The Wisconsin Supreme Court has agreed to hear a lawsuit challenging five Wisconsin sheriffs’ practices of holding detainees in their jail for handoffs to ICE.
The ACLU filed the lawsuit in September on behalf of the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera. It names sheriff’s offices in Brown, Kenosha, Marathon, Sauk and Walworth counties as respondents.
All five sheriffs’ offices honor ICE detainers — nonbinding requests that a law enforcement agency assist ICE in taking custody of a person suspected of being in the country illegally by holding an inmate in a jail up to 48 hours past the person’s scheduled release. The local law enforcement agency can then pass the detainee directly to ICE officers.
The lawsuit argues that the detainers qualify as an arrest and that state statutes prohibit law enforcement agencies from making arrests based on ICE’s administrative warrants.
While most Wisconsin sheriffs’ offices honor ICE detainers, the lawsuit claims that five named offices received roughly a quarter of all detainers issued to Wisconsin sheriffs’ offices between January and July of this year.
The sheriff’s offices have differing relationships with ICE. Brown and Sauk counties, for instance, also contract with ICE to hold immigrant detainees in their jails, meaning a person could remain in the same jail after entering ICE custody. Kenosha County has no such contract, but it does participate in a federal grant program that partially reimburses local law enforcement agencies for incarceration costs in exchange for data on undocumented inmates.
ICE records list more than 130 arrests at county jails in Wisconsin between January and July of this year. Nearly 40% of those arrested were awaiting a ruling in their first criminal case.
In its initial petition, Voces de la Frontera urged the Supreme Court to immediately take up the case as a statewide concern. The court’s order, published on Wednesday afternoon, allows the plaintiffs to skip the lower courts entirely.
Liberal justices have a 4-3 majority on the court. At least four unnamed justices voted to immediately accept the case. Justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley, both conservatives, dissented. Justice Brian Hagedorn, who often votes with conservatives, discussed the process in an opinion that did not specify his vote.
“When this court grants review in a case, we almost always let our grant order proceed without comment or dissent,” he wrote, later adding: “Even if some of my colleagues publicly record their dissent, as in this case, that does not necessarily reveal which justices voted for or against the petition in closed conference.”
Voces de la Frontera has 30 days to file a brief in the case. The court has not yet scheduled oral arguments in the case.
None of the five sheriffs’ offices named in the lawsuit immediately responded to requests for comment.
“We are reviewing the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s order and evaluating our next steps in this litigation,” Milwaukee attorney Sam Hall, who is representing all five sheriffs, wrote in an email Wednesday evening. “We are confident, however, that Wisconsin sheriffs who honor ICE detainers do so fully within the bounds of Wisconsin law and the federal legal framework governing immigration enforcement.”
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