Kansas City firm backs out of deal to sell warehouse to ICE for detention center
After weeks of scrutiny, Kansas City development company Platform Ventures has decided not to move forward with the sale of a south Kansas City warehouse to the federal government.
Platform Ventures announced in a statement Thursday that they are no longer “actively engaged with the U.S. Government or any other prospective purchaser” of its 920,000-square-foot site at 14901 Botts Road. The firm previously said in a statement last month that “negotiations are complete” after they were approached with an “unsolicited offer” in October 2025.
The remarkable statement appeared to put to rest, for now, reports that the facility could be transformed into a massive detention facility operated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
The rumored facility had sparked intense pushback in the metro, thrusting Kansas City into a national fight over the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown. Activists sounded the alarm while local officials tried to block the facility through a moratorium.
“As we stated previously, we were approached by a third-party private enterprise for this transaction and entered into preliminary negotiations consistent with the fiduciary duties owed to our investors,” Platform Ventures said in a statement Thursday.
“As negotiations concluded, we learned the purchasing party was the U.S. Government. Over the course of the building sale process, we determined that the terms no longer met our fiduciary requirements for a timely closing. Therefore, we chose not to move forward,” the statement said.
The decision comes three days after the Port Authority of Kansas City voted to formally cut off negotiations with Platform Ventures related to the sale of additional land over the reports of the potential sale.
Jon Stephens, president and CEO of Port KC, said in an interview with The Star on Thursday that Port KC was unaware of Platform Venture’s decision until the statement came out. He said he was “relieved” the company was no longer pursuing the deal.
The facility, Stephens said, originally received incentives for industrial and manufacturing jobs.
“We look forward to seeing them move forward with filling that building with quality jobs and new business attraction for south Kansas City,” he said.
Under the terms of the financing deal, Port KC technically holds the title to the property and leases it back to Platform Ventures, which allows for Port KC to offer property tax breaks.
But Platform Ventures could ask Port KC for the title back. Port KC has reiterated that the warehouse is ultimately not its own to sell and that it would have very little power to block a sale by Platform Ventures.
The Beacon first reported that Platform Ventures asked Port KC to begin the process of transferring the property’s title on Jan. 2, and that Port KC would have 90 days to do so. Stephens told The Star that Port KC was even prepared to pursue litigation beyond that 90-day window.
Stephens said during the interview, conducted late Thursday morning, that Port KC still had not heard from Platform Ventures, so next steps are still to be determined.
For the warehouse, Port KC issued $80 million in bonds, with the developer responsible for the debt, and offered tax breaks under the financing structure to help support construction. The property was still expected to generate new tax revenue even with the exemptions through new development. But if the land were sold to the federal government, they wouldn’t need to pay property taxes at all.
Stephens said Port KC has some of the best contractural processes in the city and in the country, but this latest experience was unprecedented. Communities around the country have been blindsided, he said.
“As we look at this we, of course, are taking this, like every process, as a learning experience,” Stephens said. “So we’re going through how to look at, be they clawbacks, or be they even initial approval decisions, and how we look at accountability of ensuring that when a building receives public incentives, that it is used for its intended purpose.”
Stephens said that’s always been achieved, until now.
“We had just never believed that this type of unique situation would even be possible,” he said.
Department of Homeland Security and ICE officers reportedly visited the Interstate 49 Industrial Center in mid-January, which came as President Donald Trump’s administration continued to ramp up immigration enforcement nationwide.
It was widely reported that ICE was eyeing the facility for a large detention center. Kansas City was said to be one of seven sites where DHS was seeking to establish large-scale detention centers that would house between 5,000 and 10,000 people caught up in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Kansas City’s longtime Democratic congressman Emanuel Cleaver condemned the warehouse proposal as dehumanizing and unwelcome in a letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
The Kansas City Council passed an ordinance Jan. 15 stating the city wouldn’t grant such a facility local permits, licensing or other approvals. There were doubts that the ordinance would hold up in court from city council members.
The firm said in a statement that it doesn’t comment on potential transactions, but that “baseless speculations, inaccurate narratives, serious threats towards their leadership, employees and families” led them to comment.
“We remain focused on protecting and serving our investors’ interests,” the firm said in a statement. “And our commitment to Kansas City remains unchanged.”
Statements from local leaders and lawyers on KC firm backing out of ICE sale
Local leaders provided statements after it was announced that Platform Ventures decided not to move forward with the sale.
Terrence Wise, a leader with Stand Up KC and Missouri Workers Center, said they are thrilled that the sale is no longer happening, and that it wouldn’t have happened without several weeks of protest and action by low-wage workers with Missouri Workers Center and over 20 local immigrant and racial justice, faith, school, environmental, and civil rights groups.
“We will continue fighting to keep masked, unaccountable federal agents out of our communities and for the dignity, respect, and pathway to better citizenship that we all deserve,” Wise said.
Mayor Quinton Lucas said in a statement that Kansas City welcomes any news “suggesting the halting of a planned conversion of a warehouse for goods and products into a human encampment.”
“I will continue with our legislative, legal efforts, and community engagement to ensure no warehouse or similar facility in Kansas City or nearby is converted to a mass encampment warehouse of persons that is offensive to the dignity and human rights of those who would be detained within it,” Lucas said.
Kansas City immigration attorney Michael Sharma-Crawford said the announcement is good in the sense that it shows Platform Ventures listened to the community.
“I mean, I get the idea: It’s a difficult position when you’ve got a 900,000-square-foot building that’s sitting there. I get that there’s a business that says, ‘We’ve got to move this building.’ But, at some point, they say, ‘This isn’t what the community wants. And, at some point, we are responsible.’ So it’s nice to see that they responded in that way,” Sharma-Crawford said.
Could ICE facility still pop up in KC region?
Immigration advocates, however, also note that the loss of Kansas City as a site for a facility does not mean that ICE will stop looking for an alternative.
“This is a huge relief for immigrants,” said Kansas City immigration attorney Andrea Martinez. “We applaud the community organization effort of those who opposed the detention facility. It is important that we remain vigilant as we celebrate this victory. There could be more efforts like this one in other areas outside of Kansas City.”
“You’ve till got Leavenworth hanging out there,” Sharma-Crawford said, referring to the contentious effort to create an ICE detention center in the Kansas community. “We’ll see what the city council In Leavenworth does. When you can’t house people in Minnesota and you can’t house people in Chicago, it’s got to go somewhere.”
Of rising concern advocates said, is the number of law enforcement agencies entering into what are known as 287(g) agreements, which allow state and local police agencies to be trained to perform limited immigration enforcement. The agreements allow local police or sheriffs to identify, detain or process individuals in jail for deportation.
“This is the power of the people. We applaud the work of the people that led to stopping this mega ICE detention center that would have made Kansas City unsafe. We are the strength that we have been waiting for,” Advocates for Immigrant Rights and Reconciliation Kansas City said in a statement.
People accused of immigration-related offenses are still detained in city or county jails.
Agreements between ICE and local law enforcement agencies allow jails to identify and process people with immigration-related offenses.
There are four of these 287(g) jail enforcement agreements in Missouri, and one in Kansas.
Although the Greene County jail in Springfield, Missouri, does not have a jail enforcement model agreement, the facility started holding people for ICE in February, spokesperson Jonah Beadles told The Star this week.
He explained that the jail only holds people, and does not fill out booking paperwork or question them. Since March, the facility held 250-300 people for ICE at any one time, about 25% of their total population, according to Beadles.
He explained that the jail holds people detained by all federal agencies, not just ICE.
The city of Kansas City has placed a five-year moratorium on allowing non-municipal detention facilities in the city for the next five years. If the federal government had purchased the land for an ICE facility, that could have presented a legal battle which Lucas has said the city would be prepared to fight.
Wyandotte County is considering a similar moratorium.
Rep. Sharice Davids, a Kansas Democrat, welcomed the news.
“Community voices matter,” Davids said in a statement. “This site was intended to support economic development and job creation — not to house a massive ICE detention facility that would strain infrastructure, divert resources from local law enforcement, and undermine public safety.”
“I’m glad to see this proposal halted and will keep working on thoughtful immigration policies that provide a clear pathway to citizenship, secure our border from violent crime and drug trafficking, and do not overwhelm our systems,” she said.
Both Davids and Cleaver have pressed federal officials about the prospect of the Kansas City detention center.
Davids said she is awaiting formal responses from the Department of Homeland Security about an agreement between ICE and CoreCivic to house detainees in a Leavenworth facility, which remains tied up in court.
This story was originally published February 12, 2026 at 10:53 AM.
