Justice Archives – The Kansas City Defender

The Company That Built Guantanamo Bay Is Now Building Kansas City’s World Cup Jail. A Coalition of 25 Organizations Are Fighting Back

By Ryan S. ● Abolition ● March 27, 2026

The contractor building Kansas City’s World Cup jail has been sued for human trafficking, found liable for poisoning over 100,000 people, and built the detention camp where the U.S. tortured prisoners for two decades. Decarcerate KC and 24 partner organizations are launching a campaign to fight it.

Latest in Justice

CoreCivic Kills People. Leavenworth Is Voting on Whether to Let Them Do It Here.

By Chris Lopez ● Editorial ● March 10, 2026

Leavenworth was founded by pro-slavery settlers and became the epicenter of Bleeding Kansas. That same city votes today on whether to resurrect a CoreCivic detention facility — a company that has already killed people in its custody — and open a 1,000-bed ICE camp to kidnap, cage, and disappear immigrants from our region. The shackles have always looked different here. This morning, Leavenworth decides what they look like in 2026.

“Suspend Me If You Want”: Lincoln Prep Middle School Threatens Kids With Suspension…They Still Organize Anti-ice Protest Anyways

By Ryan S. ● Justice ● February 18, 2026

Threatened with suspension, these middle schoolers refused to back down and joined the growing MO/KS student movement to denounce ICE and the proposed ICE concentration camps planned to be built in Kansas City

BREAKING: Platform Ventures Backs Down From ICE Detention Center Sale After Weeks of Mass Organizing and Protest

By Ryan S. ● Justice ● February 12, 2026

The people won. For now.

KCPD Holds Taxpayers Hostage While Shielding a Killer in Blue

By Ryan S. ● Justice ● February 5, 2026

The department has received $1.2 billion since 2022. Now it claims it can’t afford basic services while an officer who has killed three people remains on patrol. A Kansas City Defender investigation.

Kansas City at Center of ICE Nationwide Concentration Camp Network

By Ryan S. ● National ● January 21, 2026

ICE is eyeing to make Kansas City one of seven “mega centers” in its unprecedented concentration camp network. A local real estate company, Platform Ventures, may “sell out” Kansas City by selling a taxpayer-subsidized warehouse to make it happen. And federal agents are already terrorizing KC residents & going door-to-door.

Kansas City Passes 5-Year Ban on Mass Detention Facilities

By Ryan S. ● Immigration ● January 16, 2026

The move blocks permits for non-municipal detention centers as the Trump regime eyes KC for a 10,000-person ICE concentration camp

Damning Transcript Exposes Truth Behind Holy Brunch Closure

By Ryan S. ● Editorial ● December 11, 2025

What began as a federal RICO lawsuit has become one of Kansas City’s most explosive legal sagas. Now, Holy Brunch’s owner is blaming Black media for his closure and screenshotting a Black woman reporter in an expletive-laden Facebook diatribe. But court transcripts expose what he knew all along.

FOOD IS FREEDOM: Hamer Program & Black KC Farmers Continue Free Food Deliveries as SNAP Cuts Loom

By Ryan S. ● Agriculture ● October 29, 2025

The evening the food boxes arrived, a Black neighbor wept.

Bowen Tower Rent Strike: 26 Evictions and a Slumlord’s War on Black Elders

By Ryan S. ● Housing ● October 23, 2025

How a California slumlord unleashed a campaign of terror against Raytown’s Black elders—and how they’re fighting back with the city’s first rent strike