United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issues administrative "detainers" to county jails to hold individuals up to 48 hours beyond their lawful release. These detainers are not warrants. They are not legally binding.

When the Brown County Sheriff honors these requests, it constitutes a new arrest, one whose legality is now the subject of active litigation in which the Brown County Sheriff is a named defendant. That case remains unresolved. In the meantime, every individual held beyond their lawful release date, not on a judicial warrant but an administrative detainer, is a potential plaintiff in civil rights litigation against the County. Brown County has carried out at least 71 such detentions in a single year. Should the legal question resolve against the County, Brown County taxpayers face exposure to damages claims from every person unlawfully detained, liability that could dwarf the federal reimbursements the Sheriff's Office is currently collecting.

Since October 2025, ICE has expanded its funding model to, ostensibly, fully reimburse participating agencies for officer salaries, benefits, overtime, and startup costs, and to pay quarterly performance bonuses based on the number of arrests officers make. The County Board has no insight into how arrest-based incentives are shaping the sheriff’s priorities, what conditions are attached to the federal money flowing into the Sheriff’s operation, or how much money is flowing in at all. The County Board holds budget authority over the Sheriff's Office. Federal payments tied to enforcement quotas bypass that authority entirely, allowing a federal agency to direct the priorities of county law enforcement without the knowledge or consent of the body elected to oversee it.

A reminder: this is the agency that killed Alex Pretti, who grew up in Green Bay. A Preble High School graduate, ICU nurse, and U.S. citizen, shot ten times by federal agents on a Minneapolis street while trying to help a woman who had been pepper-sprayed. The Sheriff is actively cooperating with, and being paid by, the agency responsible for his death. Every detainer the Sheriff honors deepens that complicity.

This is not only a legal violation. It is a critical failure which puts the County at risk of liability for mass damages and a lack of democratic oversight.

We, the undersigned, demand:

1. Direct the County Corporation Counsel to issue a formal opinion on whether Brown County faces civil liability for detaining individuals beyond their lawful release date on the basis of ICE detainers that are not judicial warrants.
   
   
2. Require the Brown County Sheriff's Office to provide quarterly public reports to the Public Safety Committee on all ICE cooperation activities, including: the number of individuals held on ICE detainers, the number transferred to ICE custody, the duration of detention beyond lawful release dates, and all costs, revenues, and federal payments associated with ICE detention, transportation, and 287(g) participation, to include salary reimbursements, startup funds, and performance bonuses.
   
   
3. Ensure that no individual is held in county custody beyond their lawful release date without a valid judicial warrant.
   
   
4. Immediately terminate all ICE detainer compliance by the Brown County Sheriff's Office.
   Eliminate any 287(g) agreements or similar cooperation with ICE.

Statement of Principles

The Green Bay Anti-War Committee opposes all U.S. aggression and intervention abroad, including outright war, military intervention, proxy forces, sanctions, and the maintenance of global military infrastructure. We identify these efforts as serving corporate profits and U.S. hegemony at the expense of the working class, both here and in the countries targeted. Immigration enforcement is not separate from this system. The same wars, coups, and sanctions that devastate communities abroad produce the displacement that drives migration, and the same apparatus that wages war overseas enforces its consequences domestically. We stand in solidarity with all peoples targeted by U.S. imperial policy. We reject the use of administrative mechanisms that bypass judicial process, and we oppose the entanglement of local law enforcement with federal immigration enforcement when it leads to unlawful detention. A successful movement against the U.S. war machine requires confronting its domestic operations with the same resolve we bring to opposing its foreign ones.