Between January and October 2025, more than 1,300 immigrants passed through Wisconsin while in ICE custody. Most were deported.
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Roughly a quarter of those immigrants were transferred to Wisconsin from ICE detention and holding facilities outside of Wisconsin.
Nearly three-quarters first appeared in ICE custody records in one of the six Wisconsin facilities...
Nearly two-thirds of detainees who passed through the Douglas County Jail were initially arrested in Minnesota.
Monthly bookings into Wisconsin detention facilities climbed over most of 2025, with a brief decline in early summer.
Immigrant detainees transferred out of Wisconsin most frequently land in Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. ICE transferred nearly 1,000 detainees from Wisconsin to the Broadview Service Staging facility near Chicago. The nondescript suburban processing center is a temporary stopover for detainees on their way to longer-term facilities.
But detention facilities in the jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit are often the final stop...
Of the immigrants who passed through Wisconsin detention facilities, 648 last appeared in ICE records within the 5th Circuit's jurisdiction.
Of the 1386 immigrants who passed through Wisconsin while in ICE custody last year, 70.1% were removed from the U.S through deportation or "voluntary departure."
About 20% of those immigrants had neither past criminal convictions nor pending criminal charges.
Wisconsin Watch relied on ICE detention records covering January 2025 to mid-October 2025 to recreate the paths of immigrant detainees who passed through Wisconsin while in ICE custody. Data obtained via the Deportation Data Project.
Data analysis and visualization by Paul Kiefer for Wisconsin Watch.