(Headline USA) About 1,000 animal welfare activists who tried to gain entry Saturday to a beagle breeding and research facility in Wisconsin were turned back by police who fired rubber bullets and pepper spray into the crowd and arrested the group’s leader.
It was the second attempt in as many months by protesters to take beagles from the Ridglan Farms facility in Blue Mounds, a small town about 25 miles southwest of the capital, Madison.
Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett, said in a video statement that 300 to 400 protesters were “violently trying to break into the property” and assault officers. He said protesters have ignored designated areas for peaceful protest and blocked roads to prevent emergency vehicles from entering.
“This is not a peaceful protest,” Barrett said.
Federal law enforcement is investigating beagle rescuers as terrorists.
Ridglan Farms is torturing thousands of beagles, subjecting them to surgery without anesthetics and confining them in tiny cages for years until they go mad and spin in endless circles. But somehow the FBI… pic.twitter.com/NSG1aq7fyI
— Wayne Hsiung (@waynehhsiung) April 19, 2026
The sheriff’s department said a “significant” number of people were arrested out of about 1,000 protesters at the site but did not give an exact total as they were still being processed as of the afternoon.
Protesters tried to overcome barricades that included a manure-filled trench, hay bales and a barbed-wire fence. Some protesters did get through the fence but were unable to enter the facility, where an estimated 2,000 beagles are kept, the Wisconsin State Journal reported.
“I just feel defeated,” activist Julie Vrzeski told the newspaper about three hours into the operation after no dogs had been successfully seized.
Activists later moved from the Ridglan facility to protest outside the jail in downtown Madison.
The group Coalition to Save the Ridglan Dogs had publicized plans to seize the dogs Sunday but launched its operation a day earlier. The X account of the group’s leader, Wayne Hsiung, posted a picture of him being arrested. Hsiung was interviewed in jail by members of the FBI’s joint terrorism task force, according to his supporters.
“They kept trying to characterize peaceful protestors as violent,” one of Hsiung’s supporters said in a video.
Wayne was just arrested while attempting to "serve" Ridglan and its security team with a lawsuit alleging violent threats by armed men against peaceful animal advocates. Police arrested him immediately with no reason given and took the papers from him.
Other activists are… pic.twitter.com/7UGUkr1Wx3
— Wayne Hsiung (@waynehhsiung) April 18, 2026
The sheriff’s department said a person who “recklessly” drove a pickup through the front gate of the property was arrested, “preventing a potentially deadly outcome.”
Protesters broke into the facility in March and took 30 dogs. Twenty-seven people were arrested on trespassing and other charges.
Ridglan has denied mistreating animals but agreed in October to give up its state breeding license as of July 1 as part of a deal to avoid prosecution on animal mistreatment charges.
On its website it says “no credible evidence of animal abuse, cruelty, mistreatment or neglect at Ridglan Farms has ever been presented or substantiated.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
