Some Wichita city leaders are worried an effort to oppose deals between local governments and Immigration and Customs Enforcement could lead to retribution from the federal government and could trigger additional immigration arrests.
Mayor Lily Wu and council members Becky Tuttle and J.V. Johnston said that’s why they declined Tuesday to place a proposed immigration resolution on any council meeting agenda. Vice Mayor Dalton Glasscock also declined to support a vote on the resolution.
“The more attention we bring to this, the more chance that the unintended consequences will happen,” Johnston said.
The proposal in question is a resolution co-written by the American Civil Liberties Union, members of Wichita’s immigrant communities and council member Joseph Shepard.
Shepard said the “Wichita Trust and Safety Resolution” would declare that Wichita will not enter into any 287(g) agreements, will not use local tax dollars to aid immigration enforcement, and will help support immigrants and refugees through the creation of a “mattering and belonging committee.”
The resolution would have the council take a clear stance against what has become an increasingly popular immigration enforcement tool during the second Trump administration.
The 287(g) agreement — named for the 1996 amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act — allows ICE to deputize local law enforcement and delegate some federal immigration work to local officers.
Forty-eight agencies across Kansas have signed on to these agreements. They range in size from the St. John Police Department to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.
Wichita does not currently have a 287(g) agreement. The Sedgwick County Sheriff’s office signed an agreement last year.
Wichita Police Chief Joe Sullivan has said he does not plan to enter into a 287(g) agreement. But Shepard is proposing official action.
“The commitment … while it means a lot, it is not a policy,” Shepard said. “The reality is that roles change, and that policy is a way to lock into affirmation that we see immigrants in our community, we hear them, and they belong in the city of Wichita.”
Shepard requested nearly a month ago that the resolution be placed on the agenda of the Nov. 10 council meeting. City Manager Dennis Marstall referred Shepard to a city policy that says items requested to be placed on future agendas by council members require a majority vote.
Council members Maggie Ballard and Mike Hoheisel supported Shepard’s request at Tuesday’s meeting, following through on a promise they’d made at an ACLU rally in September.
The remaining council members expressed their support of immigrants writ large, but said they could not support adding Shepard’s resolution to the agenda.
“What I think we’re doing is proposing a solution to a policy concern that does not currently exist within our city government,” Glasscock said.
Glasscock said he would rather add immigration reform to the list of topics Wichita lobbies its state and federal delegates on every year. Tuttle agreed and threw her support behind an immigration-focused town hall — but said that she would not be in favor of taking the resolution up officially.
Tuttle said advocates have not convinced her that taking a stance against 287(g) agreements would assuage her concerns with the immigration enforcement process. She said a close friend who is navigating the immigration process with her husband, made a personal plea about the resolution.
“They both begged me not to do this,” Tuttle said. “The reason they wanted to meet with me was to beg me not to support this, because they are fearful of the unintended consequences of more ICE coming to our community and him potentially being deported.”
Wichita has had a handful of high-profile immigration arrests and deportations in the past month. Yessica Pena, the owner of Lady Burittos, and Rob Attar, the owner of La Galette French Bakery, were both arrested last month. Pena, along with her family, were deported to Mexico earlier this week.
Johnston said he thinks having the council draw additional attention to the immigrant population in Wichita could put more people at risk.
“I think there are unintended consequences of this,” Johnston said. “We have a few ICE agents in town now. An unintended consequence is that the administration sends 20 or 30.”
Johnston is the executive director of the Guadalupe Clinic, a free clinic that provides primary care services to uninsured patients who fall within 200% of the federal poverty line. Johnston said about 2,600 patients — nearly two-thirds of the clinic’s total patient load — are undocumented.
“I’m not going to have it on my conscience that I did something that could — we don’t know for sure, but could — affect our patients’ health,” Johnston said. “I can’t live with myself if I [do] that.”
Shepard and several advocates who attended Tuesday’s council meeting said they see no safety in staying silent. They pointed to recent ICE raids in southwest Kansas where, over the course of three days, 104 people were arrested.
“They modeled what we hear tonight: Keep your head down and be quiet,” Shepard said of the southwestern Kansas communities. “That is no way to live, by the way, and it has major consequences on the quality of life of people who live in our community.”
