Six weeks after immigration enforcement raids that even several local Republican politicians took issue with, three southwest Kansas counties helped make history by flipping the U.S. Senate seat.
Democrat Adam Hamilton defeated Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall in the Nov. 3, 2026, midterm election. Hamilton got 51% of the vote to Marshall’s 46%.
In addition to winning several counties in northeast Kansas plus Sedgwick County, Hamilton won:
- Ford County, home to Dodge City, by about 1 percentage point.
- Finney County, home to Garden City, by about 3 percentage points.
- Seward County, home to Liberal, by about 13 percentage points.
“I’m very proud and honored that so many of the people out there voted for me,” Hamilton told The Capital-Journal. “I think what they knew, they’d been hurt by the present administration and even Republicans, state legislators from that part of the state, reached out to the president and said, ‘this is not OK.’ I think they want a senator who’s going to listen, who’s going to be a fighter for them, who’s going to care deeply for them.
“I mean, it’s heartbreaking, some of the things that have happened. Preschool teachers arrested in front of their children. You have just so many parents afraid to show up and pick up their children after school. I mean, this is not who we are. It’s not how this is supposed to work.”
In Marshall’s 2020 election, he won 61% of the vote in Ford County, 58% in Finney County and 60% in Seward County.
Bob Beatty, a Washburn University political science professor, told The Capital-Journal that “Hamilton still wins if he doesn’t win those three counties.”
“But what they’re emblematic of is how much Marshall’s ties to Trump hurt him.”
Looking at an election map and seeing “those blue counties out west is a visual representation of what Trump’s policies were doing to voters in terms of negativity. But it wasn’t just that,” Beatty said, referring to the ICE raids.
In addition to immigration enforcement, Beatty pointed to other Trump policies, including tariffs and importing foreign beef.
Farmers in the area were also affected by high diesel prices, which emerged as a concern for Republicans as Election Day neared. Trump, at a rally in Kansas, announced an $8 billion farm bailout to offset diesel costs during harvest season.
In addition, six weeks before Election Day, the Trump administration launched a three-day operation where ICE agents made 104 arrests in southwest Kansas.
After the ICE raids, U.S. Attorney for Kansas Ryan Kriegshauser, who was appointed by Trump, issued a press release on encouraging “facts, not rumors.”
After the U.S. Attorney’s Office identified a handful of people it described as criminal illegal aliens who were apprehended in the operation, the office changed part of its press release online when it was reported by the Wichita Eagle and other media that none of those immigrants were arrested in the operation.
Kriegshauser called it “a targeted operation designed to put some of the worst of the worst behind bars. Contrary claims are inaccurate.”
Micah Kubic, executive director of ACLU of Kansas, said “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.”
“These ICE operations are having a massive chilling effect on the legal, documented, skilled workers that put beef on the table and keep the cattle supply chain moving,” the Kansas Livestock Association said in joint statement with Texas and Oklahoma associations. “Additionally, these types of disruptions will lead to higher beef prices for consumers.”
Martin Rosas, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 2, said “no one should have to live in fear of going to work, sending their kids to school, or shopping at the grocery store.”
Several Kansas Republicans took issue with the ICE operation.
Nine Republican state lawmakers wrote a letter addressed to Trump, homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin and members of Congress.
“Schools, businesses and families are feeling the effects,” the letter said. “Effective enforcement depends on trust: residents must feel safe reporting crimes, sending kids to school and going about daily life.”
Marshall acknowledged “mass disruptions to local communities and businesses.” He also said he relayed concerns from local law enforcement to the Department of Homeland Security.
“We must keep our communities safe, but it has to be done in a responsible and secure manner,” Marshall said.
Jason Alatidd is a Statehouse reporter for The Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached by email at [email protected]. Follow him on X @Jason_Alatidd.