UPDATE: Finney County has protested its inclusion on the list and Sedgwick County claims it has begun to cooperate.
In response to a pair of executive orders from the Trump administration, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has made available for public release the non-Federal jurisdictions that have gone at least de facto “sanctuary.” This means they release illegal aliens from their custody, “notwithstanding that such aliens are subject to a detainer or similar request for custody issued by ICE to that jurisdiction.”
Although most of the counties that are “non-cooperative” are exactly where you would expect to find them–California, Oregon, New York, New Jersey–no “red” state, with the exception of the newly and barely red Pennsylvania, has as many non-cooperating counties as Kansas. Missouri, for instance, has no such counties listed. Not even Texas or Florida can match Kansas.
ICE cautions that its list is culled from a variety of public sources and may not be comprehensive. That said Kansas has at least five such counties. They are listed below along with the date the non-cooperative policy was enacted:
Sedgwick County, Kansas, June 2014–“Will not honor ICE detainer without a court order or warrant.”
Shawnee County, Kansas, June 2014–“Will not honor detainers without additional probable cause.”
Butler County, Kansas, June 2014–“Will not honor ICE detainer without a court order or warrant.”
Finney County, Kansas, June 2014–“Will not honor ICE detainer without a court order or warrant.”
Harvey County, Kansas, June 2014–“Will not honor ICE detainer without a court order or warrant.”
Sedgwick is Wichita’s County. Butler and Harvey Counties border Sedgwick. Garden City is the largest city in Finney county in southwest Kansas. And, most problematically, Shawnee is home to the state capital, Topeka.
All five of these counties went red in the 2016 election, some by wide margins. One has to wonder whether the citizens of these counties know what their public officials are up to.
