ICE Arrests in Wisconsin Hit New Highs This Summer

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has released its latest batch of nationwide detention statistics that show Wisconsin arrests by ICE agents hit new highs in June and July.

The number of arrests jumped from at least 119 in May to 220 in June and were concentrated in the southeastern portion of the state. Since January 2025, the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, more than 2,100 people have been detained in Wisconsin.

That is all according to a new data analysis from Paul Kiefer, a fellow at Wisconsin Watch who focuses largely on immigration and data reporting.

The reporting showed that although 70 percent of these arrests happened in Wisconsin jails or prisons, there is an increasing number of arrests occurring in people’s homes, on the streets or at a courthouse.

“There was a flood of social media footage of officers pulling their targets out of cars, pulling up in their driveways in suburban Milwaukee,” Kiefer said on WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “That was a departure from the prior year and a half of arrest patterns.”

To hear more about the impact of these arrests, WPR spoke with Erin Barbato, the director of the Immigrant Justice Center at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

The following conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity. 

Kate Archer Kent: We see this spike in June arrests in Wisconsin remaining elevated in July. How is this surge in ICE arrests impacting your clients?

Erin Barbato: From what I observed the number didn’t surprise me because we are deep into responding to many of the arrests and also serving the people that are detained here in Wisconsin.

But the fear that people have to live with — that they could be picked up off the street without having done anything wrong, just living their lives, going to work, taking their children to school — has been really difficult for our communities and harmful to families that live here in Wisconsin.

KAK: The data indicates that some people are being arrested at the Department of Homeland Security field office in downtown Milwaukee, where ICE agents arrest people during mandatory check-ins. What are these check-ins? 

EB: Some people who are in removal proceedings might be able to live in the community while those proceedings are going forward.

Because of the backlog in immigration court, it may take a few years for people to get in front of an immigration judge. During that time, they may have to check in with ICE just to confirm that they’re still here, they’re not a flight risk, they’re not doing anything nefarious. It used to be pretty routine, you would check in, make sure the officer knows your current address and if anything else has changed, like your job.

But now they’ve turned into a time when people are terrified to attend because there doesn’t seem to be any sort of rhyme or reason why one person may be detained and another is not. So people go in there quite blind in terms of what is going to happen to them. They could be leaving that day, or they could be leaving and returning to their family, or they could be put in detention and permanently separated from their family.

KAK: As for the data indicating more than half of the people detained from Wisconsin have a criminal record, some people would say, “Look, ICE is fulfilling its purpose here.”  What do you make of that argument? 

EB: If you look at it just on the surface, that argument makes sense. However, once people see what we’re considering as criminal records, many of these people have not done anything dangerous or not done anything that would make someone uncomfortable.

For example, people without status here in Wisconsin can’t obtain driver’s licenses. We do not have a vast public transit system here in Wisconsin, many people have to drive to work, and they can’t drive to work without driving without a license because they can’t get one.

KAK: I want to land on what detention might mean for someone. We saw Lianyong Wei, the Chinese immigrant, die in ICE custody on Aug. 23. It’s marking the 57th person to die in the care of government since the start of President Trump’s second term, and that’s according to ICE’s detainee death notifications. What are conditions like at detention facilities now? 

EB: The conditions at the detention facilities vary based on where you are. Some of the detention facilities can hold over 1,000 people. Some have space for much less. But some of the facilities — I recently visited one in Texas that is basically a tent city — they don’t have the infrastructure or protection that is humane or safe for people to live in.

We constantly hear worries from our clients that aren’t getting their medication. We have a client who has diabetes and she’s had a really difficult time getting her medication, which is terrifying and unfair and unlawful, in my opinion.

ICE arrests in Wisconsin hit new highs this summer was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.