Author: Wisconsin Watch

In Milwaukee County, the debate over ‘sanctuary cities’ continues, while in rural Wisconsin, informal networks form to help immigrants avoid deportation. Along a desolate country road in northeastern Wisconsin, Manuel Estrada speeds toward work in his rumbling silver Ford SUV. He’s running late for his predawn shift. And he’s worried. His boss is counting on him; she’s been down a worker for a month. More than 400 Holstein cows stand blinking, waiting to be milked. His family needs the paycheck from his $11.50-per-hour job. And Estrada, 30, hopes the police aren’t waiting for him too. It’s a risk he...

The Hernandez family and other dairy workers are heading back to Mexico amid hostile rhetoric and rising immigration arrests in the Midwest and nationwide. In the driveway of a two-story house on a dairy farm in western Wisconsin, five men focus on a unique construction project. Using a drill, hammer and nails, plywood and rope, they work together in the afternoon sun to erect a structure that resembles a makeshift corral in the bed of a Honda pickup. Every so often, Luisa Tepole, 25, carries a suitcase or packaged appliance out of the house, handing it to her husband,...

Workers cite hostility and heightened enforcement, while dairy farmers raise wages to attract and keep Mexican and Central American employees. Twenty-six-year-old Rosa Jiménez and her husband, Manuel, 36, used to do the grocery shopping together. They would take the kids and make a day of it. But, lately, Manuel goes alone. “Imagine if they (immigration authorities) picked us up there. I won’t take the risk of them taking my children,” Jiménez says, bursting into tears as she sits in her kitchen on a recent afternoon. The couple always planned on one day returning to Mexico when they came to...

Gaps in federal drinking water standards enforced by state leave sites untested, numerous lead service lines remain. Almost two weeks into the school year, Melissa Corrigan got an email from the principal and superintendent of her daughters’ elementary school. Water from four West Middleton Elementary School faucets taken Sept. 1, the first day of school, had tested high for levels of lead or copper. As a safety precaution, the school would provide bottled water to students until the issue was resolved. Corrigan — whose daughters Brooklyn and Carly are in first and fourth grades — thought little of the...

The Department of Natural Resources has not alerted public water systems to stop flushing before testing, which can understate the level of lead in drinking water. Nine months after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warned against flushing water systems before testing for lead, the state Department of Natural Resources has not yet passed that advice on to public water systems in Wisconsin. The EPA issued a memo in late February as the lead-in-drinking-water crisis in Flint, Michigan was exploding into public view. The memo, intended to clear up confusion over testing procedures, declared that flushing water systems before sampling...

Costs of widely prescribed drugs jumped up to 5,241 percent in recent years, joint investigation shows. University of Wisconsin doctor says this is what families agonize over. Jess Franz-Christensen did not realize the seriousness of her son’s Type 1 diabetes diagnosis until staff in the doctor’s office offered to call an ambulance to take him to the hospital. Her next shock: The cost of Jack’s medicines. The drugs, administered through an insulin pump, cost $1,200 a month. “We’re really fortunate. We’re able to pay for stuff,” said Franz-Christensen, whose husband, Scott, is a physicist, while she stays home to...