KC-area legislator aims to ban ICE officers from covering faces, badges. Can he?
As protests continue nationwide over the death of bystander Renee Good at the hands of a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis, one Jackson County legislator has responded by renewing a proposal for greater transparency among law enforcement officers acting locally.
First District Legislator Manny Abarca is sponsoring a piece of legislation calling for law enforcement officers in Jackson County — including federal immigration officers — to be prohibited from covering their faces or badges while on the job.
He reintroduced it Monday as the “Renee Nicole Macklin Good Transparency and Accountability Ordinance,” renamed to honor Good, a former Kansas City resident.
“This is primarily to focus on and impact any outlaw-ish action from a law enforcement individual who seeks to remove their identification, to be removed of accountability,” Abarca said.
But the gesture may be more symbolic than practical, since the ordinance could be difficult to enforce if passed, according to the county’s attorney. The Jackson County Legislature only has jurisdiction over policies related to the county sheriff’s office and does not have explicit authority over federal immigration agencies or area cities’ police departments.
“While I certainly empathize with the reasoning behind it, we don’t believe that the county has the legal authority to mandate what federal law enforcement can and can’t do,” Whitney Miller, a representative for the county counselor’s office, said at a public meeting last month.
Abarca previously said that the ordinance was drafted and presented in direct response to behavior he has observed from Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and other federal immigration agents across the county in recent months, many of whom have been filmed arresting and detaining individuals while wearing masks that obscure their faces.
The ordinance was last discussed at a Dec. 15 meeting of the legislature’s anti-crime committee.
“[Agents] come into communities, commonly shield and hide their faces as well as their identifying information of any type so they can shield themselves from accountability,” Abarca said at the December meeting.
Extending the same rule to all law enforcement officers, Abarca said, would aim to hold ICE accountable while avoiding discriminating against the agency specifically.
“Any police officer, or officer of any law, that decides that it’s necessary to hide their badge – their name, their faces – because of whatever reason, is, to me, an expectation that we shouldn’t have,” Abarca said.
The ordinance would leave officers liable to “internal disciplinary action,” including criminal misdemeanor penalties, if they were found to have concealed their faces or badges at work.
It also asks law enforcement agencies operating in Jackson County to make an annual report to legislators detailing any such exemption in which officers did opt to shield their face or badge.
Abarca proposed that officers would be allowed to claim an exemption to conceal their identities with face coverings if they were doing undercover work, carrying out a SWAT operation, wearing protective clothing or engaging in other specific operations on a case-by-case basis.
While the ordinance is a symbolic show of support for residents opposed to ICE boosting enforcement in the community, it could potentially run into legal challenges.
When Abarca previously introduced the ordinance, Jackson County’s legal counsel declined to sign off on its enforceability.
“If there were charges brought under this ordinance, I would imagine they would be challenged,” Miller said in December. “This would be seen as essentially a dress code policy for federal law enforcement, and we don’t have jurisdiction as a county to set policy for federal law enforcement.”
ICE has maintained a presence in the Kansas City metropolitan area in recent months, arresting and detaining undreds of people from Liberty to Lenexa. As of Sept. 15, an average of 211 people were in ICE custody in Missouri, and 148 in Kansas, with agents targeting local businesses and staking out hearings at Kansas City immigration courts.
This story was originally published January 13, 2026 at 5:56 AM.
