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The American public, advocacy groups and elected officials across the political spectrum are scrutinizing federal immigration detentions perhaps more intensely than ever before. The Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented and even legal immigrants ā which has included narrowing the path to asylum, separating children from their parents at the United States-Mexico border, and proposing a suspension of due process for deportees ā has placed a spotlight on the facilities across the nation where federal officials hold people accused of violating immigration laws.
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Wisconsin isn’t among the 17 states known to host facilities where the federal government detains migrant children. The state does, however, have two facilities where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holds adult detainees: the Kenosha County Detention Center and Dodge County Detention Facility.
Here’s how each fits into broader federal immigration policy and practices:
Who runs these facilities?
The Kenosha County Detention Center is located in Kenosha near Interstate 94 and the Kenosha Regional Airport. The Dodge County Detention Facility is situated on Main Street in Juneau. Both facilities serve mainly as their respective counties’ jails, but are also part of a broad network of detention facilities across the continental U.S. that house ICE detainees. The Kenosha and Dodge county sheriff’s offices operate and staff the facilities, respectively, managing a mix of immigrant detainees, other federal inmates and people incarcerated by local law enforcement. Many other detention centers around the country work the same way. Others are directly run by the federal government or by for-profit prison companies.
Kenosha and Dodge counties don’t contract directly with ICE; each county struck an agreement in the early 2000s with the U.S. Marshals Service, which tracks down federal fugitives and serves other functions as the enforcement arm of the federal judiciary. ICE essentially “piggybacks” on that agreement, said Capt. Robert Hallisy of the administrative services division of the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Office. There aren’t any federal staff working at either facility, though Hallisy said the Kenosha office keeps a couple desks open for federal agents when they are in the area. Federal officials also routinely inspect conditions at the facilities, which are supposed to meet ICE detention standards that cover everything from food to medical care to providing for detainees’ religious practices. But because the Marshals Service also uses the jails, not all federal detainees there are immigrants.
Whatever conditions these facilities are supposed to meet on paper, the realities of incarcerated life in the U.S., though, are often traumatic and squalid. A DACA recipient detained at Kenosha in January 2018 told the Chicago Sun-Times that he shared a cell with 16 other men and that “the food was ‘so bad’ that he chose not to eat on more than one occasion” during his three days in custody. A 2017 ProPublica report detailed the difficulties ICE detainees, including those at the Kenosha and Dodge facilities, face in getting adequate legal representation ā or even keeping an appointment with a lawyer, as the agency frequently transfers inmates from one detention center to another on short notice.
How many people are held at Wisconsin’s immigration detention centers?
The Kenosha County Detention Center consists of two buildings that together can house about 970 inmates, Hallisy said. Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt said his facility can hold a total of 466 inmates. Both facilities house a mix of local detainees, immigration detainees, and other federal detainees, and people in the immigration system aren’t the biggest portion of that mix.
This report was produced in a partnership between Wisconsin Public Radio, PBS Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension. @ Copyright 2024, Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System and Wisconsin Educational Communications Board.