Immigrants' Rights

Municipal ID cards are a form of photo identification issued by a city or county government, rather than by the state (as with a driver’s license) or the federal government (as with a passport).

Even if the U.S. Attorney finds them inconvenient, the facts are clear: masked, unidentified men are recklessly storming our streets, surrounding cars, separating parents from children, then disappearing them into ICE's creeping network of deplorable jails and prisons. 

A former maximum-security prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, is now a critical hub in the Trump administration’s immigration detention machine, transforming in just a few months from a facility shuttered for its inhospitable conditions to a privately run jail holding hundreds of immigrants.

For Esmie Tseng, the communications director for the ACLU of Kansas, coverage of these city meetings sanitizes the reality for detainees. “We’re making a contract out of putting people in cages,” Tseng said. “This isn’t just moving widgets from one place to another, or manufacturing notebooks and pens. This is profiting off of people being put in cages.”

In Kansas, we believe people should be judged by their character, actions and contributions—not by where they come from, what language they speak, or what they look like. Attacks on immigrants' civil rights from the state and federal level have chipped away at our fundamental values that keep us safe and open the doors to opportunity for the people and families who believe in hard work and education.

The Kansas state legislature passed the HALO Act earlier this year during legislative session and it became state law, effective in July. On August 17, 2026, we submitted opposition testimony to the proposed Overland Park city ordinance, POC-3529’s HALO provision, which unnecessarily incorporates the problematic state law into the city’s code.

On July 1, 2026, MALDEF and the ACLU of Kansas filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit between the U.S. Department of Justice and the state of Kansas on behalf of students without lawful immigration status in Kansas who would be irreparably harmed by the elimination of regular tuition. The DOJ sued the state of Kansas for providing in-state tuition to college students without lawful immigration status. Rather than defend the laws of the state he serves, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach immediately joined the DOJ in asking the court to overturn the law that has been in place since 2004. On September 9, 2026, a federal court for the District of Kansas denied Kansas immigrant students’ Motion to Intervene in a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) seeking to eliminate regular tuition for students without lawful immigration status in Kansas. The court also denied Governor Laura Kelly's Motions to Intervene and Dismiss the DOJ lawsuit and entered the consent judgment sought by the DOJ and Attorney General Kris Kobach ending access to regular tuition for undocumented Kansas students.

This bill expands county sheriffs’ authority and the authority of jails not operated by sheriffs to indefinitely detain individuals for civil immigration purposes, insulates law enforcement from accountability, and removes longstanding democratic oversight. The combined effects of this bill—which is part of a larger legislative attack on immigrants and people of color—raise serious constitutional concerns. It significantly expands the authority of federal law enforcement in Kansas, weakens accountability, and threatens Kansans’ right to engage in lawful dissent.