Reps. Tom Tiffany (WI-07) and Derrick Van Orden (WI-03) sent a letter to Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett demanding answers to questions about Alejandro Jose Coronel Zarate, a Venezuelan migrant who is not a U.S. Citizen, according to the Prairie du Chien Police Department.

“Mr. Coronel Zarate was recently charged and arrested with domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse, and strangulation by the Prairie du Chien Police Department. However, he reportedly already had active warrants in Dane County for similar offenses, including false imprisonment and battery,” Derrick Van Orden and Tom Tiffany wrote.

Read more about the accusations against Zarate here.

“Given that Dane County was classified as ‘non-cooperative’ with federal immigration authorities as recently as June of this year by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Reps. Tiffany and Van Orden wrote to ask for additional information regarding Dane County law enforcement’s interaction with Mr. Coronel Zarate,” the release said.

We asked the Dane County Sheriff’s spokesperson Elise Schaffer for a response to the Van-Orden/Tiffany letter.

“I looked into Mr. Coronel Zarate’s current situation. He is being held in Crawford County, therefore it would be up to them to communicate with ICE officials,” she wrote.

“Although he has a criminal complaint warrant in Dane County (based on a Madison Police case), he has not been in our custody and therefore would not have had an ICE hold placed on him in Dane County. We do not have a ‘non-cooperation’ policy regarding communication or coordination with ICE. It is our practice not to hold someone past their scheduled release date for ICE. If there is an ICE hold on someone in our jail, they must be picked up before 11 am on their release date.”

We asked, “How many ICE holds the jail has had this year to date?” and were told to file an open records request, which we have done.

The congressmen had asked the sheriff:

Does Dane County still maintain a “non-cooperation” policy, or any other policy that in any way limits or restricts communication or coordination with ICE?

Prior to the incident in Prairie du Chien, was Mr. Coronel Zarate ever arrested or detained by Dane County law enforcement?
If so, did Dane County ever notify ICE officials that Mr. Coronel Zarate was in custody?

Did your agency, at any time, receive an immigration detainer request from ICE officials regarding Mr. Coronel Zarate?

If so, did Dane County honor that detainer and attempt to turn Mr. Coronel Zarate over to ICE?

“These reckless and misguided “revolving door” policies are not only illegal, they also needlessly put other American communities at risk by allowing dangerous criminal aliens back out onto the streets to create new victims rather than remanding them to ICE for detention and removal. We hope that did not happen in this case,” said Reps. Tiffany and Van Orden.

Wisconsin Right Now has sent an email to the sheriff asking the same questions.