using same strict criteria to add officers to the list

What has not changed is the strict criteria used to get an officer on the list. 

Officers are added only if they have a pending criminal charge, a past conviction or an internal investigation “that brings into question the officer’s integrity.” 

Experts told the Journal Sentinel last year the policy appeared improperly narrow and omitted other potential Brady material, including when a judge finds an officer not credible. 

Lovern stood by that practice. His office still does not track those judicial decisions, commonly known as adverse credibility rulings. 

“Credibility determinations, which are frequently made by courts, don’t constitute judgments of untruthfulness,” he said in a recent interview. 

When prosecutors are weighing whether to call an officer to testify, it makes sense to distinguish between overt dishonesty and credibility rulings, said Rachel Moran, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, in an interview last month. 

But an officer who was found not credible in court still belongs on the Brady list, she said.

“An officer who has misstated information in his police report, that’s exculpatory regardless of whether the officer intended to do it,” Moran said.

With long internal investigations, it can be years before an officer lands on the list

If an officer is referred to prosecutors for a potential criminal charge, he or she is placed on the Brady list immediately. 

But when it comes to internal investigations, police departments often notify prosecutors at the end of the process, if an officer is found to have broken any department rules.

That can leave a gap. 

Milwaukee police officer Eian West was added to the list in 2025, two years after he and three other officers came under investigation for their response to two domestic violence calls days apart that involved the same couple.  

The officers were accused of failing to make mandatory arrests or file prompt reports, despite the woman saying the man had threatened her with a gun and tried to set her on fire, according to department records. 

West and another officer went to the second call, on April 11, 2023, after two witnesses reported a man beating a woman in a front yard. The officers called her an ambulance.

Later that day, the woman woke up in the hospital and called Police District 4, prompting a sergeant to send two different officers to reinterview the woman and file a report.

Two days after that, the woman had a miscarriage.

Internal affairs asked West why he waited until his next shift, on April 12, after the other officers had been dispatched, to write his report. West’s report also listed the woman as the suspect and did not document the fact that she lived with the man, which is one of the elements of domestic violence, according to a summary from internal affairs.

West maintained he “was not trying to cover up that he was sent to a battery (domestic violence) and did not file it,” police records show.

Still, the officer agreed that he had violated the core value of integrity because he was not completely honest and accurate about all relevant facts in the case, the records say. 

The domestic violence calls took place in April 2023. Internal affairs interviewed West that July. But the internal investigation did not end until 2025, and only after that was West added to the Brady list.

During those two years, prosecutors did not know his integrity was under question in an investigation that ultimately resulted in a 20-day suspension. 

Since prosecutors did not know, they could not disclose it to defense attorneys. 

Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman acknowledged it sometimes takes years to complete internal investigations, depending on the complexity. 

“We are not trying to delay for delay’s sake,” Norman said in an interview. “It is unfortunate that we have a number of investigations on our plate.”

More urgent internal investigations, such as police shootings, can take priority, and the department must respect the officers’ due process and collective bargaining rights, the chief said.

Angel Johnson, a regional attorney manager with the State Public Defenders Office in Milwaukee, said that the office’s clients also have rights. 

“If there’s an officer that has credibility issues and they’re going to testify in a proceeding against my client, (my clients) have the same right to due process,” she said. 

Why some officers were removed from the Brady list

The Brady list is fluid. 

As officers come on, others come off. 

Kenton Burtch and Elric Erving, both of the Milwaukee Police Department, were removed in the last year. 

Erving was investigated for disorderly conduct in 2019. No criminal charges were filed, and his name came off the list, Lovern said. 

Burtch was accused of improperly filing his time card and claiming an estimated $1,700 he was not owed. He was demoted from sergeant and suspended for six days.

He appealed to the city’s Fire and Police Commission, which found the situation was a mistake related to the officer’s remote work arrangement and confusion over how to handle it. The commission overturned his discipline, finding “no indication or evidence of intentional misconduct,” and restored his rank. 

Because of that, Lovern said, his name came off the list. 

In the past, Lovern has removed officers who complete deferred prosecution agreements or who win appeals to get their jobs back. 

Some defense attorneys have argued that officers should only rarely, if ever, come off the Brady list.  

“Once you’re placed on the Brady list, if you continue to testify in court, you should not be removed,” Johnson said. 

As of September 2025, the list had 217 entries involving 190 individual officers. The district attorney’s office released the list in October in response to a public records request. Reporters filed records requests to gather more information about new individuals on the list. Some of those requests remain pending. 

In the months since, the list continues to change. For example, the district attorney’s office added a Milwaukee officer recently charged with accessing sensitive license plate data for personal reasons, despite tagging the purpose of his searches as “investigation.”

It was not the first time the officer, Josue Ayala, had been accused of dishonesty on the job, with one defense attorney even telling a federal prosecutor that Ayala exaggerated so much that it seemed to be a “compulsion,” the Journal Sentinel previously reported. Ayala has since resigned.

Defense attorneys continue to rely on media reports, decisions from the city’s Fire and Police Commission and civil lawsuit judgments to identify officers with questionable credibility – and that’s a problem, Johnson said. 

“It should be happening from the DA’s office, but we are still finding ourselves doing that legwork and it’s not our obligation or ethical duty to do so,” she said.

This story is part of Duty to Disclose, an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 News and Wisconsin Watch. The Fund for Investigative Journalism provided financial support for this project.

Milwaukee County’s list of officers with integrity issues became public. What’s happened since? 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.

Update: March 9, 2026:

A panel of judges in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday paused a federal judge’s February order overturning the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy in most of the country.

The Trump administration is appealing Central District of California Judge Sunshine Sykes’ order, and the pause applies while the appeal is pending. Multiple federal appellate courts are considering challenges to the administration’s policy, which bars detained immigrants from seeking bond; the 7th Circuit, which includes Wisconsin, heard arguments in a related case last month.

Wisconsin immigration attorneys who hurried to file bond motions for their detained clients last month are now in a holding pattern.

Original story, March 6, 2026

Over the past six months, dozens of immigrants held in Wisconsin jails awaiting deportation have challenged their detention in federal court. Judges ruled in their favor in more than half the cases, pushing back on new federal immigration enforcement practices.

Wisconsin’s federal courts have not seen comparable volumes of immigration-related habeas corpus petitions, which challenge the legality of a person’s detention, in at least a decade. More than a third of the petitions heard in Wisconsin since 2016 were filed in the past six months.

Two forces are driving the influx: the Trump administration’s effort to halt bond for virtually all detainees and its enforcement surge in neighboring Minnesota. 

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Board of Immigration Appeals ruled last September that all unauthorized immigrants in ICE custody are ineligible for bond, meaning they must remain in custody while their case plays out.

The ruling reversed a long-standing practice that previously enabled many immigrants to continue their cases while out on bond. In its wake, habeas petitions became one of few remaining paths to an exit.

Wisconsin’s growing tally of habeas petitions pales in comparison to national figures. Federal district courts nationwide have received more than 24,000 habeas petitions from detained immigrants since January 2025, with numbers surging after the Board of Immigration Appeals decision, overwhelming federal prosecutors tasked with defending the legality of ICE detentions.

Soon after the board’s ruling, the Trump administration targeted Minnesota in its immigration crackdown, deploying thousands of federal agents to patrol the Twin Cities and nearby rural communities. The White House claimed in early February that the campaign resulted in the arrests of more than 4,000 immigrants.

Since January 2025, ICE has transferred at least 108 immigrants from Minnesota to the Douglas County jail in Superior, Wisconsin. The sheriff’s office contracts with ICE for detainee housing, as do three other Wisconsin counties.

At least 15 immigrants held in Douglas County have filed habeas petitions in Wisconsin’s Western District Court since September 2025. Judges have thus far sided with immigrants four times, including two Ecuadorian men arrested in a raid on a construction site in a Minneapolis suburb. Five of the cases remain pending.

Those detained in the Douglas County jail made up two-thirds of the Western District’s immigration-related habeas petitions between September 2025 and February 2026. 

While arrest locations were not available for every case, available data indicates that 60% of immigrants who passed through the Douglas County jail between January and October 2025 were arrested in Minnesota.

The Madison-based court had not previously handled an immigration-related habeas case in over a decade. 

Habeas petitions in the recent past were a “hodgepodge,” said Milwaukee immigration attorney Benjamin Crouse, and were often dismissed or denied by judges in Wisconsin’s Eastern District.

Prior to last September, many habeas petitions challenged the legality of detaining immigrants for months at a time without a clear end date. A Colombian man transferred into ICE custody after a drug arrest in 2014 filed a habeas petition after spending more than 20 months at the Dodge County Detention Facility in Juneau, arguing his detention had stretched beyond reasonable time limits. 

Judge William Griesbach denied the man’s petition in 2016. Griesbach has ruled on 17 habeas petitions in the past decade, granting only one: a 2018 petition filed by a Mexican asylum seeker who spent more than two and a half years in the Kenosha County Detention Center without a bond hearing.

In some cases, Griesbach and other federal judges had no choice but to deny or dismiss habeas petitions: In at least 10 cases filed in Wisconsin’s Eastern District Court since 2016, federal immigration officials deported immigrants before the court could fully consider their petitions. 

Nearly as many immigrants left ICE custody through other routes, including community supervision and asylum, before a judge could rule on their habeas petitions.

Despite the influx of new cases in the Western District, the Eastern District has still heard roughly two-thirds of the immigration-related habeas petitions filed since September. 

Most federal district court judges who have considered habeas petitions since September have ruled against the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision prohibiting bond hearings for detained immigrants. 

Wisconsin’s Eastern District judges are split. Griesbach called the board’s position “persuasive” in December, rejecting a habeas petition filed by a Venezuelan man arrested alongside his wife during a routine check-in at the Department of Homeland Security’s downtown Milwaukee office earlier that year. That man, Diego Ugarte-Arenas, left ICE custody after receiving asylum in January.

Judge Brett Ludwig also sided with the Trump administration’s position on detaining immigrants without bond. Trump appointed Ludwig to the Eastern District bench in 2020; then-President George W. Bush appointed Griesbach to the court in 2002. 

Eastern District judges Byron Conway, a Biden appointee, and Lynn Adelman, a Clinton appointee, have both criticized the board’s ruling. “Courts have nearly universally rejected the conclusion of the Board,” Conway wrote in an October order granting the habeas petition of a Nicaraguan man arrested during an incidental run-in with ICE agents.

Western District judges have uniformly ruled against the Board of Immigration Appeals’ bond decisions.

Keeping cases in courts like Wisconsin’s Western District is a high priority for attorneys representing detained immigrants.

“It’s less about jurisdictions where you’re successful and more about avoiding jurisdictions where it’s more problematic,” said St. Paul immigration attorney Solomon Steen, who has represented two clients detained in the Douglas County jail.

Many of ICE’s largest detention facilities are in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi — states within the jurisdiction of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which last month backed the Board of Immigration Appeals’ bond eligibility decision.

When a client arrested in Minnesota lands in a Wisconsin jail, Steen said, attorneys can find them within “hours or days.” Tracking clients’ locations becomes tougher once they are transferred to larger detention facilities elsewhere, he added.

With thousands of immigrants now bouncing between distant detention centers, Steen said many face pressure to give up on their legal cases. “You won’t know if you’ll be able to contact a lawyer if you get detained,” he said. “So wouldn’t it be easier to just take a voluntary departure or take a removal order in immigration court just so that you will know where you are and what’s happening?” 

Steen and other attorneys are now working to keep clients’ cases in Midwestern courts — and out of the 5th Circuit’s jurisdiction — even when their whereabouts are unclear, preserving their chances of a successful habeas petition.

Even before the Board of Immigration Appeals blocked most detainees from seeking bond, voluntary departures — wherein an immigrant leaves the U.S. to avoid a deportation on their record — increased 21-fold between January and September of last year. 

Meanwhile, an order from a federal district court judge in California has opened the door for many of Wisconsin’s current ICE detainees to request bond for the first time in months. 

Judge Sunshine Sykes of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California initially ruled in November that the Department of Homeland Security’s practice of denying bond hearings to most immigrant detainees ran afoul of federal law. 

DHS didn’t budge, maintaining that the Board of Immigration Appeals’ rulemaking authority takes precedence over a ruling in federal district court. Chief Immigration Court Judge Teresa Riley, a Department of Justice employee, later directed judges in immigration courts nationwide to continue denying detained immigrants’ requests for bond hearings. 

Sykes doubled down last week, rebuking DHS for ignoring her earlier order. 

“It is not the executive department’s province and duty to say what the law is,” she wrote. 

Sykes vacated Board of Immigration Appeals bond rules in all states outside of the 5th Circuit, which still leaves most immigrants in ICE’s largest detention centers unable to request bond hearings. 

Crouse recently observed one Chicago immigration court judge notify immigrants about Sykes’ latest order.

 “They’re taking this a little more seriously now, but we still don’t know exactly what this looks like,” he said. 
He and other Milwaukee-area immigration attorneys are again filing bond motions for their clients. “We’re getting hearings,” he added.

Aissa Olivarez, an attorney with the Community Immigration Law Center in Madison, confirmed that immigrants detained in Dodge County are receiving notice that they are eligible for bond. So far, she said, there is no indication federal immigration authorities are rushing to move Wisconsin detainees to holding facilities farther south.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Immigrants fight ICE detention in federal court — and increasingly win 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.

A federal lawsuit filed Feb. 23 by the legal nonprofit group Protect Democracy alleges the Department of Homeland Security used facial recognition technology unlawfully to track legal observers and label them domestic terrorists. 

In Milwaukee County, law enforcement representatives are addressing facial recognition technology-related fears from residents. They’re concerned about a potential collaboration with a company called Biometrica, which provides access to facial recognition search results.  

In August, Milwaukee County Sheriff Denita Ball signed an “agreement of intent” to enter into a contract with Biometrica, said James Burnett, director of public affairs and community engagement and acting chief of staff at the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office. 

“But the contract is still considered to be in draft form – not fully signed, executed or valid – and has to proceed, like any other proposed contract, through the county’s statutory signing process,” Burnett said. 

There currently are no services or technology being provided by Biometrica, and Biometrica does not have access to any sheriff’s office data, Burnett said.

County Supervisor Sky Capriolo, member of the county’s Judiciary, Law Enforcement and General Services Committee, said she and residents have serious concerns.  

“It warrants more consideration, education and discussion,” Capriolo said. “I certainly am not ready to green-light a contract.”

Capriolo said she’s waiting to hear whether the contract will go to her committee again. 

Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman took a different step and banned the use of facial technology by his department in early February. 

On Feb. 24, Norman announced the suspension of MPD officer Josue Ayala for the improper use of a different tracking tool, the Flock camera system, to track a dating partner and a former partner. 

“I am extremely disappointed to learn about the incident and expect all members, sworn and civilian, to demonstrate the highest ethical standards in the performance of their duties,” said Norman in a statement.

Ayala was charged by the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office with one count of attempted misconduct in public office. Norman said he immediately directed MPD to create additional auditing mechanisms.

Concerns remain high

Social justice and civil rights advocates have expressed grave concerns about the use of the technology by both agencies, citing evidence of inaccuracies, racial bias and privacy violations. 

Facial recognition technology uses artificial intelligence to identify someone by comparing a photo of an unknown face to some database of images of known faces, said Katie Kinsey at the Feb. 5 Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission meeting during a presentation by the NYU Policing Project. 

The image databases can include mug shot collections, driver’s license records or images found on the internet, Kinsey said.

Facial recognition technology and local law enforcement

In spring, MPD acknowledged it used outside agencies’ licenses for facial recognition search results for two to three years without a written department policy.

The department also announced it was considering an agreement with Biometrica – an agreement that would have provided access to facial recognition technology to the department in exchange for approximately 2.5 million Milwaukee County Jail booking photos.

This proposal prompted months of public pushback before the announcement by Norman in February that the department would no longer pursue the technology.

ACLU preaches vigilance

The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin welcomed Norman’s announcement but also expressed concerns about MPD’s past decision making.  

It is “extremely concerning that MPD secretly used FRT (facial recognition technology) searches for years without any standard operating procedure – or any written guidelines – in place,” an ACLU spokesperson said in an email to NNS.

The organization is urging Milwaukee residents to remain vigilant.

“Countless Milwaukee residents and community leaders have engaged in thoughtful community education, spent hours upon hours in public meetings and contacted their local elected officials to voice their unequivocal opposition to the use of (facial recognition technology), and they will still be watching,” the spokesperson said. 

The MPD spokesperson told NNS the department could revisit the issue in the future when a policy is in place that aligns with both public safety benefit and public concerns.

Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

Milwaukee law enforcement faces growing scrutiny around facial recognition technology use 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.

Editor’s note: This is a static version of the interactive story found at this link.

Part 1: A struggling regional carrier

The legacy network

Air Wisconsin Airlines has not been spared by the nationwide decline of regional air service. The 60-year-old carrier laid off hundreds of employees in Appleton and Milwaukee last year after terminating a contract to provide aircraft, crews and services to American Airlines in January 2025. The airline’s planned pivot to charter service and federally subsidized connections to underserved airports didn’t pan out, prompting another round of layoffs by the spring.

But the company’s troubles didn’t entirely ground its fleet. Flight tracking data indicate that Air Wisconsin continued to provide regional air service through the end of 2025, primarily connecting its Wisconsin hubs to mid-sized Midwestern airports as it had for decades.

The sale

In January, Harbor Diversified Inc., the Appleton-based parent company of Air Wisconsin, sold the company’s operations and 13 of its jets to CSI Aviation, a New Mexico-based air charter company and longtime federal contractor owned by former New Mexico Republican Party chair Allen Weh.

Air Wisconsin sent recall notices to the company’s furloughed flight attendants after the sale to CSI Aviation, and the Association of Flight Attendants — the union representing the furloughed workers — negotiated an immediate raise for returning members. In a January press release announcing the recall notices, the union noted that only a third of the furloughed flight attendants opted to return.

Neither CSI nor Harbor Diversified responded to requests for comment.

CSI is central to the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown.

It has provided charter services for ICE since 2024, transporting detainees and deportees both directly and through subcontractors.

The company entered its current $1.5 billion contract with the Department of Homeland Security in November of last year.

Demand for private charters surged after 2010, when the Obama administration moved away from relying solely on the U.S. Marshals Service.

Air Wisconsin isn’t alone. Avelo Airlines began deportation flights last spring, but backed out last month following intense public backlash.

A transformed network

CSI’s acquisition of Air Wisconsin transformed the airline’s flight patterns within a matter of weeks. The airline’s website no longer lists passenger routes, but flight data collected between Jan. 9 and mid-February indicates that the airline has largely ceded its role as a Midwestern regional carrier.

Instead, the airline increasingly looks south: Destinations in Louisiana and Texas replaced the mid-sized Midwestern airports that were, until recently, the airline’s most frequent destinations.

Flight data indicates Air Wisconsin planes made at least 125 trips in January 2026, up from roughly 60 in December 2025. Thicker lines on the map indicate more frequent routes.

Part 2: Air ICE

Many of Air Wisconsin’s new destinations are within easy reach of ICE detention facilities in Texas and Louisiana, including some of the agency’s largest.

The Minnesota operation

Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is among the busiest in the country, but Air Wisconsin rarely provided service to the Twin Cities in the final months of 2025.

That changed in January, just weeks after the Trump administration dispatched thousands of federal agents to Minnesota for an immigration enforcement offensive dubbed Operation Metro Surge.

Hundreds of immigrants detained in the operation have since departed the airport in shackles, loaded onto charter flights bound for ICE detention facilities farther south.

Alexandria

The modest airport in Alexandria, Louisiana, is now the epicenter of ICE’s deportation flight operations. Air Wisconsin has flown to or from Alexandria at least 30 times since the airline’s acquisition by CSI, on par with the airline’s service to Madison and outpacing service to Appleton, home to the airline’s corporate headquarters.

The GEO Group, an international private prison operator, runs an ICE detention facility on the airport’s tarmac. A dozen other ICE facilities sit within easy reach. Among them is the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi, where Delvin Francisco Rodriguez, a 39-year-old Nicaraguan national, died in custody on Dec. 14, 2025. ICE acknowledged the incident in a press release four days later, though the agency did not specify the cause of Rodriguez’s death.

El Paso

Camp East Montana, ICE’s largest detention facility, sits just east of El Paso International Airport. Air Wisconsin flights took off from or landed in El Paso at least 32 times in January and early February, second only to Milwaukee’s Mitchell International Airport.

The camp drew national attention in early January after Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban national, died by asphyxiation after guards pinned him to the floor of a cell. The El Paso County Medical Examiner’s Office later ruled the death a homicide.

Lunas Campos’ death came a month after Francisco Gaspar-Andres, a 48-year-old from Guatemala and detained at Camp East Montana, died in an El Paso hospital; ICE attributed Gaspar-Andres’ death to liver and kidney failure.

Another detainee, 36-year-old Victor Manuel Diaz of Nicaragua, died at the camp on Jan. 14 in what ICE described as a “presumed suicide” — an explanation his family questions. ICE agents detained Diaz in Minneapolis only days before his death.

Back at home

Air Wisconsin hasn’t entirely withdrawn from its home state hubs. Many of the airline’s remaining pilots, flight attendants and ground crew are still Wisconsin-based, and Milwaukee remains the airline’s primary hub.

The airline is now hiring for more than a dozen Wisconsin-based positions — including legal counsel.

About the data

Wisconsin Watch used FlightAware AeroAPI data (Sept 2025 – Feb 2026) to reconstruct patterns before and after the Jan. 9 sale to CSI Aviation.

Hubs on these maps represent the 10 airports most frequently used. While the routes align with ICE operations, the data does not confirm if specific flights carried detainees.

Air Wisconsin turns to ICE (static version) 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.

Air Wisconsin turns to ICE 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.

The backlog of unresolved felony-related matters in Milwaukee County has surpassed the pandemic-era peak, topping more than 10,000 as of Oct. 13, according to data obtained from the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office through an NNS open records request.

As cases linger, people throughout the criminal justice system feel the effects, including victims and their families, people accused of crimes and the broader community, said Kent Lovern, Milwaukee County district attorney.

“‘Justice delayed, justice denied’ applies to everybody,” Lovern said. 

One recent high-profile incident reaffirms how case backlogs could have tragic and life-altering consequences. 

On Feb. 5, a Milwaukee man, Mile Dukic, allegedly stabbed and killed 44-year-old Amanda Varisco on West National Avenue and S. 36th Street. At the time of the killing, Dukic had separate open felony cases in Milwaukee County Circuit Court – for bail jumping and stalking. He was charged with another felony, first-degree intentional homicide, on Feb. 9.

Dukic is currently in custody with bail set at $500,000.

Two backlogs

The district attorney’s office plays a pivotal role at both ends of the felony pipeline, said a spokesperson for the Wisconsin State Public Defender’s Office: referrals from police awaiting a charging decision, plus charged felony cases working their way through the courts.

The Milwaukee Police Department made 5,650 summary felony arrests in 2025, according to an MPD spokesperson. The department continues to work with the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office to best address the felony backlog, the MPD spokesperson said.

District attorney records show 2,924 pending uncharged felony cases as of October 2025.

State office wants county to change approach, charge fewer felonies

The spokesperson for the Wisconsin State Public Defender’s Office said the district attorney’s office can and should do more to address the growing backlog by adjusting its approach. 

“We believe prosecutors should be exercising more discretion in which referrals they are charging,” the spokesperson said. The spokesperson said the office regularly sees clients charged with relatively minor offenses lose jobs or housing as a result – consequences that can outweigh the underlying charge.

When the prosecutor’s office officially presses felony charges, these cases can get bogged down and stay in the courts. Resolution to the cases depends not only on prosecutors but also on defense attorneys, judges, court staff and other resources that are strained as well, Lovern said. 

Based on the district attorney’s internal case-tracking system, more than 7,000 felony cases were charged but not yet resolved as of Oct. 13. 

“The influx of felony charges coming out of the DA’s office isn’t benefiting the court system or public safety,” said State Public Defender Jennifer Bias. “It’s a waste of our scarce attorney resources.”

Increase in serious criminal activity

Lovern pushes back on the idea that prosecutors are charging too many cases.

“I want to make it very clear: I don’t have goals for what we ought to be charging,” he said. “I don’t have a directive of what the percentage of our charging rate should be.”

Prosecutors decline to move forward on many referrals, said Jeffrey Altenburg, Milwaukee’s chief deputy district attorney. 

On a basic public safety level, there are simply more serious felonies being committed, Lovern and Altenburg said.

“I think that that’s exactly what we’re seeing,” Altenburg said. “We’re seeing more referrals coming to this office that involve firearms, violence, sexual violence.” 

Milwaukee Police Department data show reports of the majority of the most serious offenses declined from 2024 to 2025, with the exception of homicides and human trafficking, which increased slightly.

Violent crime in Milwaukee has generally declined in the past few years – but from historic highs seen during the pandemic, according to data from the Council on Criminal Justice.

When to charge

Charging decisions begin with a decision about whether a case is provable beyond a reasonable doubt, Altenburg said.

“We adhere to that standard very scrupulously in this office,” he said.  

Once that is determined, the district attorney’s office moves to the question of whether prosecution is necessary or a different kind of intervention is more appropriate, Altenburg said.

Alternatives to traditional prosecution

In Milwaukee, there are two alternative interventions: diversion and deferred prosecution.

Diversion allows a person to complete requirements, such as treatment, restitution or community service, without a criminal charge. 

Deferred prosecution involves issuing charges with an agreement in which a conviction is withheld if the person meets various conditions.

Lovern said local prosecutors created an early-intervention approach designed to steer nonviolent cases driven by substance use or mental health challenges out of the criminal justice system when appropriate. 

In 2020, Milwaukee County intervened in roughly 600 cases, Altenburg said. Last year, the county intervened in roughly 1,600 cases.

Lovern said the nature of modern policing – and modern evidence – has fundamentally changed prosecutors’ workload.

The sheer volume of evidence that must be reviewed contributes to growing wait times before charging decisions can be made, Lovern said. 

More evidence is generated because of modern technologies and other tools used by police. A single incident can, for example, generate hours of body camera footage that prosecutors review before making charging decisions, Lovern said. 

In 2020, there were 84,000 pieces of evidence in Milwaukee’s database. In 2024, there were 1.7 million items. 

“I’m sure last year, it was even higher. That’s just where we’re headed,” Lovern said.

Staffing and system capacity

Something that adds to both backlogs – uncharged cases awaiting a decision and charged cases in the system – is insufficient staffing levels throughout the court system, a trend that has continued since the pandemic. 

The district attorney’s office has about 125 full-time prosecutors, Lovern said. 

“Now that is a lot. It’s the same number that we had when (Altenburg) and I started in this office 28 years ago, though.”

The State Public Defender’s Office also faces staffing challenges, according to its spokesperson. 

“Broadly speaking, our agency needs more staff statewide,” the spokesperson said. “This wouldn’t address delays caused by prosecutors, but it would help to decrease the time it takes to appoint attorneys to indigent defendants and reduce the turnover in staff that office experiences due to burnout.”

There is also a need for support staff who help with administrative tasks, freeing up attorneys.

Lovern said unstable funding adds to staffing pressures.

About a third of legal staff in the county had been funded with federal grant money, which has been a little less predictable in the last couple of years, Lovern said.  

“We can use more positions,” Lovern said. “There’s no question about that.”

Justice delayed: More than 10,000 felony matters unresolved in Milwaukee County 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.

For many Milwaukee residents returning from incarceration, the difference between stability and setback can hinge on a single document: a valid driver’s license.

Without one, everyday responsibilities can become barriers that undermine a person’s successful return to the community, said Jay Tucker, administrator of community reintegration services at Wisconsin Community Services. 

Tucker helps oversee the organization’s long-running driver’s license recovery program, which helps people get back their licenses after suspensions or revocations. 

Although the program serves a broad range of low-income Milwaukee residents, Tucker said the loss of a driver’s license is especially destabilizing for people returning from incarceration, particularly as they look for work.  

“There’s already a stigma there,” Tucker said. “If I’m already checking a box on an application just to get the job, and now I may not have this valid work credential, it amplifies that stigma.”

Black and poor residents overrepresented

Suspended and revoked driver’s licenses disproportionately affect the city’s Black and low-income residents, said Clarence Johnson, president and CEO of Wisconsin Community Services. 

In Wisconsin, most license suspensions and revocations are not tied to dangerous driving but to unpaid fines and forfeitures. 

According to Wisconsin Department of Transportation data from 2024, failure to pay forfeitures accounted for more than 44% of revocations and suspensions statewide – far more than operating while intoxicated or point-based violations.

For many, that process starts with a single ticket, said Taffie Foster-Toney, lead case manager for the license recovery program.

“You get one citation, you’re not able to pay it and then it snowballs,” Foster-Toney said. 

Breaking a cycle

Shakia Thompson, 33, a Milwaukee resident, mother and student, said the cycle was hard to break.  

“My license was suspended because I had a lot of operating-after-suspension tickets,” Thompson said. “I would get on a payment plan, get my license back and then get another ticket.”

With work and family responsibilities, she said, staying on top of court appearances became difficult.

“With me working a lot, I wasn’t always able to attend court,” Thompson said. “So it just kept keeping me behind, and I kept owing and owing.”

How the program works

The driver’s license recovery program at Wisconsin Community Services began in 2010. 

It serves Milwaukee residents who meet federal poverty guidelines, have a suspended or revoked Wisconsin driver’s license and meet other eligibility guidelines.

Foster-Toney said the process begins with intake and a detailed review of a participant’s driving record.

Individuals are then paired with attorneys through Legal Action of Wisconsin and work case by case to resolve issues across multiple courts and counties. 

Options may include payment plans or community service. 

Thompson said the payment plan option helped her considerably. 

“There were times that I wasn’t able to pay a fine, and then I would get backed up on other bills. So it really helped in the long run,” she said. 

Participants can also attend a financial literacy workshop. In return, the program pays up to $60 in Wisconsin Division of Motor Vehicles fees once an individual is eligible for reinstatement.

Public safety benefits

Johnson said helping people regain licenses benefits the broader community.

“People who have valid driver’s licenses tend to be safer drivers,” he said. “When you have assets in your life, you’re much more inclined to make good judgment decisions. The driver’s license program offers hope. It’s a lifeline.”

Thompson said she shares information about the program widely, especially with people balancing many responsibilities, such as family and work.

“I tell a lot of people about it,” she said. “A lot of ladies in school that don’t have their license.”

After getting her license back last summer, Thompson said she’s focused on keeping it. 

“I’m doing great with my payment plans, and I have my license,” she said. “I’m moving forward.”

How to connect

Wisconsin Community Services receives referrals from courts, parole agents, nonprofit organizations, city agencies, police officers, Milwaukee Area Technical College and the mayor’s office. 

The program is housed at Milwaukee Area Technical College’s downtown campus and accepts walk-ins.

Eligibility requirements are: 

• A suspended or revoked Class D driver’s license
• City of Milwaukee residency
• Income that meets federal poverty guidelines 
• No valid license within the past eight years and completion of the DMV written test within the past 12 months
• No operating-while-intoxicated charges, suspensions or revocations related to operating while intoxicated   

People can contact Wisconsin Community Services at 414-297-6407 for more information.

‘I’m moving forward’: Driver’s license recovery program helps Milwaukee residents regain stability 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.

A jury found a Wisconsin man guilty Thursday of forging threats against President Donald trump in an attempt to get the victim in a robbery case against him deported.

Online court records show the Milwaukee County jury found 52-year-old Demetric Scott guilty of felony identity theft and witness intimidation after deliberating for most of the day. He represented himself during the three-day trial and was immediately taken into custody after the verdicts were read, leaving no way to reach him for comment on Thursday evening.

According to court documents, Mexican immigrant Ramon Morales Reyes was riding his bike in Milwaukee in September 2023 when Scott approached him and kicked him off the bike. He stabbed Morales Reyes with a box cutter before stealing the bike and riding away.

Scott was arrested hours later. While he was in jail, Scott wrote multiple letters posing as Morales Reyes to state and federal officials threatening to kill Trump at a rally. Federal immigration authorities took Morales Reyes into custody in May after he dropped his daughter off at school.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blasted his photo on social media, along with an excerpt of a letter he purportedly wrote in English promising to shoot Trump at a rally. The White House and Trump supporters played up his arrest as a major success in the administration’s crackdown on immigration.

Investigators determined that Morales Reyes couldn’t have written the letters since he doesn’t speak English well, can’t write in the language and the handwriting in the letters didn’t match his.

Meanwhile, Scott was making calls from jail in which he talked about letters that needed to be mailed and a plan to get U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities to pick someone up so his trial could get dismissed. He admitted to police that he wrote the letters.

Scott was charged separately with armed robbery, battery, and reckless endangerment in connection with the bike incident. The jury on Thursday acquitted him on the robbery and battery counts but found him guilty on the endangerment charge.

Court records show prosecutors charged Scott in 2022 with being a party to burglary. He was out on bail in connection with that case when the bike incident happened and wrote the letters, prompting prosecutors to charge him with three counts of bail jumping. The jury on Thursday found him guilty on one of those counts but acquitted him on the remaining two charges.

All together, he faces up to 26 years in the state prison system when he’s sentenced on Feb. 27. The burglary charge is still pending.

The Noem news release with Morales Reyes’ photo touting his arrest is still posted on the DHS website but now includes a disclaimer stating that he’s no longer under investigation for threatening Trump but remains in ICE custody pending deportation. The release says he entered the U.S. illegally nine times between 1998 and 2005 and has a criminal record that includes arrests for felony hit and run, property damage and disorderly conduct with a domestic abuse modifier.

Morales Reyes was released on $7,500 bond in June and is currently residing with his family in Milwaukee, his deportation defense attorney, Cain Oulahan, said. He has applied for a U-visa, a document that allows crime victims and their family members to remain in the U.S., but Oulahan said it could take years to obtain one.

Wisconsin online court records do not show any criminal cases involving Morales Reyes. Oulahan, his attorney, said that all the background checks he has conducted on Morales Reyes have turned up nothing.

Morales Reyes moved to the U.S. from Mexico in the 1980s. He worked as a dishwasher in Milwaukee, is married and has three children who are U.S. citizens, according to his attorneys. He said Scott’s conviction is a huge relief for Morales Reyes and his family.

“He’s been traumatized by going through all this, all these different levels that feel like victimization,” Oulahan said. “He just wants to work and be with his family again.”

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Jury finds man guilty of forging threat against Trump to get robbery case victim deported 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.

Last week we asked for your questions about immigration enforcement in Wisconsin, particularly as thousands of federal immigration agents patrol Minnesota’s Twin Cities, conducting door-to-door searches for immigrants and clashing daily with protesters and observers.

One reader reached out for information about Wisconsin’s firearms laws, citing the example of armed civilians at anti-ICE protests in Minnesota. The question preceded the Jan. 24 killing of Alex Pretti by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officer in Minneapolis — a shooting that escalated tensions in Minnesota, sparked national protests and reignited questions about unchecked federal power. 

The episode also renewed a national conversation about the implications of exercising Second Amendment rights during protests and interactions with law enforcement. Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse at Minneapolis’ Veterans Affairs hospital, held a concealed carry permit for the handgun he carried that day. Video of the incident shows a CBP officer confiscating the handgun shortly before other agents shot Pretti multiple times, killing him.

Here’s the reader’s question and our answer below:  

I would like to know more about open carry in Wisconsin. I know Wisconsin has more permissive open carry laws compared to Minnesota. But, I know there are some restrictions as to locations as well.

Wisconsin law is, at least on the surface, fairly permissive on the matter of carrying firearms in most public spaces — a practice often referred to as “open carry.” 

“As long as you’re not a prohibited possessor for a firearm and you’re an adult, you are allowed to lawfully open carry a firearm in the state of Wisconsin,” said Milwaukee defense attorney Tom Grieve, a former state prosecutor and Second Amendment commentator.

Those prohibited from possessing a firearm under federal or state law include those with a felony conviction, anyone convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence or anyone subject to a domestic violence protective order. Others prohibited include people found not guilty of a felony by reason of mental illness, those adjudicated incompetent by a court or those with a history of involuntary commitments for mental illness or drug dependence.

Legal permanent residents can lawfully own a firearm, provided they meet other eligibility requirements. Most foreign nationals with nonimmigrant visas, including temporary employment-based visas, cannot own guns. Federal law also bars unauthorized immigrants from owning firearms — a rule that withstood a recent challenge in federal court.

But carrying openly, particularly without a concealed carry license, can be a legal minefield. Carrying a firearm on federal property — including post offices — or on school grounds is a felony, and Wisconsin law sets a 1,000-foot radius around all school properties in which possessing a firearm is generally illegal. In urban areas, Grieve added, “you’re almost always within 1,000 feet of a school.”

The right to carry — either open or concealed — also does not extend to police stations, courthouses or correctional facilities. Private property owners may prohibit guns on their premises and direct anyone violating their rules to leave. “Signs or no signs, if you’re asked to leave, you have to leave,” said Nik Clark, president of the advocacy group Wisconsin Carry, Inc. Private property owners cannot, however, bar people from keeping a gun in their personal vehicle while on their premises.

Concealed carry license holders are allowed to carry within 1,000 feet of a school under state law, but they are not exempt from the law prohibiting firearms on school grounds. Licensees may also carry their guns in bars and taverns, but only if they do not drink alcohol. 

Wisconsin residents over the age of 21 who are permitted to own a firearm can apply for a concealed carry license through the Wisconsin Department of Justice. Applicants must prove they have completed a firearms training course and background check and pay a $40 fee to obtain their first license, which remains valid for five years. 

State law generally prohibited Wisconsinites from carrying concealed firearms until 2011, when then-Gov. Scott Walker signed into law broad concealed carry rights that extend to most public spaces, including the state Capitol. 

The state issued or renewed more than 67,000 concealed carry licenses in 2024. Bryan Voss, a Milwaukee-area firearms instructor and member of the Wisconsin Libertarian Party, said the demographics of concealed carry license applicants are shifting. 

“I’ve heard that Black women are the most rapidly growing population of gun owners,” he said, “and the makeup of the classes does seem to support that.”

Most states either honor Wisconsin concealed carry licenses or do not require a license to carry a concealed firearm. Neighboring Illinois and Minnesota do not honor Wisconsin licenses, nor do 12 other states and the District of Columbia.

A growing number of states, including Illinois, prohibit openly carrying “long guns” — meaning rifles and shotguns — at protests. Those rules aim to prevent armed confrontations between protesters, counterprotesters and law enforcement, said University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor John Gross. “What (law enforcement) don’t want,” he said, “is a situation where you have two armed groups facing off against one another with the police in between them.”

But Wisconsin law generally allows both open and licensed concealed carry at political demonstrations. A few demonstrators carried rifles outside the Wisconsin State Capitol during a massive protest against COVID-19 restrictions in 2020, for instance. 

Minnesota also allows concealed carry permit holders to bring firearms to political demonstrations. 

Family members have confirmed that Pretti held a concealed carry permit for the handgun that a CBP agent confiscated moments before the shooting. Minnesota laws allow concealed carry permit holders to openly carry their firearms, although videos show Pretti had his handgun holstered and was holding a phone camera.

Wisconsin attorneys and gun rights advocates argue gun owners considering openly carrying their firearms at protests should think carefully about their decision.

“We have a right to our own self-defense, and the defense of our family and of our communities,” Voss said. “(But) I usually advise people against open carry. I find that there are very few situations in which that makes anyone feel better or really does you any good. Worst case scenario, it makes you the target.”

“When you are open carrying a firearm people generally think, ‘Oh, this is a great way to deter someone,’” Grieve said. “It might (be), or they’re just going to make sure the first thing they do is grab your firearm.”

Clark broadly cautioned against bringing firearms to protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

“I would encourage anyone who wants to go ‘demonstrate’ armed to keep a safe distance from law enforcement,” he wrote in an email. “Wave your flag, say what you want to say, but don’t get in close contact with law enforcement. I would advise anyone not to try to interfere with law enforcement at all. But if you do interfere with law enforcement, doing so armed is presenting yourself as a deadly threat and that is dangerous for both law enforcement and agitators.”

Still, Grieve said, carrying a firearm in the presence of law enforcement is not intrinsically grounds for officers to react with deadly force, as some Trump administration officials suggested in the immediate aftermath of Pretti’s killing. 

“If that’s the case, then game wardens in the United States would be slaughtering tens of thousands of Americans every year,” he said, “because those are law enforcement officials who, by their very nature, are dealing with armed Americans on a daily and hourly basis.”

Voss challenged the White House’s initial efforts to blame Pretti’s death on his decision to carry a firearm. In his view, none of Pretti’s actions captured on video justified the shooting. “At what point did (Pretti) do something that invited an immediate execution?” he asked.

Gross shares a similar view of the shooting. “He was a lawful gun owner legally carrying his firearm in a public space, and any arguments from the Department of Homeland Security or the FBI or other members of federal law enforcement that his possession of that weapon by itself indicates some intent to harm federal law enforcement (are) completely ridiculous.”

He was referring to comments from FBI Director Kash Patel and then-Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino questioning Pretti’s reasons for carrying a firearm on Jan. 24. Bovino has since been removed from his role.

“If that were true, it would eviscerate the Second Amendment right to possess a firearm,” Gross added. “It would essentially be saying, ‘If federal agents believe you have a gun, and you potentially could use that firearm against them, then they have the authority to disarm you or even use deadly force against you to protect themselves.’”

If you are considering carrying a firearm in Wisconsin either openly or concealed, consult with the Wisconsin Department of Justice and, if possible, an attorney to learn more about how to legally and safely exercise your Second Amendment rights, Grieve said. 

Wisconsinites may remember another incident that placed the intersection of firearms rights and protests in national headlines: In August 2020, then-17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse of Illinois shot and killed two men in separate confrontations while patrolling Kenosha as part of an informal volunteer militia amid civil unrest following the shooting of Jacob Blake by a Kenosha police officer. Rittenhouse later stood trial for homicide and reckless endangerment, among other charges. A Kenosha County jury acquitted Rittenhouse in 2021.

Rittenhouse has since become a gun rights advocate, and the shooting of Pretti prompted some national pundits to compare his exercise of Second Amendment rights to Pretti’s. Rittenhouse himself weighed in on Monday via Twitter. “Carry everywhere,” he wrote. “It is your right.”

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

Guns and protests: What are Wisconsin’s laws on open and concealed carry? 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.