Nearly 60 People Arrested by ICE Over Three-Day Surge
Federal DHS says detainees had criminal histories; immigrant advocates deny this.
Galo Suárez, whose fiance Reyna Elizabeth Garcia was arrested by ICE over the weekend, marches with allies on Milwaukee’s South Side. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Between June 29 and July 1, federal immigration agents arrested 57 people in Wisconsin during a surge of arrests. Those arrests sent a wave of unease through the state, as people recounted their experiences being detained in violent scenes and tried to find their loved ones who were seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Law enforcement and immigration rights advocates, called the arrests “targeted.” The Department of Homeland Security said that the detainees had criminal histories such as sexual assault, intoxicated driving, obstruction, drug trafficking, domestic abuse, larceny and fraud. Advocates from the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera said that the vast majority of the people targeted had no criminal histories.
Galo Suárez, 25, who is in the country on a work permit along with his fiance Reyna Elizabeth Garcia, was arrested during the surge with Garcia’s brother. Suárez said the couple was followed from a food market and violently arrested by masked agents in unmarked vehicles who broke out their windows, refused to answer their questions, and repeatedly called them “dogs” in Spanish. Suárez was released and told to “run and not look back” or else he’d regret it. The agents kept Garcia and her brother. Jacqueline Eckstrom, a resident of the suburban city of Greenfield, witnessed another arrest where agents broke out windows and arrested a woman, leaving her young children behind screaming in the glass-strewn car.
In late June, Diana Socha Torres and her 8-year-old son were also taken from their home in the Wisconsin Dells. They were transported to an ICE office in downtown Milwaukee and then transferred to the South Texas Residential Detention Center in Dilley, Texas. Socha Torres has an active asylum case and was wearing an ICE-issued ankle monitor, and had no criminal charges or convictions in Wisconsin.
Arrests were also reported in and around the Madison area. Suárez joined concerned residents and local activists who marched through the South Side of Milwaukee last week to call for his fiance’s release. Just prior to the protest, ICE agents were seen circling the park near the site of the march.
DHS has said repeatedly since the surge began that being detained “is a choice,” and encouraged people in the country without legal documentation to accept $2,600 from the Trump administration to self-deport. The agency has also denied claims that detainees are not afforded due process.
Nearly 60 people arrested by ICE over three-day surge was originally published by Wisconsin Examiner.
