Small towns, big strain: How illegal immigration burdens local communities
Last month the House Judiciary Committee held a field hearing in Milwaukee to consider Wisconsin perspectives on the “Biden-Harris Border Crisis.” Sen. Ron Johnson, Co-Founder of the Love, Logan Foundation Rick Rachwal, Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt, Fond du Lac District Attorney Eric Toney, former Whitewater Unified School Board member Henri Kinson, and I provided testimony to the committee regarding the unique challenges faced by local communities as a result of a broken immigration system and completely wide-open borders. Rep. Tom Tiffany specifically made reference to The Institute for Reforming Government’s (“IRG”) June 2024 study that detailed the impact the addition of over 1,000 Venezuelan and Nicaraguan migrants has had on the operations of the small city of Whitewater, Wisconsin, population 15,000.
As explained in detail in the IRG report, Whitewater has struggled to deal with the increasing strain on law enforcement resources, housing overcapacity, and the challenges associated with educating children with no formal background in schooling and often lacking basic English skills. These increasing burdens culminated in the police chief authoring a letter to the White House in December 2023, highlighting the challenges and begging for additional federal funding. The letter resulted in additional communications from Wisconsin’s Congressional delegation and the Wisconsin Legislature, as well as a deluge of state and national media requests.
Unfortunately, IRG’s review highlighted many of the federal government’s complete failures. It is clear the roughly 7 percent increase in Whitewater’s population is a direct result of a border policy encouraged and, in many ways, facilitated by the current administration. Unlike “sanctuary cities,” it does not appear the City of Whitewater sought the immigrants. Instead, the City’s “theory” explaining the sudden influx revolves around a complex web of ample student housing following Covid, a need for farm and manufacturing labor, and the congregation of sponsor families in and around the city that were then identified by migrants at the border, all of which was compounded by a historic number of border encounters.
In December 2023, the Border Patrol registered almost 250,000 border encounters, the highest ever recorded in a single month. Conveniently, the number of encounters dropped to around 58,000 in August 2024 following President Biden’s June executive order curtailing the ability of migrants to pursue the asylum process. In other words, the entire border crisis could have been prevented had the administration simply chosen to address the root cause. But to make matters worse, the federal government did not improve the process for providing additional resources to municipalities like Whitewater.
In February 2024, the Whitewater police chief received a letter from FEMA in response to a December 2023 letter to Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. After explaining that the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022 appropriated $800 million to support sheltering and other critical services for noncitizen migrants, it went on to note “entities in Wisconsin were not awarded SSP funding in FY 2023, but FEMA and CBP continue to evaluate future funding models should Congress appropriate funding to SSP in FY 2024.” Whitewater received a similar response from Wisconsin agencies – good luck next year. And while the governor’s office was willing to meet with city leadership, there was an emphasis on keeping the meetings low profile to “avoid the press.”
So what then are states to do? One of the benefits of highlighting clear problems associated with a spike in immigration is that it similarly revealed opportunities for strong state leadership. While immigration may primarily be a federal responsibility, states can, and should, serve as an important complement to federal efforts to control the border.
The most obvious and direct means for states to contribute to border enforcement efforts is by governors directing National Guard members under Title 32 authority to supplement border patrol efforts. Since 2021, 14 Republican-led states have directed Guard members to assist in border enforcement in Texas, including Florida, Virginia, Ohio, and Iowa.
IRG’s report underscored other areas of needed reform at the state level, nearly all of which have been detailed in a key Heritage Foundation guide. First, despite the presence of notorious MS-13 gang members from Nicaragua in Whitewater and investigations that have led to the seizure of significant cartel funds, confusion remains as to the processing and potential deportation of violent criminals. Emails reviewed by IRG reflected uncertainty regarding the process for contacting ICE as migrants await immigration hearings in Chicago. States should require state and local law enforcement to determine and communicate immigration status.
According to the Heritage Foundation guide, “[r]equiring law enforcement to attempt to determine the immigration status of anyone (if reasonable suspicion exists that the person is unlawfully present in the United States) they stop, detain, or arrest is reasonable and doable through U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s 24-hour Law Enforcement Support Center and allows agencies to report illegal aliens’ status to the federal government.”
Second, IRG’s report discovered that local businesses have been looked to for assistance in addressing some of the challenges faced by the city. Because of the need for labor from local farms and manufacturers, the city has encouraged employers to facilitate transportation to avoid unlicensed drivers traveling to and from their places of employment. However, it was unclear from the records reviewed by IRG whether local businesses are conducting otherwise required employment screenings. States should require licensed businesses to use the E-Verify system to determine the veracity of the information provided by new hires. If it is determined employers are knowingly avoiding the E-Verify process, states could suspend or revoke business licenses.
The nation’s broken immigration system continues to place an unmanageable burden on local units of government.
Third, while not directly addressed in the IRG report, recent events in Wisconsin have highlighted the danger of sanctuary cities. In September a woman was sexually assaulted in Prairie du Chien by a suspected member of Tren de Aragua, the violent criminal organization born a decade ago in Venezuela’s prisons. It was discovered the suspect had already had warrants issued for his arrest in Dane County in December 2023 after he was charged with strangulation and suffocation, false imprisonment, battery and disorderly conduct. Despite the Dane County sheriff’s claim that the suspect had never been in his custody, ICE has identified Dane County as a “non-cooperative institution.” States should forbid location jurisdictions from operating under “sanctuary policies.”
In addition to states implementing sound immigration policies, the incoming Trump administration’s focus on border security represents a significant opportunity for the federal government to realign priorities, viewing states as key partners as opposed to pesky roadblocks to reform. The incoming administration’s “Border Czar” Tom Homan has indicated a desire to crack down on cartel influence in American cities, in addition to securing the border. A willingness on the part of states to closely coordinate with ICE to remove migrants with known affiliations with international criminal organizations would quickly address one of the key priorities of immigration hawks. And ensuring the prompt removal of criminal elements will almost certainly stem the flow of fentanyl and sex trafficking, both of which disproportionality impact state and local government services.
The nation’s broken immigration system continues to place an unmanageable burden on local units of government. Unless and until the federal government repairs the nation’s utterly broken immigration infrastructure, local units of government like those in Whitewater, Wisconsin will be left to respond to the federal government’s continued failures. Now is the time for states and the federal government to work in concert to once and for all secure the border and establish an immigration system that aligns with the country’s long history of legal immigration that all of us at some point in our personal family histories have been a proud part of.
Jake Curtis is General Counsel at the Institute for Reforming Government and previously served as an agency Chief Legal Counsel in the Governor Scott Walker Administration.
