Kansas City has a little-known agreement with ICE. What we found out

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Over the past two years, Kansas City has received $42,000 from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as part of a little-noticed agreement between the city and the federal immigration agency.

The agreement, revealed in federal government spending records reviewed by The Star, runs from September 2024 to May 2026. The payments, which have been obligated, allow the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE access to a multi-agency law enforcement radio network known as the Metropolitan Area Regional Radio System (MARRS), according to a city spokesperson.

Multiple city officials, including Mayor Quinton Lucas, said they were unaware of the payments until contacted by The Star this week. The full scope of the city’s financial relationship with ICE remains unclear and The Star has requested a copy of any formal agreements.

Centralized communications systems are common among local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and Lucas downplayed the agreement when informed about it. The mayor pointed to its low dollar amount, the fact that it began under the Biden administration and that it appeared to solely deal with radio communications.

“(The) agreement appears not to be born out of recent efforts toward mass warehousing of persons or recent efforts challenged in federal courts to apprehend persons without due process,” Lucas said in an email to The Star.

Revelations about the agreement have sparked concern from at least one law enforcement accountability advocate. A series of high-profile arrests and rumors of a potential detention facility have thrust Kansas City into a national fight over the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on American cities.

However, there is no evidence that the city’s little-known agreement is connected to reports of a planned immigration detention facility in south Kansas City.

Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, said Kansas City and other cities should review all potential agreements with ICE and consider canceling those contracts if city leaders are opposed to the Trump administration’s immigration efforts.

“To the extent they want to, you know, publicly say that they’re opposed to the brutality that we’re seeing with ICE and potentially allowing members of their community to be targeted by ICE,” Bonds said, “There shouldn’t be a contract in place like this.”

Two Kansas City Councilmembers, Johnathan Duncan and Wes Rogers, said they were also unaware of the agreement until contacted by The Star. Duncan said he would look into it. Rogers said the agreement was concerning, but that he needed to know more about it.

“It’s OK to have secure borders and have homeland security agents here,” Rogers said. “It’s not de facto bad. I just want to know more about it.”

City spokesperson Sherae Honeycutt, in a series of emails to The Star, said the payments allow ICE and DHS to use 111 active radios on the MARRS system. DHS and U.S. Customs and Border Protection use the system, but DHS is the only federal agency billed directly by the city.

Both federal agencies have “dedicated talk groups” on the radio system, allowing them to communicate with regional partners, Honeycutt said.

“DHS coordinates with local law enforcement as needed; the system enables communication during joint operations or incidents, but it is not a surveillance or data-sharing platform,” Honeycutt said.

The joint radio system is facilitated by Mid-America Regional Council (MARC), but governed by the MARRS Management Council, Honeycutt said.

Eric Winebrenner, MARC’s public safety communications program director, in a statement to The Star, listed nine cities and counties that are part of the MARRS system.

Those members, which include Kansas City, determine what other agencies are allowed on the system. Agreements are then brought to the MARRS Management Council for approval. Winebrenner did not immediately have information detailing how long DHS and ICE have been part of the system.

When asked what ICE and DHS would use the system for, Winebrenner said public safety agencies use it for dispatch and communications between first responders.

While centralized law enforcement communications are common and Lucas and city officials have downplayed the payment, Kansas City’s agreement was also the focus of a recent report that highlighted the immigration agency’s sprawling network of partners.

Sludge, a news outlet that focuses on money in politics, included a portion of Kansas City’s agreement with ICE in an interactive map that showed every company or agency that either entered into a new contract with ICE or was awarded new obligations under the Trump administration.

The news outlet’s report focused on $25,601 that was obligated as part of the agreement on Sept. 29. That portion, which is mentioned in federal records available online, states that the payment was for access to a communication system for law enforcement personnel.

For Bonds, the law enforcement accountability advocate, one of the major concerns about the agreement is a lack of control over how much information is shared between agencies.

“Even if you aren’t intentionally trying to share information with ICE, with DHS, you don’t really have a lot of control over who sees it and who uses it if you decide to participate in something like this,” Bonds said.