DODGE CITY, Kan. (KAKE) - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested more than 100 people in southwest Kansas during a three-day operation last week.
The U.S. Attorney for Kansas, Ryan Kriegshauser, released a statement on September 29 and is urging people to wait until law enforcement releases facts before speculating on any motives.
The executive director of the ACLU, Micah Kubic, also released a statement responding to the U.S. attorney.
He says he doesn’t believe the U.S. attorney’s statement matches what people saw and heard.
“I believe that people should rely on what their own eyes, ears, and common sense tell them, rather than what the U.S. attorney who works for the same administration that deployed the raids is telling them,” Kubic said.
Kriegshauser says the operation was part of a larger effort to arrest illegal immigrants already with convictions for serious crimes and not based on a person’s skin color or race.
“There is no reason at all to believe that is the case,” Kubic said. “What is plenty of reason to believe is that these were wanton raids that went through and created an environment of fear and havoc and chaos. Not that they were targeted.”
MORE: Wichita protest urges cities not to assist with ICE enforcement efforts
Immigration Attorney Michael Sharma-Crawford says he doesn’t believe everyone the agents took into custody were serious criminals.
“We could list them all and say these are the people arrested, these are the crimes they had,” Crawford said. “Did they do that? No, because they don’t have those statistics, because two through 27 have no criminal history, and the rest of them have no driver’s license. You’ve got a couple with criminal history, and that’s fine.”
Kubic suggests officials should end or refuse 287(g) agreements, which are partnerships between ICE and local law enforcement.
“If we want to make sure that folks are not living in fear in their communities and that there’s trust and that folks don’t have to be afraid to send their kids to school, one way of sending that signal of making that clear is making sure local governments don’t sign up for those sorts of contracts,” Kubic said.
We reached out to U.S. Attorney Ryan Kriegshauser and asked him if all arrests had criminal violations and if people who weren’t originally targeted were also arrested.