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What is a Sanctuary City?
A sanctuary city is an unofficial designation but loosely defined as a unit of government which refuses, partially or outright, to cooperate with the federal government in the enforcement of immigration laws. Any governmental entity can attain this status, whether it be a sheriff's department, jail, town, city, county, or even an entire state.
As far as the federal government is concerned, though, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) look only at whether a unit of government fulfils the agency's detainment requirements. ICE does not care whether an organization has declared itself to be a sanctuary, only if it has failed to fulfill the requirements pertaining to illegal immigrants that enter its custody.
If an organization required to comply with ICE has failed to fulfill its obligations, ICE designates the organization as either Non-cooperative or Limited cooperation (p.1):
Non-cooperative:
Limited cooperation:
As of June 2024, ICE has identified over 4,150 facilities subject to compliance, with 551 marked as Non-cooperative and 146 as Limited Cooperation (p. 2).
Wisconsin's Sanctuaries
The MacIver Institute makes no claim to the validity of the following institutions and jurisdictions being labelled as sanctuaries. The federal government's lists and designations are taken at face value, and the analysis of the federal government's enforcement of its immigration policy proceeds as if these jurisdictions are non-compliant.
There are two federal sources designating certain Wisconsin municipalities as sanctuaries: a 2024 Tracker from ICE, and a 2025 list from Homeland Security.
According to ICE's Detainer Acceptance Tracker (published in June 2024), three "facilities" in Wisconsin fall into either of the two categories below (p. 5,6,17). Those that are labelled Non-cooperative are:
And the one Limited Cooperation facility is the:
More recently, the Department of Homeland Security published a list of "sanctuary jurisdictions" to its website on May 29th, 2025 in order to comply with President Trump's Executive Order "Protecting American Communities From Criminal Aliens" (EO 14287, 4/28/25). The list provided by the DHS was removed from their website just a few days later, but an archived copy of the complete list can be viewed here. According to that list, the DHS has four Wisconsin jurisdictions listed as sanctuaries:
The implications of being so designated by the Trump Administration is made clear by Section 3 of the executive order:
Consequences for Sanctuary Jurisdiction Status.
(a) With respect to sanctuary jurisdictions that are designated under section 2(a) of this order, the head of each executive department or agency (agency), in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and as permitted by law, shall identify appropriate Federal funds to sanctuary jurisdictions, including grants and contracts, for suspension or termination, as appropriate.
(b) With respect to jurisdictions that remain sanctuary jurisdictions after State or local officials are provided notice of such status under section 2(b) of this order and yet remain in defiance of Federal law, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall pursue all necessary legal remedies and enforcement measures to end these violations and bring such jurisdictions into compliance with the laws of the United States.
-EO 14287, Section 3(a-b)
In short, the withholding of federal funds, and legal remedies and enforcement measures, are the stated means to bring these sanctuary jurisdictions into compliance. The withholding of federal funds is the most relevant and immediate consequence for Wisconsin's affected jurisdictions, and as the MacIver Institute reported on June 4th, is virtually guaranteed to be opposed by Democrats and the Governor. The question of subsequent enforcement methods in the face of continued non-compliance is an open one, and beyond our scope. But the question of how much federal funding these jurisdictions stand to lose is not.
How Much Money is on the Line?
The Wisconsin Department of Revenue (DOR) releases municipal governments' revenue and expense data in what is called the County and Municipal Revenue and Expense report.
The most recent report for 2023 shows that total federal funding received by all municipalities (towns, villages, cities, and counties) was $1.053 billion.
Counties received the most ($523 million), cities the second most ($472 million), and villages ($41 million) and towns ($16 million) received the least.
As for those municipalities identified as sanctuaries, Dane and Shawano counties received $40 million and $1.8 million, respectively. That's only 3.5% of their total revenue.
Milwaukee and Madison, on the other hand, received $205 million and $48 million, respectively. That's about 14% of Milwaukee's total revenue and a little more than 6% of Madison's.
For context, and using Milwaukee as an example, the city's $205 million worth of federal funding in 2023 falls just shy of the amount budgeted to cover Milwaukee's Employee Retirement system ($238 million) in their 2025 budget (p. 26). In other words, assuming the worst case scenario of all federal funding being halted, Milwaukee would not be able to pay employee pensions and benefits. Such a scenario may not be likely but is nevertheless a possibility considering the language of the Order; where the withholding of grants and contracts are explicitly mentioned, but are by no means stated to be the only sources of federal funding subject to withholding.
Perhaps surprisingly, left-wing organizations and local governmental units have done little to challenge the sanctuary status bequeathed to them. Being a sanctuary is seen, more or less, as a badge of honor. Their main objection, rather, is that the President and his administration do not have the authority to withhold money from them. So if a municipality's sanctuary status is not in dispute, how many illegal immigrants are in these communities?
How Many Illegals are in Wisconsin's Sanctuary Cities?
Fortunately, since many left-wing organizations are proud to offer sanctuary to illegals, they have no misgivings about reporting their number and location. Of course, the way in which they acquire this information can be criticized, but their motivations and values mean they're incentivized to over- and not under-state the number of illegals. So what do these groups say about the number of illegal immigrants in Wisconsin communities?
The American Immigration Council has an extensive body of information papers estimating the number and demographics of immigrants throughout the U.S. For Wisconsin in 2023, they estimated that of the 320,000 immigrants in the state, 93,000 (29%) are "undocumented"; i.e. illegal immigrants.
The AIC also provides estimates for the Madison and Milwaukee metro areas, claiming that 61,600 immigrants reside in the former, and 129,200 reside in the latter.
If 29% of immigrants are undocumented, then:
These numbers may be understated, however, because illegal immigrants will tend to migrate to those places offering shelter and benefits (as Dane County most certainly does via the Department of Human Services' Immigration Affairs, and as Milwaukee has done here, here and here).
These illegal immigrant numbers are somewhat corroborated by the Vera Institute--a left-wing organization relying on the AIC immigration report. In 2023, the Vera Institute published an information paper for the Madison metro area claiming that there were 51,000 immigrants, 29,500 of whom were "potentially at risk of deportation."
In their most recent 2025 information papers for Wisconsin, Madison, and Dane County, Vera doesn't use such language. Instead, they simply refer to these immigrants as "noncitizens." Whether this is a euphemism for illegal immigrant or simply a way to stoke deportation fears by including legal immigrants here on visas is unknown, but assuming it is being used euphemistically indicates that the proportion of illegal immigrants in Wisconsin is much higher--53% rather than 29%.
This means that according to the estimates of the AIC and Vera, the number of illegal immigrants in Wisconsin could be anywhere from 93,000 to 170,000.
To get an idea of the federal government's view of these estimates (ICE, in particular), not much is available other than the number of encounters, arrests and deportations reported by ICE on their Statistics Dashboard. The dashboard lacks sufficient granularity to confirm or deny the AIC and Vera's estimates, but the number of deportations recorded by the Chicago field office reports that since fiscal year 2021, the Chicago office has deported 13,325 illegal immigrants. How many of these offenders were residing in Wisconsin?
Political Motivations for Acting as a Sanctuary
Left-leaning municipalities' reasons for offering sanctuary to illegal immigrants is straightforward enough--it's politically popular and creates a demand for government action.
For those immigrants that are not here legally, Milwaukee and Dane County have the necessary pretext to increase their expenditures in order to "absorb" these people into the polity and make them "net contributors" to the state economy. The city or county can then leverage the sympathy of voters to raise taxes and spending to provide jobs training, offer housing assistance, subsidize law firms to streamline the citizenship process, or otherwise constantly complain that the tax contributions of residents are insufficient to accomplish these goals, and therefore never have to pursue citizenship on behalf of illegal immigrants. This creates a perpetual crisis that is never resolved and leads to an ever-expanding government.
Alternatively, these governments can do all of the above but instead actually work in earnest to acquire visas and citizenship for illegal immigrants. In this case, political partisans can be virtually assured of a forever loyal constituency that re-elects them to office, votes in favor of their referenda, and secures for them a steady career with exceptional pay and benefits. As Ronald Reagan would say: "That's quite a voting bloc."
Perhaps with the exception of the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin's sanctuaries may very well be willing to forego all federal funding because the benefits of the crisis exceed the lose of revenue. But Milwaukee's financial situation has long been precarious, and as mentioned before, receives 14% of its revenue from the federal government. Here, the Trump Administration may actually be able to leverage this situation to achieve its political goals.
In closing, while folks on the political Right complain about politicians' actions in support of illegal immigrants, they must understand that the "costs" of illegal immigration are not costs, but benefits, to left-wing politicians. Even Republicans benefit politically from illegal immigration in that it creates a perpetual crisis for the Republican to "solve." But the incentives to solve political problems are meager in comparison to the incentive to "try and fail and try again." Most people tend to believe that politicians who "solve" crises will still be rewarded by their constituents via re-election and donations, but this ignores that fact that politicians are rewarded anyway for failing. From the politician's point of view, meeting the demands of constituents is an untested means of attaining re-election. Why risk change, in other words, when the status quo works just as well?
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