authority to restrict non-tribal members from
fishing within its reservation. In other news,
a lawsuit against five Wisconsin sheriffs in
Walworth, Brower marathon, Kenosha and Sauk counties
over Ice detainers or immigration holds waffles
between being heard in state or federal court. A
federal judge in Madison this month remanded the
case to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The sheriffs
wanted heard in federal court and have appealed
that remand. The question before any court is whether
those 48 hour ice holds are legal in Wisconsin. Our
next guest unpacks the issue. Bryna Godar, staff
attorney at the UW Law School State Democracy
Research Initiative, joins us now. Thanks very much
for being here. >> Thanks for having me.
>> Well, first of all, how does an Ice detainer work?
>> An Ice detainer is a request sent by Ice to
local or state law enforcement agencies,
asking them to hold somebody for an additional
48 hours beyond when they would otherwise be released
under state law. And these are voluntary requests. So
the local law enforcement officers can decide whether
to follow that request or not. If they do follow it,
then the person would remain in custody beyond
when they would otherwise be released.
>> Waiting for Ice to come and retrieve them.
>> Yes. Yeah. >> And so how common is the
use of these Ice detainers across Wisconsin?
>> So according to some data from October 2021
through June 2025, I sent more than 3300 detainer
requests. Not all of those were necessarily honored,
coming in. And counties really vary in whether they
are working with Ice to honor those, or if they
have policies that limit how frequently they honor
those detainers. >> Presumably, this has
ticked up during the current Trump
administration. So what has that cooperation on the
part of sheriffs and sheriff's departments
resulted in? >> So the petitioners in
this case are arguing that that results in unlawful
detention of individuals past when they would
typically be released. And that can have significant
impacts for individuals potentially dealing with
child care or dealing with missing work. This can
apply to people who are not just at the end of a
criminal sentence, but also in pretrial detention. So
who might otherwise be detained for a relatively
short time? Those additional couple days can
have a significant impact. And there are also concerns
that cooperation between local law enforcement and
Ice can erode trust in local communities with law
enforcement, and lead to underreporting of crimes
and less of a close relationship with the
immigration community. >> So the lawsuit argues
that these holds are not legal because sheriffs have
no authority with administrative warrants to
conduct a second arrest of someone. Would you expect
that the state and federal courts would have a
different view on that? >> I think it depends on
whether they view this as really an issue of state
law or federal law. So the plaintiffs in this case are
arguing that this is really just an issue of state law.
And that is something that you would sort of expect
the Wisconsin courts to actually have the more
expertise on and be able to decide in a more
authoritative way. What the respondents are arguing is
that there's this federal law issue of whether
federal law sort of independently provides some
basis for that arrest authority. And so if they
succeed in getting this case into federal court,
the federal courts might be more open to that. And it
seems like respondents think that federal court
might be more favorable to it because they are seeking
to get it into federal court.
enforcement, under state statute, can arrest if
there are reasonable grounds to believe that the
person is committing or has committed a crime. Wouldn't
an argument be that someone entering into the country
illegally and staying constitutes a crime?
>> So first of all, the statute, it is not a crime
under state law to enter and be in the country
unlawfully. And so it's not clear that that statute
itself would give the authorization for state law
enforcement to make that arrest. But even if it did,
federal law only criminalizes a narrow
subset of immigration violations, particularly
entering the country unlawfully. So somebody,
for example, who enters with a lawful visa and then
overstays that visa has not actually committed a
federal immigration crime. Also, Ice detainers can
issue two folks with green cards who then are facing
deportation proceedings because they have committed
a crime subsequent to entering the country, but
they are not actually unauthorized until they go
through those proceedings. And so there are many
people who are subject to Ice detainers who have not
committed any sort of federal immigration crime.
>> So if it is decided in state court, would it only
apply in Wisconsin versus applying nationally if it
was decided in federal court?
>> Yes. So if it's decided in Wisconsin, it would only
apply in Wisconsin. The reach of a federal court
decision would depend on what issues they decide and
also what level of court it gets to. So if the federal
court ultimately rules mostly on Wisconsin law and
based on Wisconsin statutes, then it wouldn't apply
beyond the state. It would just sort of be persuasive
to other courts, like a Wisconsin Supreme Court
ruling would be as well, if the federal court were to
rule on more of a blanket federal law issue, and
particularly if that were to get appealed up to the
Seventh Circuit or the US Supreme Court, then that
could have broader national implications.
goal, for it to go all the way up?
is. The merits briefing hasn't happened yet, either
at the state level or at the federal court level.
The Federal court remanded based on a timing issue of
the filing. And so we don't really have a good sense
yet of how viable it would be for this to become
really a major federal law really a major federal law