By Renee Hickman and Kristina Cooke
DODGE CITY, Kansas, Nov 13 (Reuters) – Early last month, in a starkly lit meeting room in southwest Kansas, Amy Soberanes stood to address members of the Dodge City commission.
It had been two weeks since US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents descended on the city, and she and other community organizers peppered the commissioners with questions: What had they known? Why had the area been targeted? How would the city respond if it happened again?
Federal immigration agents swept into this rural corner of Kansas in late September and detained 104 people, according to the local US Attorney. Hispanic communities in Dodge City, Garden City and Liberal – dominated by meatpacking plants staffed by a mostly immigrant workforce – were hardest hit.
“Our community is looking for reassurance and direction,” Soberanes, a 25-year-old Mexican American business owner, said to the five men on the dais.
There were few answers to be had that night. But on November 3, Election Day, voters made themselves heard.
Kansas elected a Democrat to the US Senate for the first time in nearly a century when Adam Hamilton ousted incumbent Republican Roger Marshall. The three counties most affected by the ICE raids swung toward Hamilton by more than 20 points on average from Republican President Donald Trump’s 2024 vote share, results compiled by Reuters and USA Today showed.
The shift represented a striking backlash to Trump’s immigration crackdown in one of the country’s most conservative states. The raids disrupted economic activity in the so-called Golden Triangle of Beef and left local officials complaining that they had been kept in the dark.
Trump, in the wake of his party’s midterm drubbing, has sent mixed signals on immigration policy. He told “60 Minutes” that his deportation campaign may have been “too tough.” He then promoted Stephen Miller, architect of Trump’s immigration strategy, to be his next chief of staff.
Asked for comment on this story, ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement: “We will continue to enforce our nation’s laws and remove illegal aliens from American communities.”
Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that Trump’s “commonsense immigration agenda has delivered the most secure border in history.”
OFFICIALS IN THE DARK
Dodge City gained national prominence in the 1800s as a stop for pioneers heading to the American West. Cattle feedlots eventually sprouted up in the open plains.
In the 1980s, meatpacking companies began building massive plants – first employing Vietnamese and Laotian refugees and, later, migrants from Mexico and Central America. Dodge City is now 67% Hispanic, according to the US Census.
Carlos Rivera was working at the National Beef packing plant on September 22 when he heard from truck drivers that ICE agents had been spotted around town.
During the next shift change, some departing employees were detained by agents waiting on the street outside the plant, Rivera said. As news spread, others fled back inside. Many spent hours in the cafeteria until the agents left.
Company switchboards were tied up over the following days with workers calling out, Rivera said. Regional cattle and livestock groups reported workforce disruptions at feedyards, dairies and meat processors, resulting in millions of dollars lost.
City Commissioner Rick Sowers was on an early-morning walk when he noticed flashing lights on multiple vehicles outside a neighbor’s house and masked agents banging on the doors.
“I just don’t perceive that as an appropriate measure for a document case,” Sowers told Reuters, referring to immigration documents.
The lack of communication from the federal government had put him in a difficult position, he told people at the October 5 commission meeting.
DHS said in its statement to Reuters that ICE “advised cooperative local agencies” ahead of its operation in southwest Kansas but did not specify which agencies.
But as angry residents criticized officials for not making a public statement about the sweeps sooner, Nick Hernandez, the first Hispanic city manager of Dodge City, said city officials learned about the operation from social media.
They began calling state and federal legislators for information. Forty-eight hours later, Republican US Senators Jerry Moran and Roger Marshall of Kansas passed along information from DHS that the agents were leaving.
“Never during the operation did we find out who was actually in charge,” Hernandez told the meeting.
Even Marshall, long a supporter of Trump’s immigration policies, blasted the raids, saying in a statement that police “were not given advance notice or the level of cooperation we would expect,” causing “mass disruptions to local communities and businesses.”
Hamilton, his opponent, called the raids a “disaster” and said Kansans were “fed up” with Marshall being a “mouthpiece for the president.” He will be the first Democratic senator to represent the state since 1932 when he takes office in January.
In his victory speech, Hamilton recalled a story from a woman in Dodge City who told him some parents were too afraid to pick their children up from elementary school.
“This was not OK,” he said.
A COMMUNITY COMES TOGETHER
As Dodge City tries to move on, residents have looked to one another for support.
Karla Flores and her husband Alfredo Arrieta went shopping at Walmart on the day the operation started, planning to hunker down at home, she told Reuters.
Arrieta crossed into the US illegally in 2022 and found work as a mechanic in Dodge City; Flores overstayed a tourist visa and worked as a cleaner. They were pulled over by immigration agents shortly after leaving the store.
Before being handcuffed, Flores called her brother, who arranged to have their three children picked up from school and taken to a relative’s house.
A week later, when their middle son turned 15, people banded together to throw him a party.
“We were really impressed by the amount of support from the community,” Flores said.
She and her husband were deported to Mexico after five weeks in ICE custody. They spoke to Reuters by phone. Their two youngest children have joined them. Their eldest, aged 17, is living with Flores’ brother.
“They’re still dealing with the aftermath,” Arrieta said of his children. “We got up, we took them to school and then a few hours later they’re told your mom and dad aren’t here anymore.”
In its statement, DHS said “parents have a choice if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates.”
In the weeks after the raids, New Frontiers, a local nonprofit, delivered hundreds of meals to affected families – and helped register residents to vote.
“We thought we were untouchable” because of the area’s meatpacking plants and their dependence on immigrant workers, Soberanes said, adding that she had never seen people so politically energized.
Now, she said, “our community wants people to be held responsible for what happened.”
(Reporting by Renee Hickman in Kansas and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco. Additional reporting by Brad Heath and Jason Lange. Editing by Jesse Mesner-Hage and Howard Goller)
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