Today, Attorney General Brad Schimel filed an appeal of Boyden verdict that favored Alina Boyden and Shannon Andrews, two women who courageously challenged an exclusion in state employee health benefits that targeted transgender employees for discriminatory treatment. After a trial in which a jury of Wisconsin citizens found that Shannon and Alina should be compensated for this discrimination, the state has harmed them yet again by appealing the verdict and delaying justice.  The state's group insurance board has already decided to offer coverage starting next year, making the appeal even more incomprehensible.

Shannon Andrews said: "The state's actions in appealing this suit even after the Group Insurance Board committed to offering coverage for a second time to trans workers in Wisconsin exemplifies this administration's commitment to capricious cruelty. This short-sighted waste of taxpayer money simply punctuates the last 8 years with a petty act of spite."

Alina Boyden added: "Tuesday's election was a repudiation of mean-spirited assaults on the civil rights and health care access of Wisconsinites of all backgrounds.  Now, it feels as though the Governor and Attorney General have taken the opportunity on their way out the door to inflict one last insult on Wisconsin's transgender community in the form of an unnecessary and unwinnable appeal of our court victory last month."

The ACLU of Wisconsin is a non-profit, non-partisan, private organization whose 13,000 members support its efforts to defend the civil rights and liberties of all Wisconsin residents. For more on the ACLU of Wisconsin, visit our website at www.aclu-wi.org, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

Protect Your Online Identity from Government Surveillance

President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently issued a public notice that indicates the department has expanded the records it retains in immigrants’ files to include “social media handles, aliases, associated identifiable information, and search results.”  Read about this disturbing trend on the ACLU national website here.

This has raised legitimate concerns that DHS is going to spy on social media and internet usage of immigrants, naturalized citizens, refugees, and citizens who communicate with immigrants.

If you don’t feel comfortable with your personal life and social media information in anyone else’s hands, then here are some tips to protect your privacy.

●     Learn how to protect your privacy online.

1.    Lock down the privacy settings of, or delete your social network profiles. This includes sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tinder, and any shopping sites you may have registered with, like Amazon and others.

2.    Use services like DeleteMe, that can make it easier to delete your personal information from the internet, including from data brokers like Intelius and Equifax who collect this information.

3.    Check with your phone company or cell provider to make sure you aren't listed online.

4.    Contact site webmasters individually to remove content. If they don’t comply, you can send a legal request to Google.

5.    If outdated information is still showing up in search results, send a request to remove it.

6.    Anonymize or delete your email accounts.

For more detailed instructions on these steps, visit: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/remove-delete-yourself-from-the-internet/

●     Use TOR to help you safely and securely use the internet. This free software can help you defend against network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy.

●     Using a Virtual Private Network adds a layer of security to both private and public networks.

●     Use encrypted text messaging like Signal, which ensures no one can read your messages or see your calls, or FireChat.

●     See an example of how this could affect your life. https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/29/dhs-to-track-immigrants-on-social-media/

Use these tools to protect yourself from the Trump Administration’s invasive surveillance.

Stay tuned and support the ACLU of Wisconsin as we fight to protect your rights. 

During the summer of 2017, I volunteered at the Dilley Detention Center.  I spent a week hearing the stories of mothers with their children who had fled Central America and were now seeking asylum in the United States.  I worked as part of a project to prepare the women for their credible fear interviews as part of that asylum process.  They shared stories of horrific violence and fear for their lives if they remained in their home countries.  If asylum officers find their fear is not credible, they will be swiftly sent home, and so the stakes are very high.

The Dilley Detention Center is located on a hot Texas plain some 80 miles southwest of San Antonio.  It is a facility run by the private prison company Core Civic with the capacity to hold some 2400 women and children.  Tall fences surround the detention center, and at night you can see the security lights illuminating all the facility.  Mothers and children, who have fled violence in their home countries, are now detained in the portable buildings which make up this permanent detention center.     

Currently, a consent decree in a federal lawsuit called Flores v. Reno, prevents the federal government from detaining children for more than 20 days at Dilley or other detention centers and prohibits the government from detaining children in facilities that are not licensed by the state where they are located.   As a consequence, the majority of families are released from the facility on bail or electronic monitoring within a matter of weeks.  The Trump administration, however, has now proposed regulations which would gut the consent decree protections and would allow the Department of Homeland Security to maintain children with parents for indefinite periods of time in family residential centers not license by any state.

The idea of expanding child detention is outrageous, given the federal government’s long history of failing to provide for the immigrant children in its custody.   Numerous studies have shown that detention is psychologically damaging to children.  There are also many documented situations of abuse of children in detention by the operators of the facilities where they are held.        

Effective alternatives to detention exist which are much less costly and which are equally effective in assuring that immigrant families appear for their scheduled dates in immigration court, but the Trump administration seems intent on punishing children and families who want nothing more than to find safe refuge from violence in the United States.

This week president Trump also announced that he would be building “tent cities” to hold asylum seekers who may cross the border.   Under the proposed rule, it is children and their families who would be detained in these tent cities for years on end.

The ACLU of Wisconsin flatly opposes any expansion of detention of children.  Accordingly, on October 31, 2018, we filed a comment in opposition to the proposed rule, joining with thousands of others rejecting this cruel idea.

Speak up now: The government must not undermine Flores’ protections for immigrant children and families! 

Join us in opposing the expansion of child detention by submitting your comment at this link by November 6.

Tim Muth has firsthand experience working in detention centers across the country.  He splits his time between the ACLU of Wisconsin and doing human rights work in El Salvador.