TAKE ACTION: Keep ICE out of Milwaukee County Courthouse!
On April 14, the Judiciary, Law Enforcement, and General Services Committee of the Milwaukee County Board passed a resolution requesting stakeholders to “ensure access to services and safeguard every individual’s constitutional right to due process”. This came in response to the Trump administration’s ICE agents coming into the courthouse to arrest migrants.
The resolution specifies the “Office of the County Executive, the Chief Judge of the First Judicial District, and the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office—within their respective jurisdictions and authorities—to cooperate with one another, in conjunction with the Office of Corporation Counsel and other relevant parties.” These stakeholders should not need the county board’s request before they take action to protect the courthouse against ICE. Like everyone else paying any attention in the US, they knew Trump was going to cross lines, especially when it comes to his mass deportation program. It’s a massive failure on their part and on the part of the county board in general that they are only now working on securing and protecting migrants at the courthouse.
You can take action to ensure the processes for defending migrants that these stakeholders develop are as robust as possible.
Contacting officials is easy.
The most effective way is to use your own words, talk about how you are personally affected by arrests at the courthouse, and how county officials collaborating with Trump’s mass deportation plans makes you feel, and then make a clear demand: “keep ICE out of the courthouse.”
If you don’t have time for all that, we understand. Politicians ignore people a lot and pouring your feelings into a message that is probably going to be reduced to a tick mark on a scrap of paper by a staffer is kind of humiliating. If you want to be heard without that bullshit, just send an email or make a call saying “keep ICE out of the courthouse.” If enough of us do that, they’ll get the message.
Here’s who to contact:
County Executive David Crowley: call (414) 278-4212 between 8am and 5pm, or email crowley@milwaukeecountywi.gov
County Sheriff Denita Ball: call (414) 278-4766 or email Sheriff@milwaukeecountywi.gov
Chief Judge Carl Ashley: (414) 278-4998 or email chiefjudge.firstdistrict@wicourts.gov
Follow up!
The next step on this resolution is a vote before the whole board at noon on April 24. The resolution seems very likely to pass. It passed committee easily. Other supervisors requested to join Juan Miguel Martinez, Caroline Gomez-Tom, and Marcella Nicholson as co-sponsors, and spoke at length about the importance of due process protections, and the danger ICE operatives pose to our community. Watch testimony from them and impassioned advocates and community members here.
Supervisor Patty Logsdon was the only dissenter. She abstained after reading a statement about how she cares and supports the resolution, but needs specific answers to a list of questions about the legality of the decisions these stakeholders will make after honoring the resolution’s request and who will represent her if she faces charges for supporting the resolution. Scott Brown, the county’s corporation counsel, confidently dismissed all her concerns, even calling some preposterous. It seems that Losgdon wants to be a collaborator with the fascists who have seized our federal government. Surely she’s not alone.
We don’t have time to wait for the full board’s vote on this resolution, but the stakeholders also don’t need the request before they can act. If Crowley, Ashley, and Ball still have not addressed this issue before April 24, we’re going to say they are slow-walking it intentionally to collaborate with fascist Republicans.
The resolution itself quotes two of the stakeholders, County Executive David Crowley and Chief Judge Carl Ashley’s statements against ICE operating in the courthouse. Unsurprisingly, no statement from County Sheriff Denita Ball was included. She also failed to attend the hearing, and sending a deputy via zoom after MCSO’s absence was noted. The sheriff has been circumspect on the subject of MCSO cooperating with ICE since January, and it is her deputies, along with MPD officers who will be enacting the Trumpist police state if everything goes according to his plans. Incidentally, Mayor Cavalier Johnson, a known collaborator with fascists in the Republican Party, has said that he wants the Milwaukee Police Department to work with ICE in some circumstances.
