Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested seven people in a targeted action Thursday morning on the east side of Madison, according to Voces de la Frontera, a Milwaukee-based advocacy organization.
Alexandra Guevara, a spokesperson for Voces, said that calls began coming into their hotline around 10:30 Thursday morning. She said advocates are now working with the detainees’ families to determine why the seven people were arrested, whether ICE had judicial warrants for them, and where they’ve been taken.
The Dane County Sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to a message asking whether the detainees were in the Dane County Jail. Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt said he is not authorized to release information on federal detainees. The Dodge County Detention Center is the closest facility to Madison that houses ICE detainees.
The ICE media office also did not respond to a message seeking information.
Centro Hispano Executive Director Karen Menendez-Coller said in a message to Madison365 that today’s arrests were “targeted enforcement like has happened in Madison for many years now … it wasn’t something out of the norm, sadly.”
Guevara said Voces rejects ICE’s approach to targeting undocumented people in a public manner.
“It actually is spreading fear. It actually is creating panic,” she said. “It is affecting people in a way that they don’t go to schools, they don’t go to work, they don’t go to their healthcare appointments. And that creates instability, right? I mean, schools are seeing less students, workplaces are seeing less workers. When this happens, that doesn’t only affect the people who are not going it also affect the business owners. It affects the teachers. It affects the students whose friends are missing school. It affects the community.”
This story will be updated as more information becomes available.
This story has been updated to include comment from the Dodge County Sheriff and Karen Menendez-Coller.
