ICE had warrant for documents at KC-area restaurants. Why’d they arrest people?
Immigrant rights advocates want answers about why Wednesday’s restaurant raids in the Kansas City metro, which federal agents said were linked to suspected criminal labor exploitation, ended with 11 potential victims in handcuffs.
Agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), arrested seven El Toro Loco employees in Kansas City, Kansas, and four more at the restaurant chain’s Lenexa location.
The search warrant, signed by a federal judge, authorized agents to seize documents “relating to harboring, human smuggling, or labor exploitation.” The warrant did not name any individuals who were to be arrested.
“I have real concerns that they may have been using a search warrant as a broader pretext to make arrests that would not be within the scope of that warrant,” said Mark Fleming, associate director of litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center.
In a statement issued Friday afternoon, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that “ICE was carrying out a criminal federal search warrant to rescue victims of human trafficking.”
McLaughlin did not answer questions from The Star about whom agents arrested and on what grounds, but she did make a point to condemn individuals who showed up to the restaurant and filmed agents arresting the employees.
“Extremists and activists, one with their child in tow, tried to interfere with law enforcement by storming the restaurant, calling law enforcement Nazis, and attempting to keep officers from leaving the scene,” she said. “Unfortunately, these types of smears and obstruction to law enforcement operations are becoming more and more common.”
Court records related to the raid remain sealed. According to Advocates for Immigrant Rights and Reconciliation (AIRR), a local nonprofit that has been tracking recent ICE activity around Kansas City, at least three people detained Wednesday have since been released.
El Toro Loco warrant
Fourth Amendment protections generally prevent law enforcement from seizing property or arresting people not named in warrants. But various exceptions exist allowing officers to seize evidence and arrest people who they believe could pose a threat or be a flight risk.
Fleming said he believes ICE may have exceeded the limits of its authority when making arrests Wednesday.
He pointed to a 2019 case decided by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in which the court ruled ICE improperly raided a Los Angeles factory under the guise of a search warrant for documents when agents’ primary goal was to make mass arrests of workers.
According to the warrant, items agents could seize were: “Books, records, receipts, notes, correspondence, ledgers and other documents or papers relating to harboring, human smuggling or labor exploitation.”
“Any living space or physical evidence of sheltering or harboring will be photographed,” the warrant said.
Nothing in the warrant justifies the detainment of employees who may have been trafficked, Fleming said.
“If you want to make an arrest based on a warrant, you get an arrest warrant — not a search warrant,” he said.
According to ICE’s website, “Any individual illegally present in the United States who is encountered during an enforcement operation may be taken into custody and processed for removal as stated by law.”
Being in the country without proper immigration documents is a civil offense rather than a criminal offense.
Concerns of exploitation
El Toro Loco Lenexa and El Toro Loco Legends are both LLCs registered to Alfonso Herrera Hernandez, who has a Memphis area address.
Herrera Hernandez, who did not respond to requests for comment Friday, previously characterized the raids as “really bad” in an interview with The Star. He declined to say more without first speaking to a lawyer.
El Toro Loco was the subject of a 2023 federal lawsuit, which alleged the restaurant did not pay minimum and overtime wages to staff. Herrera Hernandez and two of his managers settled in 2024 for an unspecified amount of money.
McLaughlin’s description of Wednesday’s operation as an effort to “rescue victims of human trafficking” suggests further allegations of labor exploitation on the part of El Toro Loco.
That raised concerns for Fleming.
“I think it’s deeply troubling that the administration’s strategy for addressing human trafficking, which is obviously a very serious criminal allegation, is to then turn around and arrest the purported victims of that trafficking,” Fleming said
“It would seem that this would be an appropriate time for them to be providing certifications for T visas, which are the proper visa under immigration law for victims of human trafficking.”
When asked for further information about the individuals arrested and if they were considered victims or perpetrators, Erin Bultje, a spokesperson for ICE, said, “The case is still ongoing regarding the people in the restaurant so I can’t comment on their situations.”
Due process
El Centro, a nonprofit that serves Hispanic families in the Kansas City area, condemned the Kansas raids as unjust and dehumanizing.
“Not only are the actions focused on individuals who are working and contributing to our community, they are done unjustly and without due process,” reads El Centro’s statement, released Thursday.
“Everyone on U.S. soil, regardless of their immigration status, have constitutionally protected rights, yet these rights do not seem to matter to agents who are carrying out immigration enforcement, whether they are from ICE, DHS, or deputized agents from the DEA or KBI.”
After ICE’s February raid of El Potro Mexican restaurant in Liberty, the National Immigrant Justice Center that Fleming works for argued the Liberty raid and 21 other recent ICE enforcement actions violated a settlement agreement around warrantless arrests
.That settlement raised the legal bar for when immigration officers in Kansas, Missouri and four other states in ICE’s Midwest region can arrest someone without a warrant. It pulled language from the Immigration and Nationality Act, which doesn’t allow the agency to make a warrantless arrest unless they have probable cause that the person they are arresting is “likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained for their arrest,” Fleming said.
The settlement expired in May, but NIJC has argued in court filings and hearings that it should be extended. Judge Jeffrey Cummings of the Northern District of Illinois held a hearing on the motion in late June, but has not yet issued a ruling.
It’s unknown whether HSI agents involved in Wednesday’s raids filled out forms justifying the warrantless arrests of employees. Forms known as I-213s are used to explain why arresting agents believe a person should be taken into custody for potential deportation.
After the Liberty raid, NIJC argued in court that ICE doctored I-213 forms because the initial copies provided by immigration attorneys did not match the documents ICE produced almost a month after the arrests.
The Star’s Taylor O’Connor, Sofi Zeman and Eleanor Nash contributed reporting.
This story was originally published August 2, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
