Kansas senator holds one-sided hearing to urge compliance with Trump immigration efforts

TOPEKA — Sen. Mike Thompson’s hearing on symbolic legislation about immigration laws featured one-sided testimony with dehumanizing language, unsupported speculation that violent Venezuelans could be running a sex trafficking ring in Wichita, and a comparison between being in the country illegally and robbing a bank.

After allowing Attorney General Kris Kobach and a Kansas Bureau of Investigation official testify, Thompson, a Shawnee Republican, refused to hear from a nun who asked to address the committee. He told her he requires 24 hours notice for testimony, even though his hearing first appeared in the Senate calendar the evening before the morning hearing.

Senate Concurrent Resolution 1602 would encourage Gov. Laura Kelly “to fully cooperate with the policies of the Trump administration in enforcing federal immigration laws.” A resolution is not a law but rather a nonbinding statement by the state Senate and House. Legislative staff affirmed for members of the Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee, which Thompson chairs, that no governor or president has ever provided a formal response to a resolution.

The resolution, which requires a simple majority vote from both chambers, would ask the Secretary of State’s Office to send a copy to the governor, President Donald Trump and relevant federal entities.

“This is encouraging the state to help with the fact that we’ve had — we don’t even know how many illegal immigrants come across the border,” Thompson said at the outset of Thursday’s hearing.

In a statement for this story, Kelly’s spokeswoman Grace Hoge, said the governor “has been calling for immigration reform for years, which includes securing the border and deporting dangerous criminals.”

“This is an issue that can only be solved at the federal level and not through a nonbinding resolution from the Legislature,” Hoge said.

Kobach, who gained notoriety in two terms as secretary of state by spreading false claims about noncitizen voting, told the committee members that he supports the resolution but would prefer they “go further” and pass three proposed laws.

The Legislature should require Kansas employers to use E-Verify to confirm employees’ immigration or citizenship status, stop providing in-state tuition rates to Kansas residents who are not citizens, and guarantee local law enforcement officers could participate in federal training to become deputized to enforce federal immigration laws, he said.

Kobach cited the unreliable Federation for American Immigration Reform, where he once worked as an attorney, in telling lawmakers there are 104,000 people in Kansas illegally and that they cost taxpayers $4,300 on average.

The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies FAIR as a hate group, based on extensive documentation of FAIR leaders’ racist comments and ties to white nationalist groups. The group advocated for anti-immigration laws at the state and local level, and its estimates are largely regarded as unreliable. The CATO Institute, a Libertarian think tank, determined in 2017 that FAIR’s fiscal estimates for immigrants in the country illegally were inflated by as much as 97%.

Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau, a Wichita Democrat, pressed Kobach on the impact of deporting the parents of children who, by birthright, are U.S. citizens. Would the children be separated from their parents? Would they end up in foster care? Kobach assured her that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “is very cognizant of families” would “never knowingly deport” parents without giving their children a chance to leave the country with them.

“That’s a decision that ICE presents to the family, but the fact that one has children doesn’t mean that the parents automatically, suddenly, are compliant with the law,” Kobach said. “So it’s a difficult issue. But rest assured, ICE, I’m not aware of any case where ICE just snatched the parents and then the kids come home from school and they’re not there. It’s a long process.”

Sen. Michael Murphy, a Sylvia Republican, said he wanted to “piggyback off” of Faust-Goudeau’s questions.

“Say my wife and I robbed a bank and you came and arrested me and my wife and the kids were in school, would it be any different?” Murphy asked.

Kobach told him his analogy was “a good one.”

“Presumably you’d be held in custody for flight risk, and so you wouldn’t be able to come home for dinner to the kids,” Kobach said. “So in many ways, in the immigration context, it’s less likely to disrupt the family than that.”

Robert Stuart, executive officer of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, said his agency estimates 75,000 people were in Kansas illegally, but that there’s no way to know for sure.

He warned that his agency was seeing more immigrants from China lately. The “vast majority” of drug trafficking could be traced to Mexican drug cartels, he said. And he worried about a violent group of Venezuela whose name he spelled because he couldn’t pronounce it: A-r-a-g-u.

He noted a recent Wichita news report about a large number of Venezuelan immigrants.

“So they may very well be incorporating into into the Wichita area,” Stuart said, although he didn’t know the immigration status of the Wichita residents.

Stuart said it was impossible to know how many crimes are committed by people in the state illegally because there’s no checkbox on standard police reports for immigration status. But he was confident the Mexican cartels were responsible for drug trafficking.

“They’re capitalists. They’re going to make money with whatever they can do,” Stuart said. “It’s selling fentanyl. It’s selling meth. It’s selling meth laced with fentanyl. It’s selling fentanyl laced with marijuana. And if you need a gun, they’ll give you one of those too.”

Thompson closed the hearing after 40 minutes of testimony from Kobach and Stuart, over the objections of Sister Therese Bangert, of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth.

“Oh, gosh. Well, I’ve closed the hearing,” Thompson said. “I didn’t — we typically ask for somebody to give, for sake of time management, to give us a 24-hour notice. It’s on our conferee rules. So just for the sake of time, I’m sorry I can’t do that today.”

Bangert and Sen. Marci Francisco, a Lawrence Democrat, pointed out that public wasn’t notified of the hearing until the evening before.

Thompson, who introduced the legislation two days before the hearing, said he had “put it on the calendar as soon as we had it available.” He also told Bangert she could testify in the House if the resolution receives a hearing there.

Bangert subsequently provided written testimony in which she recognized the need to address “a broken immigration system,” but questioned the frequent use of “illegal alien” by Kobach, Stuart and Republican senators during the hearing. She urged the committee to consider immigrants in Kansas who are law-abiding “in every way but for papers.”

“Personally, I find troubling the heated rhetoric used when speaking about our sisters and brothers that are immigrants/the aliens Jesus speaks of in the Gospel,” Bangert wrote. “At times the language is dehumanizing. The immigrants I know are family values people who want the same things for their children that I want for my son, nieces and nephews. They are people of Faith who work hard and long hours. I witness them being builders and rebuilders.”