KS-SEN: Kris Kobach sent names of Nebraska residents to ICE while running for Kansas governor

Kris Kobach was in the middle of running for Kansas governor in December 2017, but he had unfinished business in Nebraska.

The former Kansas secretary of state helped write an ordinance in 2010 for Fremont, Neb., banning landlords from renting homes to immigrants living in the country illegally. Four years later, he successfully defended his handiwork on behalf of the town all the way to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.

His legal victory attracted national attention. Still, enforcing the law had proven difficult because information collected on rental applications wasn’t enough for the federal government to determine whether someone was in the country legally.

So in 2017, while still receiving a $10,000-a-year retainer from Fremont, he emailed the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement with a list of 289 people who had applied for an occupancy license in the eastern Nebraska city, where about 15 percent of its 26,000 residents are Hispanic.

Kobach wanted to determine if any of the people on this list were in the country illegally, and asked ICE to “verify the immigration status” of each individual.




https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article235055257.html#storylink=cpy