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Monthly arrest figures more than tripled between January and December 2025, with only a slight dip in the new year.
Agents have conducted at least 100 arrests in Wisconsin each month since May 2025.
Roughly 20% of those arrested in Wisconsin since January 2025 had neither prior convictions nor pending charges. That share is about half the national average, but it has risen sharply over the past year. Just over half of all immigrants arrested in Wisconsin in the same period had prior criminal convictions, and a quarter faced pending criminal charges.
Each circle represents a recorded ICE arrest location since January 2025. Larger circles indicate more arrests at a given location.
ICE listed county jails, state prisons and federal prisons as the locations of roughly half of all immigration arrests in Wisconsin since January 2025. Those arrests are effectively handoffs between law enforcement agencies.
Another 8% of arrests took place at the Department of Homeland Security field office in downtown Milwaukee. Three-quarters of those arrested at the field office had neither prior criminal convictions nor pending charges.
Among them: Elvira Benitez, a 51-year-old Sheboygan Falls woman arrested during a mandatory check-in at the office last month. Benitez, who emigrated from Mexico as a teenager, had previously spent five months in ICE custody before an immigration court judge canceled her deportation order, clearing the way for her to secure a green card. DHS re-arrested Benitez in Milwaukee after appealing the judge's ruling.
ICE records do not list addresses for arrests outside of jails, prisons or other federal facilities. Instead, the agency assigns field arrests to rough geographic areas, referred to in arrest records as a "general area."
Some, like the "Trempealeau County general area," are likely equivalent to the boundaries of a Wisconsin county.
Others, like the "Milwaukee general area," are more ambiguous. ICE records also flagged more than 140 Wisconsin arrests as taking place in the St. Paul, Minnesota, "general area" since January 2025, likely referring to the western Wisconsin suburbs of the Twin Cities.
Monthly arrests in the Wisconsin portion of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area surpassed those around Milwaukee for the first time in December 2025, shortly after DHS dispatched thousands of federal agents to the Twin Cities.
ICE records are often incomplete, but some recent entries note "collateral" arrests, meaning that officers arrested an immigrant without advanced planning while carrying out another enforcement action. If ICE agents executing a warrant for a specific person also arrested their target’s roommate, for instance, the roommate’s arrest could be flagged as “collateral.”
The agency has recorded nearly 100 collateral arrests in Wisconsin since January 2025, primarily around Milwaukee and Minneapolis-St. Paul. The vast majority of immigrants picked up in collateral arrests had neither prior criminal convictions nor pending criminal charges.
Arrestees listed in both datasets often reapper in detention records either at the DHS field office in downtown Milwaukee or the Dodge County Jail, which contracts with ICE to hold immigrants detained by the agency.
The DHS field office in downtown Milwaukee contains a holding room designed as a transfer point. Matching arrest and detention records suggest ICE agents have transported immigrants from as far away as Oneida County for booking at the downtown Milwaukee office. DHS holds a lease for the space, which it rents from the Milwaukee School of Engineering, through April 2028. The agency recently completed construction of a larger field office on Milwaukee’s northwest side, but it remains unclear when ICE will shift its operations to the new building.
The Dodge County Jail in Juneau acts as both a short-term transfer point and a long-term detention facility.
ICE detention records indicate that the Sauk and Waukesha county jails were each the first stop for more than 100 immigrants arrested in Wisconsin over the past year.
Each circle represents the last recorded location of a Wisconsin detainee who remained in custody as of February 2026.
Of the 1,338 immigrants who appear in both arrest and detention records after January 2025, just 171 remained in detention as of February — more than 70 in the Dodge County Jail alone.
ICE records indicate another 57 immigrants arrested in Wisconsin remained in detention facilities in Indiana and Kentucky as of February.
And 23 appeared in ICE facilities in Louisiana and Mississippi that are often a final stop before deportation.
More than 80% of those arrested in Wisconsin over the past year are no longer in the U.S. Each red circle represents the recorded port of departure for an immigrant arrested in Wisconsin since January 2025. Larger circles represent a greater number of departures through a given port.
ICE marked most as "removed," but roughly 20% secured so-called "voluntary departures": a process requiring court approval that allows immigrants to leave the country without adding a removal to their record, leaving the door open for them to eventually return through legal pathways.
Roughly 60% had criminal convictions at the time of their arrest. The most common conviction: driving under the influence of alcohol.
Just over 15% had neither a prior conviction nor pending charges.
Hundreds of Wisconsin deportees left the country via the tiny airport in Alexandria, Louisiana — the operational hub for ICE’s deportation flight operations.
Others last appeared in ICE records at land crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border, primarily in Texas.
Tens of thousands of immigrants from both countries settled in Wisconsin over the past decade, with new arrivals peaking in 2024.
When immigrants cannot safely be deported to the countries where they hold citizenship, federal immigration authorities can sometimes instead deport them to a "third country."
While "third-country" deportations predate the Trump administration, an October ruling by the federal body overseeing immigration courts cleared the way for judges to more easily toss out asylum cases and instead send asylum seekers to countries to which they may have no ties.
Most immigrants arrested in Wisconsin and subsequently deported to third countries were Nicaraguan, Venezuelan and Cuban nationals.
Faced with the possibility of a third-country removal to Honduras last winter, one Nicaraguan man arrested in an October 2025 ICE raid in Manitowoc opted to return to his home country — risking retaliation for his opposition to Nicaragua’s government — rather than starting from scratch in unfamiliar surroundings.
Kenosha County saw net international migration fall by over 95%. Most counties saw sharp declines, and some experienced net losses, with more residents leaving than arriving. Shawano County remained an outlier, seeing a small increase in international arrivals compared to the previous year: 29 in fiscal year 2025, up from 24 in 2024.
This analysis relied on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data from October 2022 to early March 2026 made available by the nonprofit Deportation Data Project. ICE records often contain inaccuracies or empty fields, so all findings are approximate and may reflect undercounts.