Is progressivism that cuckoo for cocoa puffs?
You will find the name of Stephen Ratzlaff on your Tuesday, April 1 ballot, if you haven’t already voted. Put a thick black checkmark next to that name. He is running for Dane County Executive against the incumbent, Melissa Agard. She is a product of the local progressive machine. If you are satisfied with the status quo, if you like your tax bill, if you embrace Woke guilt-mongering, go with Ms. Agard (and God).
But Stephen Ratzlaff is asking the right questions. He wonders why Dane County taxpayers are spending seven figure$ a year to jail illegal immigrants. How many exactly we don’t know because this county refuses to identify illegal aliens in its custody. The progressives who run Dane County won’t cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. So candidate Ratzlaff did the next best thing. Back in February, he filed an open records request to find out how many inmates were foreigners. That request has just been fulfilled. On just one day, the Dane County jail housed 52 foreign inmates out of a total jail population of 772. Twenty are from Mexico; the next most frequent nationality is Honduran, numbering 9 inmates.
Those 52 inmates accounted for 178 crimes — 67 of them felonies, including first-degree murder, first-degree sexual assault of a child, and human trafficking. Among their crimes (proven and alleged): concealing a corpse, battery, fraud, forgery, theft, mayhem, false imprisonment, strangulation, threatening law enforcement, and hit and run.
The price of virtue-signaling
Somehow, our naive progressives confuse law-breaking illegal aliens with the hard-working legal immigrants who play by the rules. Also, they hate Trump and everything associated with him, including a certain electric vehicle. The sheriff, in consultation with Executive Agard, in late January said he would no longer participate in the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program because of “community values.” However, I.C.E. had listed Dane County as “non-cooperative” six months earlier.
That program paid $90,000 annually. So, add that lost revenue to the outlay for housing and feeding foreigners who entered our country illegally and now menace our streets. Figure the cost to house an inmate at $60 a day; that’s how much the county pays to house inmates in other counties when our jail is at capacity. And the costs of apprehension, adjudication, and injury to the public.
On a party line vote, WI Assembly Republicans voted 02-18-25 to require sheriffs to provide names of incarcerated individuals to I.C.E. or lose 15% of state aid. But it’s headed where all good legislation goes to die, on the desk of Democrat(ic) Gov. Tony Evers, for a veto.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: The sheriff, elected as a Democrat, calls them “residents,” not “inmates.” Sheriff Kalvin Barrett endorses Susan Crawford for WI Supreme Court. Dane County voters can say They are Mad as Hell by voting Stephen Ratzlaff for county executive and Brad Schimel for the court.
4 responses to “Why are we harboring illegal immigrant lawbreakers?”
Ahem…”People experiencing illegal immigration”
The problem is Dane County voters are NEVER mad as hell because the vast majority of them WANT & EXPECT the kinds of insanity/virtue signaling from their elected officials you describe. (I say “elected” despite Madison/Dane County being a one-party state where elections generate as much suspense as watching grass grow.) And cost is never a factor in their calculations. And the upcoming election is Exhibit A. I can’t count the number of Crawford fliers I’ve found in my mailbox over the last month or six weeks. Relying on Dane County voters to elect anyone but pre-approved progs is an exercise in futility. That said, I’m hoping the rest of the state gets out the vote to tip the balance against Dane and Milwaukee counties the way it did in the last election. Half of my vote for Schimel and Kinser was inspired by their policies and the other half by the prospect of Madison’s liberal elite having another meltdown, this one perhaps even more traumatic than last November’s. Nothing like watching snowflakes melt in April.
In short: yes, Progressives are cuckoo. Now that their fraudulent funding and media bias are under attack, all they have left is blather and violence.
I commend Stephen Ratzlaff for fighting the good fight, but no one with his sensibilities stands a chance at county exec while the Progressive Dane is entrenched as it is. Until the effects of their policies show up on the doorstep of a majority of Dane County voters and there is an opposition force that reminds them of it constantly, we will get more of the same. And maybe that won’t even be enough.