A dispute over a memo about how Wisconsin state workers should interact with federal immigration agents escalated this week into sharply worded warnings from the president’s border czar, Thomas Homan, and the state’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers.
Mr. Evers and others interpreted comments by Mr. Homan to suggest that he and other elected officials could face arrest over local immigration policies, leading the Wisconsin governor to say he was “not afraid” of what he described as “chilling threats.”
The Wisconsin dispute was the latest chapter in a long-running fight between President Trump’s administration and Democratic-led cities and states over whether local officials must cooperate with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
In Wisconsin, Republicans had for days pushed for Mr. Evers to rescind a message to state employees, issued on April 18 by the state’s Department of Administration. The single-page memo instructed workers to call a state lawyer if an ICE agent or other federal official visited their workplace. The memo told state workers to stay calm and notify their supervisors, to not immediately answer an agent’s questions and to not give them access to nonpublic areas. Chicago officials issued similar guidance to city workers earlier this year.
The disagreement over the memo intensified outside the White House on Thursday when a person who identified himself as being from The Gateway Pundit, a right-wing website, asked Mr. Homan why the government was not simply arresting “the leaders who are harboring and shielding” people who should be deported.
Mr. Homan responded, “Wait till you see what’s coming.”
When the reporter followed up by asking specifically about Mr. Evers and the Wisconsin memo, Mr. Homan expanded on his first response.
“Wait to see what’s coming,” he said, according to video of the exchange posted by C-SPAN. “I meant what I said: You can not support what we’re doing. And you can support sanctuary cities if that’s what you want to do. But if you cross that line of impede-ment, or knowingly harboring and concealing an illegal alien, that is a felony and we’re treating it as such.”
Mr. Evers responded on Friday with a video message in which he said “a Trump administration official, in not so many words, apparently threatened to arrest me.”
“I haven’t broken the law,” Mr. Evers said in the video. “I haven’t committed a crime. And I’ve never encouraged or directed anyone to break any laws or commit any crimes.”
He added that “these threats represent a concerning trajectory in this country.”
“We now have a federal government that will threaten or arrest an elected official — or even everyday American citizens — who have broken no laws, committed no crimes and done nothing wrong,” said Mr. Evers, a former teacher and state schools superintendent who is serving his second term as governor.
In the video, Mr. Evers also defended the memo and accused his political opponents of distorting its content and intent.
“The goal of this guidance was simple: to provide clear, consistent instructions to state employees and ensure they have a lawyer to help them comply with all federal and state laws,” Mr. Evers said.
When asked by The New York Times on Friday to explain what he meant by his previous comment about the Wisconsin governor, Mr. Homan said that the Trump administration would not allow entities to impede immigration enforcement.
“I’m just saying: watch what happens. I mean, D.O.J. is taking a strong stance,” Mr. Homan said, referring to the Justice Department. “They’re suing sanctuary cities. We’re going to arrest people who cross that line of harboring and concealing. So if they cross that line, just see what happens.”
Asked about whether Wisconsin’s new guidance violated the law, Mr. Homan said he would defer to the Justice Department.
“I can’t answer that question,” he said. “We’ve got to leave that up to the Department of Justice. They’re the ones to decide if it met that metric. They’re the ones who decide at what point did it cross the line. I have my personal opinion, but I’m not going to give you that because I don’t want to get ahead of D.O.J.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Evers had faced pressure over the memo from Republican state legislators, who asked in a letter this week that he “rescind this guidance to avoid future conflicts between state and federal authorities, to assist our brave men and women in law enforcement, and to ensure the Trump administration’s goal of deporting violent illegal immigrants is given the full assistance of the state of Wisconsin.”
Cracking down on jurisdictions that do not proactively cooperate with ICE has been a priority of Mr. Trump and his appointees since the president returned to office in January.
The Justice Department sued officials in Illinois and Chicago, arguing that their laws limiting cooperation with immigration agents are illegal. The top federal prosecutor in New Jersey said her office was investigating that state’s governor and attorney general over their immigration policies. And the president has sought to block funding for cities and counties that do not cooperate with immigration officials.
Wisconsin, a swing state that Mr. Trump carried last year, has become a focus of federal immigration policy in recent days. Last week, federal agents arrested a state judge in Milwaukee who they said steered an undocumented immigrant through a side door in her courtroom while agents waited to arrest him in a public hallway.
Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.
