Amid push for more ICE detention centers, key Kansas City deal collapses
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Kansas City firm has backed out of negotiations to sell a warehouse that federal officials were considering as a site for a large-scale ICE detention center.
In January, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents quietly toured a massive warehouse on the city’s south side, owned by Platform Ventures; in the days following, public blowback came fierce and fast.
U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II, D-Mo., whose district includes Kansas City, Missouri, previously told SAN his first priority is preventing any potential mega detention center from opening in Missouri’s Fifth Congressional District.
“I welcome Platform Venture’s decision to not move forward with the sale of its south Kansas City warehouse,” Cleaver wrote in a statement Thursday. “From the onset, I had serious concerns about the scope, oversight and justification for placing a large-scale immigration detention center in Missouri’s Fifth District.”
Platform Ventures did not immediately respond to SAN’s request for comment, but in a written statement provided to local media outlets, the company said it is not “actively engaged with the U.S. government or any other prospective purchaser” regarding the property. The warehouse is located alongside a major highway south of downtown Kansas City.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas also addressed the fallout on social media, writing that he will work with local authorities 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.”
Both the mayor and Cleaver previously told SAN they opposed the detention center and were blindsided by the federal government’s scouting of the facility. The proposal also drew backlash from Kansas City-based immigration attorney Rekha Sharma-Crawford.
“You want to put 7,500 people in an over 900,000 square-foot warehouse in the middle of Kansas City? And we didn’t know this was going on?” Sharma-Crawford previously told SAN. “How does that work? There are going to be local resources that are going to be necessary if that’s what they’re gonna do.”
The second fallout
This marks the second time a property owner has halted a contract with the federal government related to immigration detention facilities in the Kansas City area, in recent months.
In December, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation in Kansas walked away from a nearly $30 million federal contract to develop preliminary designs for immigrant detention centers, according to The Associated Press.
ICE did not respond to an email from SAN regarding the breakdown of its latest negotiations with Platform Ventures.
DHS’s quiet plans for expanding immigration detention facilities
ICE expects to spend $38.3 billion on a plan to acquire and retrofit warehouses across the country to house thousands of immigrants, according to a document published Thursday on New Hampshire’s state website.
The document outlines plans to purchase and convert 16 buildings nationwide into regional processing centers, each designed to hold between 1,000 and 1,500 immigrant detainees at a time.
Another eight large-scale detention centers would hold between 7,000 and 10,000 detainees each and serve as “the primary locations” for international removals.
Although the documents do not mention Kansas City, Missouri has previously been identified as one of seven preferred states for large-scale warehouses estimated to house 5,000 to 10,000 people each. Cleaver first learned of the possible detention site in his district by reading about it in The Washington Post. On Jan. 13, Cleaver sent a letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and acting Director Todd Lyons demanding answers.
“I write with grave concern,” Cleaver wrote, about the “reported plan to open an immigration detention center in Kansas City, MO.”
He asked: “Has the administration briefed Congress on the plans and locations of these facilities? Will the administration provide Congress and the general public with the locations of the proposed facilities? How has the administration coordinated with local governments? Will the administration honor the local zoning policies and processes?”
Cleaver requested a response from DHS by Jan. 23. It never came.
Nor did DHS respond to SAN’s request for information about its plans to expand immigration detention facilities.
“While this specific sale will not move forward, my concerns about the expansion of mass detention and the lack of transparency regarding immigration enforcement decisions have not changed,” Cleaver said in a statement. “Congress has a constitutional obligation to serve as a check on the executive branch, and I will continue pressing DHS for answers wherever due process, human rights and fiscal responsibility are at stake.”
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
