Officials in a Wisconsin county approved $8 million in housing for immigrant dairy farm workers after a ProPublica report about a flawed investigation into the death of a boy in 2019.
The new funding approved by Dane County is part of a larger set of reforms that will also improve access to government services for people who don’t speak English, ProPublica reported Friday.
The changes are in response to a February report from the news outlet that identified problems in how law enforcement investigated the death of 8-year-old Jefferson Rodríguez. The Nicaraguan boy was living in a barn above a milking parlor on a dairy farm and died after being run over by a skid steer.
The night of his death, police who responded to a 911 call struggled to communicate with Rodriguez’s father, José María Rodríguez Uriarte, and other farm workers who don’t speak English. Police concluded after talking to Rodriguez that he was the one who had accidentally ran over his son, according to ProPublica.
In reality, it was another worker on the farm, ProPublica’s investigation found. The language barrier between police and the workers had resulted in the faulty conclusion.
Jefferson’s death was ruled an accident but his father was blamed.
Now, the county is budgeting $8 million in new funding for immigrant workers on whom Wisconsin’s dairy farms rely.
Heidi Wegleitner, a member of the Dane County Board of Supervisors who led the housing initiative, told ProPublica the county will assess current housing supply and could then purchase land to build new housing.
“The issue of safe housing for folks working on farms and in rural parts of the county I don’t think had been front of mind to me until hearing more about, honestly, the death of Jefferson Rodríguez,” she told the news outlet.
Separately, the sheriff’s department will also craft a new policy on how its deputies respond to residents with limited English proficiency, ProPublica reported. The county is also creating new positions to improve services for people who don’t speak English.
