Prairie Village residents seeking ‘positive outlet’ protest company with ICE ties
When Jamie Greason learned that a Prairie Village-based industrial development company reportedly sold property to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to be used for an immigration detention facility, it was the tipping point for her to do something.
“I think it’s easy for people in our community not to take action because we’re all very busy and a lot of times we don’t see the effects in our mostly white and wealthy community,” Greason said of Prairie Village. “We don’t see the effects of a lot of policies for a while.”
In a city that’s seen tense political debates play out among more conservative community groups and nonprofits, Greason said she’s been toying with the idea of taking action locally for a while.
Now, the lifelong Prairie Village resident is one of four co-founders of People for Prairie Village, a new community group that encourages its residents to participate in peaceful protest, advocate for inclusive policies and “spread messages of hope, love and justice.”
“Our slogan is ‘Get with the Action,’” Greason said. “Our whole purpose is to just increase engagement and to normalize things like protests in our community, to just demonstrate the interconnectedness between life and politics.”
Flint Development protests
Greason spoke with a Star reporter on a windy Monday afternoon along 75th Street in the Johnson County city. She was joined by 15 to 20 fellow residents who were protesting Flint Development — which recently sold 60 acres of warehouse property for $123 million to DHS for a massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility near El Paso, Texas.
According to local reporting, the facility is expected to hold 8,500 people.
“Prairie Village earlier this year adopted a resolution in solidarity with Minnesota, saying that we would be a city that protects its people and immigrants,” Greason said while standing in front of Flint’s offices.
The resolution, adopted in February, came forward after ICE officers fatally shot Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti — which sparked nationwide protests against federal immigration enforcement.
A week later, she found out about Flint’s sale to DHS for ICE detention centers through a column in The Star.
“We spoke that following Monday at City Council and we asked the City Council to publicly declare, denounce what Flint has done,” she said. “I don’t know what all they can do as a city, but they can certainly agree not to do business with Flint in the future.”
City spokesperson Ashley Freburg told The Star that city staff has not been contacted by People for Prairie Village regarding this issue and has received no formal requests.
Flint Development did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
Standing up to local division
Renee Duvall, a fellow Prairie Village resident who joined Greason on Monday, said that she joined People for Prairie Village because she wanted to get more involved in her city.
“I think we as a community were feeling some of the pressure and trying to find a positive outlet for some of our frustrations with what’s happening on a national level, and then also some of the divisiveness that’d we’d seen in Prairie Village here locally,” Duvall said.
Mirroring some national trends, the Johnson County city saw increasing hostility and polarization around local issues in recent years — particularly around the city’s attempts to build a community center, address its affordable housing shortage and create city budgets.
Conservative groups, known as PV United and Preserve Prairie Village, formed in order to protest any city efforts they disagreed with, and supported City Council candidates in both the 2023 and 2025 election seasons. In 2023, PV United saw success during the elections and ultimately changed the makeup on the dais, but that shifted last year.
“Luckily, (in) our last election cycle, we were able to defeat a lot of those far right candidates for our City Council, and I think that just really gave us the push we needed to kind of unite and form the People for (Prairie Village),” Greason said.
In 2025, voters rejected a slate of candidates backed by PV United and rejected a measure the group supported that called for the city to abandon its form of government.
“Had they flipped the council and got us to abandon our form of government, I can’t imagine what our community would be like now,” she said. “There were people forming these little groups trying to fight back, and I think a couple of us realized ‘What if we had already been unified before?’”
“What if we had built community in a way that allowed us to be resilient? It would never have gotten that far.”
