The Mexican restaurant where multiple workers were taken in February still sits dark, across the road from a travel plaza where people were also arrested by federal agents.
An Ecuadorian market in a nearby town targeted by immigration agents is back open again, with a sign on the door telling people to ring the bell before entering.
And J was still staying inside – the federal agents had already taken his wife, and he couldn’t risk being taken, too. Someone had to take care of their 18-month-old child while the family worked to reunite.
“The United States is the American dream, that’s what they call it,” said J, who came to the US from Venezuela in 2023, in Spanish. He asked to be referred to by his initial due to fears of immigration enforcement. “But no, it wasn’t like that.”
When federal agents menaced the Minneapolis metropolitan area earlier this year, they also spread into rural western Wisconsin, taking dozens of people from smaller towns in more politically conservative areas.
Immigration agents aren’t just targeting blue cities; they are coming to small towns, too, where some felt the relative quiet of their lives wouldn’t be impacted by Donald Trump’s plan for mass deportations.
In Baldwin, Wisconsin, a town of about 4,000 people, local residents estimate more than 50 people were taken by federal agents, peaking in January and February. Other, larger towns in St Croix county, like Hudson and River Falls, have also seen immigrants arrested.
Baldwin is over 95% white, according to the most recent census, and leans Republican, but its immigrant population has grown in recent years, residents say. On the town’s main street, a Latino grocery and a Mexican restaurant sit among American restaurants, a local pharmacy and other small businesses. Beyond the main street and adjacent highways, scattered businesses quickly turn into farmland.
While the area hasn’t seen deportations in recent weeks, many are still on edge and staying home. Denise Flaherty, a local who helps immigrants, said there were several per day before the relative calm of the last month or so.
Mutual aid networks are still working to get groceries and supplies to families who have seen members of their households sent out of the country, or give rides to people who fear they could be pulled over and swiftly taken away. Residents are still trying to get answers and transparency from their local officials and police, who they believe were friendly with immigration agents.
“This is a super important fight,” said Jenelle Ludwig Krause, who has been organizing with a newly formed group called Safe Neighbors. “I care very deeply about what happens in Baldwin and what kind of community I’m part of.
“I also feel like what has happened in Baldwin is happening in a lot of other towns and is about to happen in thousands and thousands of more towns, and we just have to find pathways to protect ourselves and take care of each other.”
Stories of specific apprehensions – including outside a large home improvement store – started around Thanksgiving, but ramped up in December and then again as agents spread out further from the Twin Cities, where residents quickly poured into the streets to protest agents and doggedly followed them in their vehicles. When it seemed like agents were dwindling in Minneapolis, they were picking up again in western Wisconsin.
Megan Timmerman, a lifelong Baldwin resident who organized a local vigil after the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, said she initially felt helpless. “I live right in the heart of town, and I feel like I could look out my window and see something happening all the time,” she said.
Federal agents targeted mobile homes, apartment buildings, ethnic restaurants, grocery stores, the roads frequented by people driving to work from one town to another. It’s not clear why Baldwin, in particular, was hit so heavily by immigration enforcement agents, though everyone has their theories. It’s right off a highway. Agents were staying in hotels in the county.
The Department of Homeland Security didn’t address questions on why Baldwin was targeted, why Operation Metro Surge spread into Wisconsin or whether federal agents were still operating in western Wisconsin.
“Every day, DHS enforces the laws of the nation across the country including in Minnesota and Wisconsin to keep Americans safe,” a department spokesperson said in an email statement. “ICE agents uphold our nation’s immigration laws in all 50 states, seven days a week, 24 hours a day.”
During the peak of arrests, fewer people responded by turning out in the streets than in larger, left-leaning cities, making it easier for agents to make arrests. Even for those who opposed what ICE was doing, they weren’t always willing to do so publicly, or show up to patrol and document agents in action.
“People think Baldwin is very red or right-leaning, but I don’t know if that’s fully the case, especially as we grow. I just think people aren’t loud about it,” Timmerman said.
Multiple people involved in local volunteering and organizing said there are some who want to help, but their spouses or other family members don’t agree with them politically, so they help quietly. Baldwin, and western Wisconsin more broadly, leans solidly Republican – though some municipalities have shifted toward Democrats during the Trump era.
“I really think that they came into small towns thinking there would be no resistance,” said Julie N, who volunteers helping local immigrants and requested not to share her last name. “And in a way, there wasn’t the resistance to stop them right away, because there aren’t enough people.”
That changed over time, she said. Now, the local population that opposes these deportations has made clear “you can’t just come into our communities and just do whatever you want, and we’re not going to say anything”.
Local residents have told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that they faced retribution and intimidation from federal agents, much like those who patrolled ICE activity in the Twin Cities.
The fear and disruption to daily life continues to linger. In early March, a local English language teacher wrote a letter to the editor of the Baldwin Bulletin, the local paper, saying her students worried their parents wouldn’t be home when they returned from school, or they didn’t feel comfortable going on field trips.
“Over winter break, I was grocery shopping and organizing food deliveries for families too afraid to leave their homes,” the teacher wrote. “On New Year’s Eve, students called me crying because ICE activity was happening where they live. These were children calling their teacher because they didn’t know who else was safe. That fear has only grown.”
Residents taken off the streets
J came to the US from Venezuela after he was kidnapped by guerrilla groups. He had temporary protected status, a legal immigration program for people from select countries, which was revoked for Venezuelans by the Trump administration last year.
His wife was taken by federal agents while driving near their home in St Croix county in February. He previously worked in construction, but doesn’t feel safe leaving his home anymore, and he also must care for his daughter. The girl has rarely gone outsideand wakes up in the night, crying for her mother, he said, but it’s impossible to explain to such a young child why she isn’t there. They call her via expensive video calls, and while they appreciate seeing each other, it reinforces the distance.
She had a work permit and signed paperwork to voluntarily leave the country, but the government would not immediately send her back home. At one point, she was taken to an airport to return to Venezuela and waited three days for a flight before being taken back to a facility. She was finally able to leave in March, weeks after she signed the papers.
J can’t go back to Venezuela – he would be in danger. But he and his daughter plan to meet her mother in Colombia, and the family will find somewhere else to live, perhaps Spain, where they have family.
“I don’t know what we’re doing wrong, we’re just working,” he said in Spanish. “I do things the right way. I pay my taxes.”
Jairo Sarango runs an Ecuadorian market in Hudson, selling meats, fruits, vegetables and shelf-stable products to a largely Latino clientele.
He’s seen a steep decline in business because his customers do not feel comfortable leaving their homes to come shopping. He has had family members deported, both in Wisconsin and elsewhere in the US.
Agents didn’t come to his business, though they were at a nearby Ecuadorian market and other businesses in the area, he said. Still, he said he fears ICE.
Rancho Loco, a Mexican restaurant in Baldwin, is working to reopen after many weeks, recently soliciting applicants to work as hosts, cooks, dishwashers and servers. In early February, federal agents came to the restaurant. The business had been open, with its doors locked, allowing patrons in one by one – a common practiceamid the surge. But someone got inside and let other agents in, according to several residents. Multiple employees, including the manager, were taken.
In mid-February, more than a dozen people spoke out against ICE at a village board meeting in Baldwin,calling on their local officials to do more. They want the village to pass an ordinance that prohibits federal agents from using village-owned properties for staging and makes clear that Baldwin police shouldn’t participate in immigration enforcement.
“There was a reason why some of us never leave this town,” one woman said. “We’re proud to be from here. We feel safe here. It’s an amazing community where we feel supported and welcomed. Unfortunately, some of those same reasons that I’ve stayed here for so long I’ve recently been called into question.”
Naturalized citizens said they carry their passports out of fear. One woman said she and her family have plans in place in case she is detained or pulled over, and her daughter has been harassed by kids saying they would send ICE to her house. Another said her husband, who is of Mexican descent, hadn’t left the house in a month since a suspicious vehicle stopped and stared at him. He “feels like a prisoner in his home”, she said.
Local residents have raised questions over police’s involvement with immigration. One person said that two people were pulled over by Baldwin police, and ICE soon arrived after. “How would ICE know to come to that area?” they asked. A woman said she was surrounded by federal agents in a private parking lot while assisting a family, and when she reported the incident to local police, she was dismissed.
“I asked, should I call 911, next time I find myself trapped and unable to leave a parking lot?” she said of her call to the police chief. “And he said, but what would be the emergency? I felt unsafe. I still feel unsafe, and, even speaking here, I feel unsafe.”
One person defended Baldwin police, saying people condemning deportations were acting like the Baldwin police should shut down ICE. “It won’t happen,” he said.
Kevin Moore, the Baldwin police chief, said his department doesn’t work with federal agents or enforce immigration law, and the department hasn’t been used by agents as a staging area.
“Politics does not guide how we police our community,” Moore said during the meeting. “Personal beliefs, national debates and political viewpoints do not influence how we respond to calls for service or how we treat people who need our help.”
Moore did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the president of the village board.
After the February meeting, residents formally requested the issue be added to the village board’s agenda in March so they could get answers. Their request was denied, and the board removed the public comment period from the March meeting completely.
If local officials hope the issue will die down, “it’s not gonna pass. We’re not just gonna let it go,” one Baldwin resident told the Guardian.
What need looks like now
Since ICE came to town, the network of local organizers has grown. ICE watchers patrol to monitor for activity and Flaherty and Julie fundraise to help cover rent and utilities, phone bills or other needs. Requests initially slowed as arrests waned, but there’s a lingering sense of unease – and a mountain of unpaid bills.
Flaherty said recently she’s been busier than ever. People are starting to feel more comfortable leaving their homes after months inside, so now they’re catching up on medical appointments, needing more car repairs because they’re driving more, and trying to find work, she said.
“People are donating money, and we really, really need money,” Flaherty said. “A lot of people, because they’re not going to work, they’re continually getting behind now.”
Much of the response is more “after-the-fact triage”, Julie said. Flaherty spent many weeks trying to get the keys back from the federal government for a vehicle after two people were taken from a home improvement store parking lot. She had arrived soon after the men were taken, retrieved belongings from the car, but the keys weren’t there. She traveled to the Whipple federal building in St Paul, Minnesota, multiple times, eventually getting agents to turn over the keys.
The particulars of a rural, red-leaning area bring some difficulties that a dense urban area responding to ICE wouldn’t see. Flaherty, a retiree who helps about 50 immigrant families, said she called the ICE watch dispatch in January, but couldn’t get help because she was in a rural area and couldn’t give an address.
At the peak, Julie would start giving rides at 6am then spend all day giving rides, grabbing groceries, taking kids to schools, triaging whatever needs people had. She went to doctor’s appointments with several people, including repeatedly with a pregnant woman.
Ludwig Krause, the Baldwin organizer, said the community’s response doesn’t fall cleanly along political lines. For many, taking care of each other in a small town is a way of life. And most people appreciate what immigrants have brought to the area – they’ve revitalized the economy and helped prevent a small town from shrinking, as many are these days, she said.
“It’s not a red-blue line,” she said. “We want to take care of people.”
“Our community is growing, it’s thriving, we’re grateful, and we want to take care of everyone, regardless of the color of our skin or how much money we have in our pocket.”
