Milwaukee leaders denounce recent ICE activity, raise questions about local power

Elected leaders and civil rights groups gathered in Milwaukee Thursday to denounce the recent surge of arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Wisconsin. U.S. Rep Gwen Moore said that rather than going after violent criminals, the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign has targeted people without criminal records, and has resulted in the deaths of American citizens. 

Moore was joined by Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, Common Council President Jose Perez, Sen. Tim Carpenter (D-Milwaukee), Voces de la Frontera executive director Christine Neumann-Ortiz, state Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez (D-Milwaukee), and others. 

Moore  pointed to the case of Yessenia Ruano as a prime example of the kinds of people being targeted by ICE. Ruano, a public school teacher’s aid in Milwaukee, self-deported last year to El Salvador, along with her young twin daughters who were born in the United States. She crossed the border in 2011, fleeing gang violence after the murder of her brother. 

Ruano had no criminal record and was applying for a T-Visa, which would have protected her as a victim of human trafficking, yet, ICE denied her request for an emergency stay to her deportation proceedings. Earlier this week, Ruano returned home to Milwaukee, following a federal judge’s ruling in May that she must be allowed to return to the United States.

Moore stressed that while a judge eventually ruled in her favor, “that didn’t stop the separation, the anxiety, the expense, the GoFundMes, all of the trouble that we’re putting innocent people through.” She added that Ruano “was certainly not a rapist, not a murderer. She had a T-Visa, she didn’t even have any parking tickets, which many of us cannot say that we don’t have.” Moore also mentioned Salah Sarsour, the president of Milwaukee’s Islamic Society, who was arrested by ICE earlier this year and detained in a facility in Indiana. A judge later ordered his release, ruling that the arrest was First Amendment retaliation for Sarsour’s criticism of the Israeli government and his advocacy for Palestinian people.

“Thank God that he is free today,” said Moore. “But again, here’s someone punished for their speech, for their high profile in the Muslim community as the president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, and because of his high profile, his criticism of American policy and what is going on in Gaza, he became a target. And you know, everything that they can’t prove they just make up about you.” 

Sarsour had also been in the country for decades, and had never accumulated a criminal record in the United States. “These are just a couple of stories, but there’s people’s names that we don’t know,” said Moore. “They’re being kidnapped, as my colleague Pramila Jayapal shared with us, they’re being disappeared, they’re being rushed through a judicial process without due process because they don’t have any money, and we’re here to decry that.”

Mayor Johnson said that ICE is “violating constituents’  trust in federal agencies and putting our residents in Milwaukee at greater risk with the aggressive operations that they’ve been deploying, not just here but in communities all across this country.” Johnson said that while arresting serious felons and other criminals not controversial, “aggressively snatching our residents off the street, taking actions like that — including people who are in the midst of the formal proceedings necessary in order to obtain legal status — is just plainly wrong. It’s just wrong.”

Neighbors, educators, family members, and workers in restaurants, hotels and hospitals, shouldn’t be targeted by ICE, said Johnson. “So the behavior that ICE has done here has incited chaos, and fear, in communities that every single one of us is tasked to serve and tasked to protect,” said Johnson. 

He highlighted local government efforts to regulate ICE activity, such as by prohibiting ICE agents from wearing masks or using city property. The city of Milwaukee passed those  policies in  a local ICE Out package, and the county board has approved similar restrictions. However, ICE made it clear through their actions and public statements that the agency has no intention of respecting  local ordinances. 

During the surge earlier this month, which led to the arrest of nearly 60 people, ICE agents were filmed staging in a Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) parking lot, despite the department’s explicit policies prohibiting cooperation with ICE. MPD said that it did not give permission for ICE to use the lot, and that the federal agency was reminded to not use city police property. Agents were also reminded by the sheriff’s office to not use county parks after they’d been seen there as well, in violation of local policies and ordinances. 

The Wisconsin Examiner asked Johnson whether any efforts have been made to ensure that MPD’s Homeland Security-adjacent intelligence Fusion Center isn’t also cooperating with ICE, but the mayor pointed  to the department’s policy against working with the immigration agency. There are also growing concerns in the neighboring city of West Allis, which does not include a requirement for a judicial warrant for arrests by  ICE.

The surge has eroded trust in local law enforcement’s pledges to not work with ICE, and raised doubts about whether local elected officials can do anything at all to rein in the agents. Several arrests that have been witnessed or filmed by residents showed masked agents violently wrestling people to the ground and detaining them. One detained man, Galo Suárez, 25, said that agents repeatedly called him and his fiance “dogs” in Spanish, and that they refused to release his fiance, Reyna Elizebeth Garcia, despite the fact that they both had work permits. Suárez said that the agents told him to walk away and that he wouldn’t like what happened to him if he chose to look back. Other witnesses described ICE agents leaving unattended children behind in cars filled with broken glass, after shattering windows to arrest their parents in front of them. In one case, ICE reportedly left an abandoned vehicle flipped on its side in the middle of the street.

Johnson wanted to assure residents that “they are not without recourse” and that “there still are options out there.”  He encouraged voters to “send a message to the president” that “change is coming,” and that people who don’t support Trump’s crackdown policies will be elected to office. 

Carpenter said that Trump’s immigration policy has failed, and that he doesn’t hear any conversation about providing a pathway to citizenship for people in the country without full legal documentation. Carpenter compared the way ICE has arrested people on the street to the way human traffickers operate. “I’ve seen it out there…white vans…I don’t know what’s going on at some of these stops,” said Carpenter. “They are very scary. I don’t know if something’s going on and I should intervene, but then I would be breaking the law or get in trouble. But I can guarantee you that on streets like Greenfield, National, Mitchell Street, there are abductions going on right now for people that are going into human trafficking slavery.” 

The senator called the trauma being experienced by the children of immigrants targeted by ICE “reprehensible,” “anti-family,” and “anti-American.” While he condones the arrests of people who are criminals, Carpenter condemns the recent arrests and detentions  in Wisconsin. Perez  said that communities are sending a message to Trump that they do not consent to these policies. “Due process is a fundamental right in this country,” said Perez. “Every person deserves to be treated with dignity, fairness, and respect under the law. And we will make our voices heard, waiting for the time when we can again trust those charged with our protection.”

Neumann-Ortiz asked for a moment of silence for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant and Texas resident who was killed by ICE during an attempted traffic stop. Araujo was reportedly picking up workers in his van when ICE attempted to stop the car. ICE has said that the agents fired after Arajuo, the father of three U.S. citizens who lived in the U.S. for nearly 35 years, attempted to “weaponize” his vehicle. His family has called for an independent criminal investigation. Neumann-Ortiz  said that this is another example of an agency which is “completely out of control, makes our communities less safe, and is a gross misuse of public dollars.” 

In Milwaukee, several groups are  conducting know your rights training, canvassing neighborhoods, protesting, and verifying ICE sightings. Neumann-Ortiz said that Voces de la Frontera is tracking multiple cases of excessive force, injuries to arrested people, and questionable access to due process. One child, who witnessed his mother’s arrest, remains traumatized after the incident, Neumann-Ortiz said. The son replays the arrest over and over in his head, and he gets scared whenever he sees police, fearing  that they’re coming to take his father as well. “That’s post-traumatic  syndrome, that’s what that is,” said Neumann-Ortiz. “How is that making us any safer?” 

Neumann-Ortiz encouraged residents to get informed on what their rights are and to use  the 1-800-427-0213 hotline number if they see or encounter ICE. She also praised mutual aid efforts like donating food and other supplies which are  distributed to  neighbors afraid to leave their homes  by volunteers, as well as groups providing legal aid and advice. These are examples  of what’s possible “when we unite,” said Neumann-Ortiz.