By Kim McDarison

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, both Republicans, arrived in Whitewater Friday to participate in a 30-minute press conference focusing on local law enforcement issues described by the lawmakers as immigration-related, while advocating for proposed Republican policies to address national border security.

The officials were joined on a six-man panel by representatives from area law enforcement agencies, including Walworth County Sheriff Dave Gerber, Walworth County Undersheriff Tom Hausner, Kenosha County Sheriff David Zoerner and Whitewater Police Chief Dan Meyer.  

Opening the conference, Johnson thanked representatives from local law enforcement agencies for providing members of the panel with a briefing, which he described as “sobering.”

The briefing, which was held during an hour-long roundtable discussion held in advance of the press conference, Johnson said, “really centered on the issues and the problems facing local and county law enforcement around the whole issue of the flood of illegal immigrants that have come to this country under the (President Joe) Biden administration. Best numbers we can obtain, because Secretary (of the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro) Mayorkas will not be forthright with us, is something on the order of about 6 million people have been encountered, processed and dispersed.”

Johnson further described some individuals entering the country as “known-got-aways,” and, he said, “we don’t know who these people are.”

He said there are 1.7 million known-got-aways in the country, and, he said, “we don’t know how many unknown-got-aways there are.”

Looking to put the 6-million number into perspective, he said “29 states have a population less than that number.”

Citing additional immigration statistics, Johnson said: “And we hear the problems that Mayor (Eric) Adams is grappling with in New York, trying to deal with 100,000 immigrants. That’s less than 2% of that 6 million total. They said it’s going to bankrupt New York. Well, the national media pays attention to the big cities, but we’re paying attention to what happens here in Wisconsin, to a city like Whitewater, to a county like Walworth, and it’s devastating, and it’s a growing problem that has to be dealt with.”

Steil, too, offered a statement, saying: “We see on the national TV how it plays out in cities as Sen. Johnson just said — Chicago, New York, and others — but I think it’s important that people understand the impact that it’s having in smaller communities as well, in particular this community here in Whitewater. Hearing the statistics that the sheriff and the chief of police walked through on the severity of the calls that are coming through, and the significance of the challenges a community faces, and the limited resources that a community the size of Whitewater has to be able to address those challenges to make sure that you’re capable and able to provide for the public safety here is of paramount concern. 

“The challenges we face at the U.S./Mexico border, the uncontrolled immigration that’s coming to the United States has an impact across our entire country. It’s having a serious and substantive impact here in Whitewater. The answer to that is to secure the U.S./Mexico border.”

Steil said that he believed an opportunity to “force” the Biden administration to secure the border could be found through the levers of federal funding.

“That’s the task in front of us at the federal level, but at the local level here, our law enforcement officers, both in the city of Whitewater as well as the county, Walworth County, are facing serious challenges to address the situation here on the ground,” he said.

Gerber spoke about identifying challenges facing local law enforcement agencies, saying: “This started out here in the city of Whitewater with Chief Meyer and some things that he had brought to light, and we started looking at the county level, and the entire county of Walworth, and the impact its having on county resources, from the sheriff’s office, from our corrections division to our communications division, to our patrol deputies, to our detectives, but mainly the biggest impact for the sheriff’s office is our metro drug unit. We are spending a majority of our time here in the Whitewater area dealing with drug crime.” 

In that capacity, Gerber said, “we’ve served search warrants, we’ve worked investigations with the city of Whitewater, here with the university police, state and federal partners, and we’re going to continue to do that. My responsibilities as sheriff are numerous, but it’s pretty plain and simple when you come down to it — it’s to protect and serve the citizens of Walworth County. That’s exactly what we’re doing, and I will deploy as many resources as I can to assist the city and the university here in Whitewater in dealing with the problem, and making sure this community stays safe for the citizens of this community.”

Meyer said he was appreciative of the attention being paid to the issue.   

“This is clearly something that impacts border cities, large cities, like New York, Chicago, however it’s important to know how much of an impact it has here, locally, and frankly, I would argue that the demographic change we’re seeing here, is actually a larger impact to us because of that smaller pool of resources that we have to draw from. I do think it’s important to note that in all of this, there’s absolutely no intent to vilify any individual group of people. My goal in bringing this issue to the forefront is to make sure that the public is aware of it so that we can ensure that we have resources to properly serve our entire community, and law enforcement really is one slice of that pie. We need us, we need nonprofits, we need other people to serve and address that influx that we have here,” he said.

Questions from reporters 

The panel next took questions from a small group of reporters who were invited to attend. WhitewaterWise was not among publications given access to the participants of the “press conference.”

An earlier story, explaining steps taken to organize the event and “invite reporters,” is here: https://whitewaterwise.com/johnson-steil-meet-in-whitewater-with-law-enforcement-officials-policing-challenges-discussed/.

WhitewaterWise was given access to a video link after the conclusion of the event by Whitewater city officials. Our reporting is based on information provided within the video recording. While reporters in the room were allowed to ask questions, the audio did not pick up their sound well enough to offer reliable reporting, therefore, while WhitewaterWise is able to report responses to reporters’ questions, we are, in many cases, unable to report the question itself.

Responding to a question, Meyer said: “It’s a difficult issue to put a number to just because of the — what the issue is. We are talking about, in many cases, undocumented people, but we know we have a large influx of people from Central America, many of them from Nicaragua, some from Venezuela, and the impact on law enforcement specifically is what we discussed, and we have many challenges with communication, with housing, transportation, documentation, and just overall, a reduced ability for us to provide proactive law enforcement services.”

Responding to the same question, Johnson said: “One surrogate data point would be the number of students registered in schools.”

Johnson, looking to Meyer for verification, said he believed the number was 400.

Meyer said he was correct.

Johnson continued: “I think, what I was certainly struck by, he motioned toward Meyer, you mentioned communication. They (Nicaraguan residents) speak a different dialect of Spanish, and so they (Whitewater Police Department staff) don’t have, even though they have Spanish speakers in the department, they don’t have them that understand that particular dialect, and so they’re spending tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars just through interpretation services and it dramatically slows down the ability to process, investigative, just all these, to handle these service calls. So it’s a huge burden on law enforcement.” 

Johnson asked Meyer to elaborate on his point.

Said Meyer: “I’ll go back to that pool of resources. We just don’t have it. What we are spending to fund those interpretation services has gone up more than 10-fold since 2020. And that’s just, the city doesn’t necessarily have the funds to deal with something like that, so that’s just one issue though.” 

Steil, too weighed in on the discussion, saying: “One of the challenges with illegal immigration is the chaotic manner in which people arrive into the United States versus a structured, legal immigration system. And so when an individual encounters with law enforcement, it is much more difficult to identify who that person is, which creates challenges down the road.”

Following Steil’s comments,  Gerber said: “So when you cross the border, we don’t know who these people are. We don’t know who they were. (They) could be from Russia, they could be from the Middle East, they could be from Central America, and when they get to the United States, a lot of times, the first time we get to identify them is when they have first contact with law enforcement.”

Gerber noted that often times law enforcement agents spend their time matching names and fingerprints with records from other departments in other states, because, he said, an individual may have had contact with another agency, but has given the Wisconsin department a different name.

“Then we have to take time and decipher through the aliases and the fingerprint records to find out exactly who this person is. But it’s scary to know that someone could come into the United States and we have no idea who these people are. And they could be great people coming from wherever they are coming from to find a better life, but it’s the criminal activity that we’re most concerned with,” Gerber said.

He added that he believed communities within the county are safe. 

“We want to keep it that way,” he said. 

Said Johnson: “There is a robust and thriving industry of creating identification, drivers licenses, social security numbers from the deceased individuals, I think they said $1,300 buys you sort of the gold-plated identification standard. We are just scratching the surface of the problem, the endemic problem that we’ve created here, as this massive flow of illegal immigration.” 

Addressing Steil, a reporter asked how he proposed to secure the border.

Steil responded, saying: “Returning to many of the policies of the previous administration. Let’s return to Mexico policy that is actually finishing construction of the wall, and particularly in key segments. It’s increasing funding and hiring law enforcement agents, in particular, U.S. customs and border protection. And I think the window for us, for this administration, which is an unwilling administration in the first place, I think our opportunity here is on the funding bills (as) we look out now until the end of the year.” 

Fielding a related question, Steil said: “I think in particular we have an opportunity as we look to funding for Ukraine, to tie that with the border. I think that’s our best opportunity to force the Biden administration to come to the table to actually secure the U.S./Mexico border.”

Johnson, too, weighed in on border security and leveraging the Biden administration through a supplemental bill to fund the war in Ukraine, noting that Republican and Democratic senators were working, he said, “on a border security language tied to the President’s supplemental funding request, but there have been discussions inside the Republican conference that no matter how you change the laws, take that ‘credible fear’ standard up to the ‘more likely or not’ standard, reinstate a functioning return to Mexico safe country, complete the wall, no matter what tools we give this administration to secure the border, this administration wants an open border.”

Johnson said he hoped that Republicans will not allow the Biden administration to move forward with the supplemental funding bill unless funding for Ukraine is made contingent upon the administration meeting certain benchmarks pertaining to border security.

“This is very doable,” he said, adding: “we are going to try and create those benchmarks over a 12-month period to get this border under control rapidly.” 

A reporter asked about immigrants who come to the United States to work.

Said Johnson: “There is work, which is why we need a functioning legal immigration system. So they are working in the above ground economy. Again, it’s the underground economy where these individuals can be taken advantage of by unscrupulous employers. So we want a legal system. The open border, the illegal flow, is preventing us from implementing a fully legal system, which is, again, why you have this robust industry creating fake IDs. That’s not the way to go about this. So we’ve got to fix the, we’ve got to secure the border, and then we have to establish a functioning legal immigration system.” 

Addressing a question, Gerber said: “In the recent past, we’ve been spending a lot of time, like I talked about earlier, our drug unit investigators are here in Whitewater or assisting the city police, university police, with drug investigations, and we’ve made some substantial arrests. We are serving search warrants, and we are trying to keep our community safe. And of the drug arrests that we are making, we are seeing a lot of cocaine, a lot of fentanyl which is a problem. It used to be a lot of weed back in the day, and now we’re seeing a lot of hardcore drugs, which tends to lead to overdoses and other things and I want to make sure that we put a stop to that, because, I want to make it clear, we are not going to allow it here in Walworth County. But with that, we also have illegal documents that we are uncovering as a result of our drug investigations, and these documents are really genuine looking. I mean a Wisconsin ID card with all fake information on it looks genuine. Social security cards, and like the senator alluded to before, that’s an industry in and of itself … And being able to change identities, and that leads to identity theft, and all those things as well.” 

Gerber next asked Hausner to talk about proceeds from drug sales.

Hausner said that in a recent investigation, which he described as “ongoing,” limiting his ability to share details, deputies, he noted, “documented that almost a quarter million dollars in a four-month period was funneled back to the cartel itself, from Walworth County, from Whitewater.” 

Returning to the issue of border control, Johnson said: “We (Republicans) are going to force their (Democrats) hand to secure the border and we are going to tie that to Ukraine funding. We have to secure our border and protect America and Americans first, and the Democrats are not willing to do it.”

He advocated for completion of the fence at the Mexican border. 

The President and the Democrats do not want a secure border, Johnson said, adding: “we have to force their hand, and their desire for funding the war in Ukraine is the only leverage point we have, and yes, we will use that, because, I’ll repeat, it’s important for us to secure our border and protect Americans and protect our homeland.”

A reporter asked for an explanation regarding posters placed behind the panel.

Meyer said information provided on the posters included a list of “problematic incidents.” Among them, he cited a situation where a family with a 2-year-old child was living in a 10- x 10-foot shed in below freezing temperatures.

Also presented was a chart, which, Meyer said, represented calls for service in Whitewater in 2022 at a single apartment complex. He said many of the calls were related to apartments that had too many occupants, which caused “a lot of disorder,” he said.

A reporter asked: Why Whitewater?

Said Meyer: “We don’t know for sure, but I think the most clear or the answer that makes the most sense is that when COVID hit, we had housing available here. The university enrollment declined so we had available housing, and there’s also work here available for farm labor.”

A video of the event can be viewed by clicking on the arrow below.