Federal officials from the Department of Homeland Security were eyeing a Kansas City warehouse for one of their next detention facilities for immigrants. The company that owns the Missouri warehouse, Platform Ventures, announced on Thursday that it is not moving forward with the sale.
The move comes after steep pressure from locals who have been consistently protesting the potential sale since immigration officials toured the facility on January 15.
Platform Ventures said it “is not actively engaged with the U.S. Government or any other prospective purchaser” in a statement to Kansas City Public Radio.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said that while his city welcomed the news, his office is prepared to keep fighting. “A mass encampment warehouse” is “offensive to the dignity and human rights of those who would be detained.”
According to a report from the American Immigration Council, by the end of November 2025, ICE was using 104 more facilities for detention than at the start of the year. That’s a 91 percent increase. The Council report found that the Trump administration’s arrest practices have led to a 2,450 percent increase in the number of people being held in ICE detention with no criminal record.
As DHS continues to expand its existing presence and open new offices around the country, Kansas City residents join other community leaders in Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City, Ashland, Virginia, and elsewhere who are fighting back against potential ICE detention centers in their cities.
Terrence Wise, a leader with the activist groups Stand Up KC and Missouri Workers Center, said in a statement that the no-sale wouldn’t have happened without “several weeks of protest and collective action” from locals who “will continue fighting to keep masked, unaccountable federal agents out of our communities.”
This post has been syndicated from Mother Jones, where it was published under this address.