Wisconsin Supreme Court accepts case challenging sheriffs who assist ICE

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court will take up a case that challenges the practice of holding people in local Wisconsin jails at the request of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin filed a petition in September on behalf of the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera. That petition argued that the issue was of statewide concern and said the lawsuit should be allowed to bypass lower courts.

In an order published Wednesday, a majority of the court’s justices accepted that reasoning by agreeing to take up the case directly.

The ACLU’s lawsuit takes aim at what are known as immigration detainers. Detainers are requests from ICE, asking local jails to hold someone for up to 48 hours.

If jails honor detainers, that gives immigration agents more time to pick someone up if they’re suspected of being in the country illegally. In practice, that could lead to someone spending extra time behind bars if the charges against them were dropped or they would have otherwise been released on bond.

Most, but not all Wisconsin sheriffs choose to comply with immigration detainers. The ACLU argues that, by doing so, those sheriffs are violating Wisconsin law.

According to the lawsuit, a detainer amounts to a new arrest, which needs to be authorized by a warrant that’s signed by a judge.

The lawsuit specifically names the sheriffs of Walworth, Kenosha, Brown, Marathon and Sauk counties as defendants. That’s because those counties have been carrying out the highest number of ICE detainers, according to the ACLU.

Voces de La Frontera has 30 days to file a brief in the case before the defendants file a response. A date for oral arguments has not yet been set.

Liberal justices hold a 4-3 majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Several of the court’s conservatives dissented publicly with the decision to take up Voces de la Frontera’s case.