Will Kansas pave the way for cities in Trump’s immigration crackdown? | Opinion
Today, more than a little attention is focused on an aggressive Trump administration immigration crackdown around Charlotte, N.C., with more than 250 arrested so far. But the Trump administration’s big displays of law enforcement power aren’t going to get the job of sending back the millions of illegal immigrants Americans voted to remove last year.
The Department of Homeland Security, which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has about 80,000 sworn officers focused on larger cities and the border. Local and state police departments have about six times that many officers, and they’re in every nook and cranny of our nation. We’re going to need them for President Donald Trump to succeed at what he said was his highest priority — arresting and deporting criminal immigrants.
Over the last few weeks, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation turned over to ICE ten immigrants convicted of serious crimes. The arrests were made in Hutchinson, Newton, Garden City and Dodge City. The men were found guilty of everything from child molestation and armed robbery to drug running and a deadly hit-and-run. Not only are American immigration laws standing a little stronger with their arrests, but Kansans are safer to boot.
This model of giving immigrants their day in court and then turning them over to federal authorities who can start the process of sending them home should be adopted all over the country. In places where law enforcement is run by strong conservatives, like Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, it is already happening.
But this should become the practice even in the cities and states that have declared themselves sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants, of which there are none in Kansas and Missouri, thanks to state laws restricting the practice.
I can respect the ethical, moral, practical and religious case for giving undocumented immigrants sanctuary, even if I don’t share it. Jesus was clear on how we should treat the stranger among us, and it is simply a fact that this important pool of labor is a boon to our economy and just as law-abiding as the native-born.
But that case falls apart when immigrants begin to prey on us or, as is even more common, prey on each other. If you care about immigrants, the fact is that criminal immigrants are a bigger danger to others in their immigrant communities than they are to native-born Americans.
Undocumented status in sanctuary cities and states or in “certified welcoming” cities like Charlotte, which often have lesser restrictions on law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities than sanctuary jurisdictions, should not be a license to commit crimes and then be released back into American society when a prison sentence is done. We should send criminals home.
The Department of Homeland Security says that in recent years, state and local authorities in North Carolina have ignored requests to turn over immigrants enmeshed in our criminal justice system more than 1,400 times. Not all of those cases involved serious crimes or a criminal conviction, but plenty of them did. Authorities across the country owe Americans and law-abiding immigrants safety from the predators among us.
North Carolina’s legislature forced reluctant counties like Charlotte’s Mecklenburg to honor ICE detainers in a law that went into effect in 2024 over a Democratic governor’s veto. When Mecklenburg’s sheriff kept up his disputes with ICE, the legislature toughened the law in 2025, over a second veto.
Some other cities and states that the Trump administration accuses of having sanctuary policies have been trying to draw the line in the right place. New Jersey, for one, allows cooperation with ICE after an immigrant has been convicted of most crimes or even when just charged with serious violent crimes.
That seems to be a smart middle ground that would satisfy the concerns many Americans have – and that played a role in getting Trump elected last year. Democrats interested in turning the page on Trump’s showy crackdowns, that enmesh far fewer criminals than he promised, could adopt it in contrast to the Biden administration’s inept and unpopular record. A common sense approach won’t matter much to Trump as he pursues his agenda, but next time Americans are choosing a president, a middle-ground policy might be more attractive than one on the extremes.
David Mastio is a national opinion columnist for the Kansas City Star and McClatchy.
This story was originally published November 20, 2025 at 4:18 PM with the headline "Will Kansas pave the way for cities in Trump’s immigration crackdown? | Opinion."
