One worker deported, another still detained a month after ICE raided Liberty restaurant
In February, more than 10 agents from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a branch of ICE, showed up at El Potro Mexican restaurant in Liberty just before lunchtime, claiming they were looking for someone who was a registered child sex offender, according to a motion filed in federal court this week.
By the end of the operation, they apprehended 12 employees and took documents from the restaurant.
While 10 employees received and posted a minimum bond since they were arrested, one individual was deported and one remains detained, according to the motion filed by immigrant legal services and advocacy nonprofit National Immigrant Justice Center.
The motion follows an ongoing settlement with ICE that’s been in effect since May 2022 with the agency’s Chicago area of operations, which includes Illinois, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri and Kansas.
The settlement resulted from a lawsuit that challenged the legality of sweeping arrests made during the first Trump Administration in 2018, At the time, ICE conducted large-scale immigration enforcement actions that involved arresting bystanders in addition to specific individuals that officers had warrants to arrest.
According to the motion, ICE agents held the 12 Liberty employees in four booths for nearly two hours before arresting them and escorting them out of the restaurant. Beyond requesting identification, agents did not question the employees at that time.
In a past statement to The Star, an ICE spokesperson said that agents had conducted a “worksite enforcement action” at the restaurant to ensure “compliance with federal employment eligibility requirements.”
After initial processing, 11 of the 12 employees were detained by ICE in Chase County, Kansas, about three hours from Liberty, and one person was taken to Kentucky and then Indiana.
Who was deported after Liberty raid?
Rekha Sharma-Crawford, a partner at Sharma-Crawford Attorneys at Law who represents several individuals who were detained, told The Star that her team should have a disposition on the last person in custody soon. She said the rest have motions pending in immigration court.
“I think our first priority, of course, is to get everybody released,” she said.
NIJC Associate Director of Litigation Mark Fleming told The Star that the individual deported had a “very old removal order,” which means she had been ordered to be deported in the past.
“Unlike say in the criminal context where there’s a statute of limitations on all crimes except serious violent crimes… in the immigration context, they stay on your record forever,” he said. “To be clear in her case she received what is called an expedited order of removal. She was stopped at the border decades ago — pre-2000 — she had barely entered the country, ordered removed, and at some point she came back in.”
Part of the NIJC’s motion asks that she be returned to the U.S., where she would likely get to go in front of a judge.
“As to the Liberty 12 as I like to call it, very few of them had any criminal record at all,” Fleming said. “Most of them had been here a long time, long-standing roots in the community as far as we can tell, and obviously gainfully employed and law-abiding.”
Helen Ortiz, a board member of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Greater Kansas City, who has been in touch with the workers and their families told The Star last month that the woman transferred to a detention facility in Indiana is a 60-year-old grandmother with high blood pressure conditions.
A GoFundMe fundraiser for legal costs for arrested Liberty workers has raised about $4,500 as of Friday afternoon.
This story was originally published March 15, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
