GREAT FALLS, Mont. — On Nov. 13, 26-year-old Dakota Wheeler pulled into the parking lot of his workplace, Rainbow Senior Living in Great Falls, to drop a friend off for his upcoming shift. The two sat in the car for a few moments, watching videos on their phones, when a silver Dodge Charger pulled up beside them.
“They came out immediately with guns,” said Brycen Pickering, Wheeler’s friend and coworker. “They kept yelling, ‘Get out of the car! Get out of the car!’”
Pickering said Wheeler didn’t immediately move from the car, because he didn’t understand what was happening.
“He kept asking, ‘What’s going on? What’s wrong?’ They were shouting something about warrants, but Dakota doesn’t have any warrants,” Pickering said.
When asked if officers ever identified themselves, Pickering said they did not. The surveillance footage released by Rainbow Senior Living, shows agents approaching the vehicle with guns drawn.
“They had vests on that said ‘Police,’ that’s all. The car had no markings on it. It could have been anybody,” he said. “And it’s hard to concentrate on anything else when there’s pistols pointed at you and your good friend in the car.”
A Home in Great Falls
Wheeler has been in Montana since he was 15, brought to the United States on a visitor’s visa from England with his mother. The visa expired in the spring of 2016, and Wheeler has been trying ever since to finish the naturalization process. The main factor in the way, according to his 20-weeks pregnant fiance, Paige McAtee, has been money.
“It’s at least $10,000 to get everything situated,” said McAtee. “People can’t even make it on minimum wage as it is. And with our 2-year-old daughter it was, pay bills, feed her, get diapers, and then try to save $10,000.”
Wheeler has worked at Rainbow Senior Living for eight years. His mother, Lisa Anderson, is the Business Office Director, and remembers the cost when she first came to America.
“When I went through my immigration, it was $6,500,” said Anderson, emphasizing the process took about three years to complete from start to finish.
On the day Wheeler was taken, McAtee spent hours trying to find him, calling local police, the sheriff, the U.S. Marshals, and the county jail, none of whom had any record of him. It wasn’t until after she went with Wheeler’s mother and stepfather to the federal courthouse to speak to U.S. Marshals in person, that they were able to make some progress on his whereabouts.
“We got a call later finding out that he was taken by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement,” confirmed McAtee.
The following day, after researching similar cases, his family located a petition for a restraining order against ICE and filed it that afternoon. Within two hours a federal judge granted it, ordering that Dakota could not be removed from Montana, must have access to counsel, and had to receive proper legal process.
Federal Inmates as Revenue
Wheeler is currently being held at the Cascade County Jail, along with 11 other immigration detainees at the time of publication of this article. Unlike other jails in the state, Cascade County has a unique federal contract that allows it to hold immigration detainees longer than 72 hours, a practice Cascade County Sheriff Jesse Slaughter emphasizes is not new.
“When we signed our marshal contract back in 2021, ICE was delineated on that contract,” explained Slaughter. “And that meant that we would hold anybody that the marshals want us to hold, including ICE detainees, basically making us a federal detention facility.”
The Cascade County Jail is utilized by a variety of agencies, including Great Falls Police Department, the Sheriff’s office, Montana Highway Patrol, the Great Falls pre-release center and more. Each of these agencies holds a specific contract to house inmates at the jail.
Depending on the contract, the agency will pay anywhere from the state rate of $82 per bed per day, to $115 per bed per day.
The marshal contract covers all federal agencies, such as the FBI, DEA, IRS, even the EPA. The county recently signed a separate contract with Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
In a July meeting of the Cascade County Commissioners, Slaughter explained the need for these federal contracts, spotlighting the jail’s reliance on outside contracts for 70% of its $14 million annual budget. Only $4 million of the jail’s budget is covered by taxpayers.
In June of this year, Cascade County sent out what is called a “white paper” to open negotiations to have a standalone contract with ICE that would pay more in revenue compared to the current marshal contract that already requires Cascade County to hold immigration detainees.
The county never heard back on the inquiry.
“In a perfect world you’d levy $5, $6 million and you would kick all your feds out and you’d drop your population by about 140 (people) a day. You would be a fully funded community,” said Slaughter. “So I’d have a smaller operation that would be smaller in the long term to the taxpayer.”
Until such a levy is passed, however, the county has few options.
“I struggle to think now’s the time to ask for it,” said Slaughter. “But hey, this is what we’re up against.”
In the meantime, Wheeler’s family awaits his Dec. 10 hearing. McAtee has started a GoFundMe page, where they’re raising funds not only for Wheeler’s current legal fees, but also for the $10,000 required to complete the naturalization process.
“Today I had my 20-week ultrasound,” said McAtee. “Lisa came with me, but he’s been there for every single OB appointment. That was hard going there without him. Everything has changed because he’s always been there, he’s always been such a constant in our lives.”
Their 2-year--old daughter, Cleo, wants him home more than anyone.
“He’s always at work from six to two, so she’s good in the morning,” said McAtee. “And then dinner comes and nighttime is horrible because she just screams for him. She looks for him. And I don’t know what to tell her.”
“And with a baby on the way,” McAtee continued, “he’s super excited, he’s the one who picked out the name. He loves being a dad. We just want him home.”