This story has been updated to include information on a lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration's student visa policy.Daniyal Shahbaz typically wears a tie when he flies back to the United States from Pakistan, his home country. When he deplanes, a hall lined with U.S. Customs and Border Protection booths awaits. The Iowa State University mechanical engineering and political science student hopes his tie will impress immigration officers, who have the power to admit or reject arriving inter...

Alisa Ramdial Shahib sketches roses, hearts, butterflies and golf clubs to send to her family. This is the first time she has been away from her 8-year-old son. She is also separated from her daughter, who is attending college, and her husband, Secah Shahib. Ramdial Shahib has been in immigration custody in Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, since March — with no criminal charges.Ramdial Shahib mails every drawing to her husband, who lives 140 miles away in Independence, Missouri. He carefully places eac...

A 33-year-old man speeds through an Onalaska neighborhood on his motorcycle as a police officer follows him. “Pull over,” the officer shouts through an open window. Instead, the rider accelerates to 100 mph. 

At the two-minute mark of the 2021 video, the motorcyclist hits an SUV waiting to turn. Paramedics pronounced him dead on scene. The body is blurred out in the video clip. With more than 21 million views, it is the most-seen video on one of the nation’s most popular YouTube channels for po...

In a lopsided Supreme Court race, Wisconsinites overwhelmingly chose liberal Justice-elect Chris Taylor to join the state’s highest court for a decade-long stint. Her win will give liberals a 5-2 majority.

But before election night, a newcomer had entered the race: a virtual assistant powered by artificial intelligence that was texting voters, offering to answer their questions about the election, with an eye toward helping Taylor.

“Got any questions about (Chris Taylor’s) record and why it ma...

Natalie Chavez’s mother always helped her with her panic attacks. Now, the 12-year-old said, she has to rely on herself. 

That’s because immigration officers handcuffed and shackled her mom, Elvira Benitez-Suarez, 51, of Sheboygan Falls, during a routine immigration check-in last week. She was taken to Chicago, then Indiana and now resides at the Campbell County Detention Center in Kentucky.

“My mom is not a criminal,” said Natalie through tears at a Thursday press conference. “She does a lot...

When Mackenzie Nickeas, a first generation biology student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, first came to campus, the First-Generation+ Student Center helped her with financial aid by setting up a tuition payment plan. 

So Nickeas said she was “baffled” this week when she and other students received an email announcing the center would close at the end of the spring semester. The closing is part of a move from the university to consolidate several student cultural and resource centers...

At a Hissy Kits show, it’s all about the crowd’s — and cats’ — meows. 

Dozens of people came to watch the cat duo perform on a wintery Friday night in November 2025.

The Hissy Kits are a unique pair of instrumentalists. Whiskey wears a tuxedo cat suit, and Scotch dons an orange cat suit. Both wear dark sunglasses, becoming one with their furry personas. 
“When we play, there will be times when you intuitively will know it’s a good time to meow,” one of the Kits told “Wisconsin Life” at the sta...

When freshman flutist Ethan Bowe saw auditions were open for a solo in the marching band show, he thought, “Why not?”

He got the part. And now Bowe will be one of more than 200 students marching in the 137th annual Rose Parade with the Greendale High School marching band. The ensemble will also perform its field show during a separate competition known as Bandfest at Pasadena City College’s stadium. 

Nearly 900 students attend the high school south of Milwaukee. Almost a quarter are in the mar...

Latricia Williams relies on food stamps from FoodShare each month to feed her 4-month-old baby formula.

He drinks five bottles a day — and cans of his formula cost Williams $75.

“All my benefits go to his milk. I stock up on that,” said Williams, a Milwaukee resident. “And I can’t next month. … He drinks really fast, so I’m going to have to be going to pantries as well.”
Williams is one of the more than 700,000 Wisconsinites who will lose their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit...

Since the 1970s, enrollment at Flint Public Schools has decreased drastically from more than 45,000 to fewer than 2,700 students. The water crisis has had a significant effect on the city’s once flourishing public school system. A 2022 study by the National Institutes of Health found that a substantial number of adolescents in Flint had clinically significant behavioral issues.
‍
Students at Southwestern Classical Academy — the last remaining public high school in the city — who were 5, 6 and 7 during the height of the crisis, have been prone to behavioral and learning issues. With scarce resources, parents and teachers in the community are looking for someone to step up and help at Southwestern Academy. Reporter Steph Conquest-Ware visited Flint with a cohort of Northeastern University students to investigate how the city is still suffering from the crisis that began over 10 years ago. Listen to the podcast for more on the story.