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“These new provisions break down the boundaries that exist between local and federal operations. They expose agencies in our state to federal civil rights litigation and it’s all for the goal of targeting immigrants in our community,” Logan DeMond, the director of policy and research for ACLU Kansas, said. “This is a direct attack on due process. There are serious constitutional concerns with this legislation. It’s not just an attack on immigrants. It is an attack on all of our rights.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas in 2017 analyzed the legal liability of local law enforcement when they operate under the 287(g) contracts for ICE. Because they are free to disregard detainers, those agreements have not been found in court decisions to be a defense for unlawful detention, the ACLU said, listing lawsuits. “Jailers cannot evade responsibility for unlawful detention by claiming the federal government required them to hold the person on an immigration detainer,” ACLU’s report said.

The Kansas ACLU said it is disappointed in the situation. “We are disappointed in the situation we are in but will likely wait to comment when we know more. I am a little concerned that it does not appear the City has developed any detailed language about how the task force / oversight board will operate and who will be on it, but clearly CoreCivic has not wasted any time starting operations,” the Kansas ACLU said in a statement sent to KCTV5.

By the time you read this, those swept up in ICE raids may already be filling some of the 1,000 beds at a troubled for-profit prison in Leavenworth now turned federal detention facility.

Logan DeMond with the Kansas American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) found fault with the legislation in several areas: “This bill disregards civil rights, disregards due process, disregards necessary checks on law enforcement, and the likelihood of error exposes the state to what will be costly litigation.”

Logan DeMond, director of policy and research at ACLU of Kansas, said the bill cannot be viewed in isolation and called it another attack on immigrants in the state.

The ACLU of Kansas has testified against the bill, arguing it makes it harder to hold federal agents accountable for misconduct and expands immunity without strengthening oversight.

“While the full county program faced setbacks,” Google AI says, “residents can still potentially access a community ID through local initiatives, with efforts led by organizations like the ACLU of Kansas aiming to provide IDs for library, transit, and service access, though the process and availability for a specific municipal ID card need checking with local county/city offices.”

Esmie Tseng, communications director for the ACLU of Kansas, said the data confirms what is already known. “This is clearly a numbers game about quotas and percentages for ICE agents, divorced from the humanity of who is impacted and blurring the lines between the civil immigration matters and the cruel legacy of our criminal legal system,” she said. She argued each data point represents someone going through a traumatic experience that she said can involve being grabbed off the street by strangers in masks, put in chains, thrown in the back of an unmarked vehicle and driven to a facility with deplorable conditions.