Kansas City developers halt sale of warehouse for ICE detention center as public pressure mounts
Welcome to our news segment: TL;DR of Immigration News, for when the news is Too Long and you Didn’t Read it.
This is a weekly collection of immigration-related news stories. These bite-size summaries will keep you up to date without overwhelming your inbox.
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In a move reminiscent of the Redcoats fleeing the colonies, ICE/DHS has withdrawn thousands of their agents from the streets of Minneapolis. This is a bittersweet victory over the regime, given its costs and the fact that ICE still remains in the city at all. Nevertheless, we join Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect in putting one in the W column.
As Meyerson rightly points out, courage is contagious. In the wake of Minnesotans’ defiant defense of their neighbors we have seen Congressional Democrats suddenly locate their spines; we’ve seen other mayors and governors finally moved to action to protect their citizens from the white nationalist terrorists occupying our communities. And most importantly, we’ve seen thousands of citizens across America come together in community.
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Kansas City developers halt sale of warehouse for ICE detention center as public pressure mounts
Protest. Works.
Platform Ventures, the owners of a warehouse south of Kansas City, insist that they serve only the company’s stockholders. However, public concerns about the possible purchase of their building by ICE and its potential repurposing as a concentration camp facility have succeeded in preventing the sale.
After federal agents toured the facility in January, the Kansas City Council passed a ban on any permits or approvals for nonmunicipal detention facilities. The ban is operative until 2031.The possibility of an ICE facility in town also sparked fierce public protests.
"This decision wouldn’t have happened without several weeks of protest and collective action by low-wage workers with Missouri Workers Center and over 20 local immigrant and racial justice, faith, school, environmental, and civil rights groups," Terrence Wise said in the statement. "We will continue fighting to keep masked, unaccountable federal agents out of our communities and for the dignity, respect, and pathway to better citizenship that we all deserve."
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Trump quietly pulls National Guard from Chicago and Los Angeles after series of court losses
Donald Trump’s administration has quietly withdrawn federalized National Guard troops from Democratic cities after a series of court rulings struck down the president’s plans.
The withdrawal of more than 5,700 troops from California, Chicago, and Oregon concluded January 21, with no public acknowledgment from the White House or Department of Defense. Those deployments cost nearly half a billion dollars, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
In December, the Supreme Court blocked the administration from sending the military into Chicago. The Court appeared to reject the administration’s argument that protests against the president’s anti-immigration agenda are so volatile that only the National Guard, under Trump’s orders, can stop them.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker wrote, “The pressure is working, and we’ve got to keep at it.”
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DHS Watchdog Warns Shutdown Could Imperil Immigration Enforcement Oversight
This past Saturday, a partial government shutdown went into effect around the funding of DHS, which could have an immediate effect on the Trump administration’s nationwide immigration crackdowns.
In response to the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Senate Democrats are demanding reforms for ICE and CBP before they’ll vote to fund, and of course Republicans in both the Senate and the White House are attempting to push back. In the meantime, experts warn that the lack of funding could potentially halt investigations and oversight probes into ICE and CBP crimes, while ICE operations remain fully funded by Trump’s appropriations bill from last year.
It’s a catch-22 for Democrats who want to criminally investigate and do oversight reviews on ICE activity, including visiting detention centers, and the investigation of use of force during ICE operations like “Midway Blitz.” Yet the option to fully fund the DHS without pushing for reform is also heinous. It seems as though the best way to “reform” a broken agency like ICE would be to abolish it altogether.
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“Even in Russia, They Don’t Treat Children Like This:” A Family’s Nightmare In ICE Detention
“We left one tyranny and came to another kind of tyranny.”
“In Russia, police tell us, ‘We are the law, as we say goes.’ We came here, and they tell us exactly the same thing.”
NBC news’ Mike Hixenbaugh attributes these quotes to a Russian man named Nikita, whose last name is withheld because he fears retaliation if he is forced to return to his home country, Russia. Nikita, his wife Oksana, and their three children ages 13, 12, and 4, fled Russia for fear that Vladimir Putin’s brutal regime would retaliate against them over Nikita’s anti-war activism. Following both international and US law intended to protect political asylum seekers, they presented themselves at the US border and requested asylum. An asylum judge agreed that the threat against them was credible.
Under most previous non-Trump administrations, the family would likely have been allowed to live freely in the US while awaiting their hearing. Instead, as of the time of NBC’s article, they had been living in the Dilley Detention Center for 131 days, which is more than six times the length the law states the government is allowed to keep children in immigration detention.
Hixenbaugh summarizes the conditions they live with at Dilley: “Worms in their food. Guards shouting orders and snatching toys from small hands. Restless nights under fluorescent lights that never fully go dark. Hours in line for a single pill.” The couple’s 12-year-old may permanently lose the hearing in one ear due to poor medical treatment.
The article notes that CoreCivic, the private company running the prison, defers all questions to DHS. Dilley, CoreCivic, and DHS all have one thing in common: they are beyond reform. They need to be shut down.
Action items:
- Are you ready to organize on the ground? Use our Congregational Protective Presence Toolkit to keep our communities safe during the upcoming holidays of Easter and Ramadan. Write to shayna@neveragainaction.com to request coaching support.
- Register here for Community Defender Training: Habeas Corpus & Immigration Detention on Tuesday, February 24, 2026 from 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm PT/ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm ET. This training will help community defenders understand how habeas petitions are used in the immigration detention context and go over the basic elements of a pro se petition for the most common scenarios. This training is for non-attorney advocates, including organizers, and others supporting detained community members. This training will be presented in English with Spanish simultaneous interpretation and is not eligible for CLE credit. Questions? Please contact events@nipnlg.org.
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If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for next week’s roundup, drop us a line at neveragainaction@gmail.com.