The Dane County Sheriff’s Office will no longer be paid for sharing some data with federal authorities about immigrants who are in the country without legal status.
More than two dozen counties in Wisconsin choose to participate in a federal program known as the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, or SCAAP. It allows local agencies to be partly reimbursed for the costs of jailing some unauthorized immigrants, provided those immigrants have been incarcerated for at least four days and have been convicted of at least one felony or two misdemeanors.
In exchange, agencies have to provide details about those immigrants to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
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But last month, Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett announced his agency is cutting its ties with SCAAP. In an interview with WISC-TV, the sheriff cited community feedback. He also said immigration enforcement has changed now that President Donald Trump is back in office.
“My main message to our immigrant community as a whole is that we are here for you,” said Barrett, who became sheriff in 2021. “We understand the pain and the confusion that’s been taking place over the past several weeks, and know that the Dane County Sheriff’s Office is here to support you.”
Dane County Executive Melissa Agard applauded the sheriff’s decision.
“I think really the tipping point here is with the return of the Trump administration and the drastic turn and how it is that Washington, D.C. is engaging with people across our nation,” Agard said in a recent interview with WPR. “It really doesn’t reflect the inclusive and welcoming community that Dane County strives to be.”
A 2022 report from the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin found Dane County collected more than $630,000 over four years from 2016 to 2020, during the first Trump administration.
That was the the highest amount of money awarded to any local Wisconsin agency through the program — second only to the money paid to Wisconsin’s Department of Corrections, which oversees the state’s prison system.
Milwaukee County, the state’s most populous county, does not participate in SCAAP.
The ACLU of Wisconsin was among the groups that called on members of the public to contact the Dane County sheriff, urging him to sever ties with SCAAP.
“The deportation machine runs on data and participating in the SCAAP program fed data into that deportation machine,” said Tim Muth, a senior attorney with the ACLU of Wisconsin. “And so we are happy that the Dane County sheriff will no longer be be providing that data on a regular basis to to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), and we would call on the other sheriffs across the state that participate in the program to end their participation as well.”
Dane County won’t collect a SCAAP reimbursement from fiscal year 2024, and it won’t apply for funds covering 2025, sheriff’s office spokesperson Elise Schaffer said. Money from SCAAP went to the county’s general fund.
In fiscal year 2023, Dane County collected about $80,000 from the program, federal data shows, which was the highest amount of any Wisconsin locality.
Dane County’s total budget is more than $900 million, and Agard said she believes the loss of SCAPP payments will be negligible.
“I very much care about financial responsibility and how it is that we use the tax dollars that have been provided to us,” Agard told WPR. “And I’m confident that we’re going to be able to to fill that hole and continue to provide high quality services to the folks in Dane County. “
The extent to which local law enforcement collaborates with ICE has gained renewed attention after Trump took office this year. That’s after the Republican president campaigned on a promise to carry out deportations on the largest scale ever seen in the country’s history.
On Tuesday, Republican state lawmakers announced they are drafting legislation that would withhold state aid from certain communities.
Specifically, the proposal would penalize communities if local law enforcement officers fail to notify federal officials in instances where they cannot verify the legal immigration status of people who are arrested for suspected felonies. The proposal would also withhold funding from places like Dane County, where local law enforcement does not honor detainers from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Detainers are written requests, asking jails to hold someone for additional 48 hours while U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement decides whether to take that person into federal custody before starting deportation proceedings.
In Dane County, the sheriff’s office will tell ICE when someone is scheduled to be released from jail, if ICE has provided judicial authority to place an immigration hold on that person, Schaffer said. But Schaffer said the Dane County Sheriff’s Office will not hold someone in jail past their scheduled release date.
“It’s up to them (ICE officials) to be here to take custody of the person,” Schaffer wrote in an email.
The Republican proposal began circulating for co-sponsors on Tuesday. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has promised to veto such a proposal.
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