KSHB 41 reporter Fernanda Silva covers stories in the Northland. She also focuses on issues surrounding immigration. Share your story idea with Fernanda.
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On Thursday, Kansas City, Missouri, passed a resolution imposing a five-year ban on non-municipal detention facilities after ICE personnel conducted a site tour in south KCMO. But the question remains: Can KCMO “say no” to a federal agency?
We took that question to Mayor Lucas, who introduced the measure.
“I think the simplest way I can answer that is — it would probably end up in court,” Lucas said.
According to him, it also depends on who would build the facility.
“There’s a difference if it is, let’s say, a federal agency as compared to a private-sector actor,” Lucas said.
Associate Professor of Political Science at Park University, Matt Harris, agrees that a lawsuit would likely be filed.
The answer could lie in the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. “That says that states and municipalities can’t interfere with federal law or its application,” Harris explained.
While he believes the federal government would win, Harris said such challenges could delay the opening of a potential detention center.
“If the feds are interested in building this detention center quickly, something like that could definitely hold up the process. They might ultimately decide it’s better to build somewhere else,” Harris said.
City leaders say they will use all available legal tools to enforce the moratorium.
“We’ve made it clear that we don’t want a 10,000- or 5,000-person mass detention ‘human being warehouse’,” Lucas said.
The City Council’s vote Thursday afternoon puts a five-year moratorium on permits, licenses, zoning, and other approvals for non-municipal detention facilities in Kansas City.
The vote comes after Jackson County Legislature Chairman Manny Abarca said he was told by Department of Homeland Security officials about plans to build a 7,500-bed ICE detention facility in Kansas City.
In a statement sent Thursday, ICE said, “These will not be warehouses.”
“They will be very well-structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards,” the statement read in part.
We reached out to the agency for comment on the Kansas City ordinance, but did not hear back.
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