How a quiet ICE warehouse tour blindsided Kansas City
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Officials in Missouri’s largest city are demanding an explanation after federal agents quietly scouted a massive southside warehouse for use as a “mega” immigration detention center. Despite the Trump administration’s calls for local cooperation, the mayor, a member of Congress and a police captain told Straight Arrow News they received no prior notice of the Jan. 15 tour by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Federal law doesn’t require ICE to notify local authorities before operations, but Kansas City officials told SAN this case is different: siting a large detention center within city limits without notice raises long-term concerns.
Jackson County Legislator Manny Abarca, whose district includes parts of Kansas City, was tipped off that DHS agents were at the warehouse and arrived to find them outside the building, according to local media. Abarca told KCUR that the federal agents confirmed to him they were touring the empty warehouse, alongside contractors, as a possible site for a future detention center.
“They are national, regional, local teams that are looking to open an ICE facility, a mega detention facility — something that will have a regional impact that’s pretty dramatic,” he said.
In the wake of the unannounced visit, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas addressed the public in a press release: “We are working to verify reports about potential DHS detention facilities in Kansas City. Regardless of what we learn, I want to reaffirm our city’s commitment to being welcoming and inclusive.”
Kansas City–based immigration attorney Rekha Sharma-Crawford, who serves on the Board of Directors at American Immigration Council, called the plan ill-conceived.
“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 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.”
Kansas City, Missouri officials issue swift response in rebuke of DHS’s visit
Within hours of DHS and ICE’s warehouse visit, Lucas and the city council approved an ordinance that would block applications to expand detention facilities not owned or operated by the city through Jan. 15, 2031.
“The city will use all available legal tools to enforce the moratorium,” Lucas wrote in a statement. “We consistently hear from residents that Kansas City’s focus should be on economic development and housing, not mass detention facilities holding thousands.”
The warehouse, nestled alongside a major highway south of downtown, sits in an industrial area where its closest neighbors include a Walmart distribution center, an Amazon fulfillment warehouse and a bottling plant for Niagara water. While local zoning codes show that detention centers are allowed in the area, operating an immigration detention facility would require a special permit.
Bridget Lavender, a staff attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative, said the federal government could override the city’s moratorium because of the Constitution’s supremacy clause, which states that federal law generally trumps conflicting state or local laws.
Because the moratorium is already in place, Lavender said, if DHS wants a permit, ”it would require the federal government to challenge the ordinance in court.”
‘What’re they going to do to make sure humanity is not killed in a warehouse?’
Sharma-Crawford told SAN that city leaders need to be prepared.
“If this is gonna happen, they must make sure it can happen in a humane way,” she said. “What’re local officials going to do to ensure that in Kansas City, where the people of Kansas City have been some of the most welcoming, kindest people, what’re they going to do to make sure humanity is not killed in a warehouse?”
It’s not clear how the federal government would convert the warehouse into a livable space for thousands of detainees, but the possibility raises a series of questions for Sharma-Crawford: “Do we really want that in our neighborhood? Do we really want people flown in from all across the country? And, more importantly, do you really want people being held in places where you warehouse packages?”
U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II, whose district includes Kansas City, told SAN his first priority is preventing any potential mega detention center from opening in Missouri’s Fifth Congressional District.
“Should that become impossible, I couldn’t agree more that such a facility must adhere to our community’s values as well as federal law, which requires humane treatment, physical access to a lawyer and congressional oversight,” Cleaver said.
One day before ICE’s visit
A late December 2025 article from The Washington Post revealed the Trump administration is seeking contractors to renovate industrial warehouses to hold more than 80,000 immigrant detainees.
Missouri is listed in the article as one of seven desirable states for large-scale warehouses estimated to hold 5,000 to 10,000 people each. Two of the largest warehouses are planned for towns with Democratic-led local governments: Stafford, Virginia, and Kansas City, Missouri.
The article was Cleaver’s first introduction to the idea, he told SAN. And that, he said, is a problem.
“If a detention center is going to be opened inside our corporate city limits, we should have sufficient notice to make certain that the location of said facilities is not in an area that would create, with its very presence, conflict with the community,” Cleaver told SAN on Jan. 14.
The next day, officials from ICE and DHS toured the warehouse. While Cleaver said he wants to communicate with the federal government as soon as possible to “avoid chaos,” he has not yet received any response to the messages he sent the federal government about the matter.
SAN obtained a copy of a Jan. 13 letter Cleaver wrote to DHS Secretary Krisi Noem and acting director Todd Lyons demanding answers.
In the letter, Cleaver stated that “I write with grave concern” 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.
He told SAN, he is in a “constant state of panic.”
SAN reached out to Noem and Lyons via email about DHS’s plan for a detention center in Kansas City, but received no response.
Similarly, Platform Ventures, the company that owns the warehouse, did not respond to SAN’s requests for comment. However, according to local news reports, Platform Ventures confirmed the company was approached in October 2025 with an unsolicited offer to purchase the warehouse.
“PV has a fiduciary duty to evaluate every sale or lease proposal involving this facility, as we do for all properties in our portfolio,” Platform Ventures said in a statement to The Kansas City Star. “In this case, all negotiations are complete.”
When contacted about the concerns over a lack of communication between federal and local authorities, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson referred SAN back to DHS.
Kansas City to host FIFA World Cup
Kansas City will host several games for the 2026 FIFA World Cup in June and July.
“We are right now, planning almost on a 24-hour basis, for the World Cup,” Cleaver said. “The last thing we need is for people to come into our community from every point on the globe only to end up getting arrested in Kansas City because they live differently.”
Cleaver said he sees this as both a humanitarian issue and an economic one.
“FIFA is a great entertainment opportunity. But let’s be real, every city that will become a venue for FIFA is thinking economically,” Cleaver said. “I don’t think the chamber of commerce believes that this is a great opportunity to have ICE and FIFA come into town at the same time.”
Anxiety mounts as ICE ramps up aggression across the country
As ICE enforcement activity intensifies nationwide, local law enforcement leaders are increasingly raising alarms about encounters they say are crossing constitutional lines.
On Tuesday, Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley held a press conference alongside several Minnesota law enforcement leaders, saying they’ve received “endless complaints” of civil rights violations.
Bruley said people are being stopped in traffic and asked by ICE agents to show their paperwork. According to Bruley, one of his police officers was stopped while off-duty.
“When they boxed her in, they demanded her paperwork of which she’s a U.S. citizen and clearly would not have any paperwork,” Bruley said.
When the officer began recording the interaction, Bruley said “the phone was knocked out of her hand.” Once she identified herself as a police officer, the ICE agents left, according to Bruley.
“Making no other comments, no apologies,” Bruley said. “I wish I could tell you this was an isolated incident. If it is happening to our officers, it pains me to think of how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day,” Bruley said.
Bruley emphasized that local law enforcement has a long history of working with federal agencies, including ICE, and said he supports immigration enforcement — but says the violations of civil rights “has to stop.”
“It’s tied to the civil rights movement here”
The concerns raised in Minnesota mirror fears now spreading in communities hundreds of miles away.
In Kansas City, immigration attorney Rekha Sharma-Crawford said reports of aggressive ICE behavior elsewhere are fueling widespread opposition.
“ICE officers have no jurisdiction, they have zero legal authority over United States citizens to detain people randomly,” Sharma-Crawford told SAN. “I want to know what legal authority [they have] to demand papers without reasonable suspicion, without probable cause.”
Sharma-Crawford said the issue extends beyond immigration policy and into fundamental civil liberties.
News reports from Minnesota — where ICE agents shot and killed Renee Good, an American citizen — have intensified anxiety in Kansas City.
“I think it’s just got the community very hyper vigilant,” Sharma-Crawford said. “They’re very cautious, they’re very scared.”
Sharma-Crawford has practiced immigration law for 26 years and supports immigration enforcement when used as a targeted approach to remove criminals. But she said that numerous reports of U.S. citizens being subjected to civil rights violations are cause for serious concern.
“The parallels that it causes does kind of harken back to the Nazi-era, ‘show us your papers,’” she said. “I think different communities are going to hear different things in that. It’s tied to the civil rights movement here, Kansas City has a deep history of African American history.”
Those concerns are shared by Kansas City’s elected leaders, including Cleaver, who said the presence of masked federal agents operating without notice carries a deeply personal meaning.
“As an African American growing up down in Texas, if somebody runs up to me with a mask and their gun, I’m thinking of the Klan. I’m thinking this is some kind of underground bullying organization. Certainly not a United States law enforcement agency,” Cleaver told SAN. “The whole thing could be seen as a gathering of the chaos agents. Because we’re going to have a lot of chaos.”
The discreet federal tour of a Kansas City warehouse, paired with reports of armed ICE encounters and civil rights violations in Minnesota, reflects more than a change in immigration policy, Sharma-Crawford said. She believes it signals a fundamental shift in how government power is being exercised.
“Does this feel like a new chapter of American history? Yeah, I think so. I don’t say that lightly. I say that with a lot of seriousness, with a lot of solemnness.”
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
