Galo Suárez, 25, was in a car near the El Rey Food Market on 13th St. in Milwaukee with his fiance Reyna Elizabeth Garcia and her brother Teodoro last weekend, when they realized they were being followed. A truck stopped in front of them and four more pulled up behind them. Suárez, related the experience in Spanish as members of Voces de la Frontera translated during a Tuesday press conference. He said masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began breaking their car windows and threatened them with “several heavy consequences” if they didn’t comply.
“They had guns pointed at us,” Suárez said, as he sat beside other witnesses of ICE arrests, Voces de la Frontera leaders and local elected officials at the Voces office in Milwaukee. “They didn’t ask us for our names, they didn’t ask us for an I.D. They took us violently out of the car.” His fiance was put against the car “in a very violent way” said Suárez. The agents called her a dog, he said, and told her “that is what happens to you.”
The encounter was not an anomaly. As of Tuesday, Voces de la Frontera’s hotline had corroborated 26-28 ICE detentions over the last few days in Wisconsin. “We know that many of the people are being held in Dodge, Waukesha County, Chicago-Maywood, Kentucky, Miami, Florida,” Voces said in a statement. Even as the press conference played out, two more confirmed ICE reports came in from Fitchburg, a suburb of Madison…