Civil Rights & Immigration
Dozens rally in front of Milwaukee Federal Building for DACA
Bus loads of activists and supporters, including dozens of high school students, congregated in front of Milwaukee’s Federal Building Tuesday morning, calling on the government to protect the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Voces de la Frontera Action, an arm of the group Voces de la Frontera, spearheaded the event, which was part […]
Is DACA doomed? Supreme Court may side with Trump
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court appears unlikely to salvage an Obama-era program that has allowed hundreds of thousands of young, unauthorized immigrants known as “Dreamers” to remain in the country without immediate fear of deportation. Lawyers defending the program — known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA — argued Tuesday that the […]
DACA case heads to U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday
WASHINGTON — Can President Donald Trump put an end to legal protections for a group of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States years ago as children? The U.S. Supreme Court will consider that question Tuesday — and its answer will determine the fates of hundreds of thousands of young adults across the […]
Renewed birth certificate program provides IDs for work and voting
Milwaukee County supervisors Theodore Lipscomb and Sequanna Taylor are supporting an amendment to the county’s free birth certificate program, continuing the program into 2020. The amendment is part of an effort by Milwaukee County to widen voting access to its residents. Since 2012, the free birth certificate program has allowed residents to apply for birth […]
New report shows high levels of uninsured children
After falling steadily for at least eight years, the number of children without health insurance rose nationwide for the second year in a row in 2018, according to a new report released on Wednesday. Nationwide, 5.2% of children were without health insurance in 2018, according to the report, produced by the Georgetown University Center for […]
Potential E-Verify deal would give legal status to farmworkers
Congressional Democrats hope to broker a deal with Republicans that would grant legal status to farmworkers currently in the country illegally but would require employers to verify the immigration status of all future hires. Democrats hope the compromise could draw GOP support by forcing employers to use E-Verify, a federal online system, to ensure farmworkers […]
Midwest racial gaps grow
Industrial expansion and unionization helped improve the lives of many black families even in the face of segregation. When industry declined and unions shrank, their fortunes reversed.
ICE raids and a battle over Arcadia’s school bus route
Arcadia, a small town in western Wisconsin, near the Minnesota border, has seen a huge influx of immigrants from Latin America in recent years. Some 40% of the town’s 3,000 residents are Latino, according to the Census. In surrounding Trempealeau County, where immigrants make up the bulk of the workforce on local dairy farms, the […]
Rev. Barber brings his campaign for justice to Milwaukee
“Wisconsin is one of those states that’s critical for talking about poverty,” Rev. William Barber told Wisconsin Examiner, shortly before taking the stage at the 2019 Summit On Poverty and SWIM (Scaling Wellness In Milwaukee) Conference last Tuesday. “Normally we racialize poverty,” Barber explained. In Wisconsin, where there are more poor whites than poor African […]
Immigration activists push Milwaukee to clarify policy
Momentum continued to build in Milwaukee as immigration activists flooded City Hall on Thursday for a third time in two consecutive weeks. Dozens of community members marched and chanted through the halls before entering a Fire and Police Commission meeting, calling on officials to protect immigrant families. The Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission’s scheduled vote […]
Black and Latino Roundtable focuses on immigration, incarceration reform
The negative fallout from decades of mass incarceration was a major topic of discussion during the second annual State of Wisconsin Black and Latino Caucus Roundtable held at the Capitol on Thursday, Oct. 3. Eleven state representatives hosted the event, alongside two dozen participants from various criminal-justice and community-advocacy backgrounds. Gov. Tony Evers and Lt. […]
Why are private prisons controversial?
Editor’s note: Private prisons have long stirred controversy, most recently over their role in housing undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. Several states have banned them, several banks have vowed to stop financing them and more than one presidential candidate has pledged to end them at the federal level. John M. Eason, associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has done […]