News & Commentary

The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas claimed via email that law enforcement entities are using the HALO Act to discourage bystanders from documenting the activity of federal agents. The nonprofit organization also claimed the law raises safety concerns for Kansans who encounter agents.

“The only way they can do that is by tapping into local police forces,” said Micah Kubic, the executive director of the ACLU of Kansas.

For weeks, reports of ICE activity in Olathe seemed to arrive almost daily, with residents documenting detentions at apartment complexes, businesses, gas stations and intersections and community volunteers tracking federal agents across the city. But since the July 11 detention of a U.S. citizen in Olathe, few new public reports have surfaced in the city, according to local ICE watch groups. Here’s what we know:

The Kansas American Civil Liberties Union stressed in a social media post last week that bystanders would only be able to record interactions by law enforcement outside of the 25-foot buffer zone.

But opponents like the ACLU of Kansas say it infringes on First Amendment rights.

ICE currently holds more than 60,000 detainees nationally. President Trump and ICE administrators say deportation policy mostly removes those who committed crimes, but media investigations of federal data, and the American Immigration Council and the ACLU say the vast majority of detainees were never accused of crimes.

“Even though Mr. Carvajal-Muñoz complied and posed no safety threat,” the organization wrote, “agents smashed his window with a crowbar, dragged him out of the car at taser-point, handcuffed him, and placed him in the unmarked SUV. … Carvajal-Muñoz was afraid for his life, especially after seeing what had happened to Renée Good in Minnesota two weeks before.”

The Department of Justice is suing Kansas over a 2004 law that allows some immigrants without legal status in the U.S. to receive in-state tuition at Kansas colleges and universities.

Micah Kubic, executive director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, said the DOJ’s action was a coordinated attack from the federal government and Kobach on Kansas children. He said Kobach was “so determined to collude with the Trump-Vance administration that he will misuse our courts to attack the laws of the very state he serves.”