Jackson County won’t issue permits for ICE detention centers, echoing Kansas City
After a Kansas City development company announced that it will no longer sell a warehouse to U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement Service for use as a detention center, the Jackson County Legislature has opted to throw one more obstacle in the path of any similar future plans.
The Jackson County Legislature voted Monday to pass a five-year moratorium on zoning and permitting approvals for detention centers — including ICE facilities — in unincorporated parts of the county. The county will only approve development paperwork for detention facilities that are municipal, such as a city jail, until at least 2031.
The ordinance echoes a similar five-year moratorium imposed by the Kansas City Council shortly after reports emerged that ICE was eyeing a south Kansas City warehouse for a possible 7,500-bed detention center. The Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas is currently weighing a similar ordinance.
The detention center zoning ban was sponsored by Legislative Chair Manny Abarca, who has introduced multiple pieces of legislation in recent months to signal opposition to ICE activity in the region.
Abarca said that the ordinance is an opportunity for Jackson County to follow the example of other local bodies across the region, as well as nationally, and to “dictate that we’re not going to allow the caging of people.”
“The reality of the situation is far worse than a code or a zoning ordinance,” Abarca said. “This is about humanity. This is about what we believe democracy will stand on - or fall upon.”
This particular ban passed 6-1, with DaRon McGee and Jeanie Lauer absent or abstaining from the vote. Vice-chair Sean Smith was the lone holdout.
Resident outrage
The majority of residents who attended the vote were strongly opposed to immigration detention center construction in the Kansas City area, encouraging Jackson County to take an active role in discouraging the federal agency from expanding its regional presence.
“Those detention centers are horrible,” Blue Springs resident Patricia Parks said. “People get disappeared…It’s just wrong.”
Kansas City resident David Broxterman said he does not want to see any sort of local approval for an ICE facility in close proximity to community infrastructure, including his son’s school.
“It couldn’t be a more supportive thing of what we’re seeing go on with the ICE agency and all the things we’re seeing around here, to say, ‘Yeah, let’s bring it here,’” Broxterman said. “...That is just saying, ‘Yeah, we approve of this foul mistreatment of human beings.’”
While the ordinance protects against zoning for all non-municipal detention facilities, Kansas City resident Benjamin Ressler said that some of the specific human rights abuses documented in ICE detention centers make the agency’s presence a particular danger to detainees and residents alike.
“It is outrageous to even consider that a building that is built to house consumer goods in transit can somehow be made to humanely house human beings,” said Benjamin Ressler. “...You can’t turn a warehouse into a prison.”
‘A line in the sand’
Some of Abarca’s fellow legislators responded to the ordinance with a similar level of fervor against the current state of federal immigration enforcement operations. Others were concerned about leaving the county vulnerable to legal challenges.
Legislator Jalen Anderson described ICE detention facilities in general as “a horrible human rights violation.”
“Ever since the beginning and the creation of ICE, we have seen an attack on individuals, human beings who may not be American citizens but are still human beings at the end of the day,” Anderson said. “...Let Jackson County draw a line in the sand.”
Legislator Sean Smith pushed back on the legislation shortly before it passed, calling it “performative” and questioning its adherence to county property rights law.
“We are proactively, essentially, eliminating the right to use their property as they see fit, to every Jackson County resident and property owner, without any due process,” Smith said.
County Counselor Bryan Covinsky said that the county’s legal team does not share Smith’s concerns.
The county is also currently weighing an ordinance that would impose penalties on law enforcement officers, including ICE agents, who conceal their face and badge numbers while working in the county.
The ordinance was held in committee again this week as legislators debate whether it can be legally enforced, and the county counselor’s office has declined to sign off on it, citing insufficient local authority to set policy for federal agencies.
