She was trapped before she understood what was happening.
“I’m stuck. I can’t move,” Sadie Teel, an observer says in footage reviewed by The Defender, her voice tightening as she narrates from the driver’s seat of her car in an Olathe apartment complex parking lot. “There’s someone behind me. I am trapped in here.”
She had been doing what people across this country have done since the deportation raids escalated: standing witness, recording, and exercising a First Amendment right that generations of organizers bled to defend. And in that parking lot, she watched ICE agents, the federal gestapo force, turn a brand new Kansas law into a hunting tool.
“This is a warning to anyone on the Kansas side that ICE is weaponizing the Halo Act,” she said.
“The 25-foot buffer zone moves with the agent, and they know that, and they’re blocking people and using that to arrest observers.”
Sadie Teel, Community observer, Olathe
What Is the Kansas Halo Act? A Moving 25-Foot Arrest Zone
The so-called Halo Act took effect this spring after the Republican supermajority in Topeka overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto to force it into law. It makes it a misdemeanor to come within 25 feet of a “first responder” while they work, punishable by up to $1,000 and six months in jail. Far-right Senate President Ty Masterson, the law’s chief architect, sold it as protection from “radical protesters.”
But the 25-foot buffer is not a fixed line. It moves with the agent. Which means the crime moves with the agent. Which means an ICE officer can walk toward you, close the distance himself, and manufacture your arrest. The law lets the hunter draw the boundary of the hunt.
That is precisely what the observer says she watched happen in Olathe.
How ICE Is Weaponizing the Halo Act in Olathe, Kansas
“Today I witnessed them trapping people in a parking lot, calling the police, and having someone arrested,” she said. “The 25-foot buffer zone moves with the agent, and they know that, and they’re blocking people and using that to arrest observers.”
Teel provided The Defender a minute-by-minute account of the encounter. She arrived at Harrison Point around 10:45 a.m. and parked on the west side of the lot to observe three ICE vehicles. Six minutes later, a red truck pulled in, followed by a blue Subaru bearing Minnesota plates. When the truck tried to turn around, the Subaru blocked it, then reversed toward it aggressively. The agent got out and threatened the driver with pepper spray.
Then two more ICE vehicles pulled in behind Steel. An agent approached her window and said two words: “25 feet.”
He was citing the Halo Act. He was citing it while his colleagues sealed her in. There was no exit ahead of her and ICE vehicles behind her. The law demands she keep her distance, and the agents enforcing it had just made distance impossible.
According to her account, then the agents called in reinforcements. “I literally saw ICE agents wave down Olathe PD,” Steel said, and by 10:54 a.m., officers had blockaded the intersection of Harrison Street and East Dennis Avenue. When the driver of the red truck tried to leave through the complex’s exit, Olathe police vehicles were waiting at that intersection to stop him. He was immediately detained.
Within ten more minutes the agents were gone, the driver was in custody, and Steel was filming the detention from the east side of the complex. She escaped only by finding a different exit and turning south, away from the police blockade. The entire operation, from her arrival to her escape, lasted 22 minutes.
“That wasn’t the case for the other car I saw get trapped,” she said.
Local police sealing streets at the direction of federal deportation agents. Officers detaining the witnesses those agents had cornered. This is what the collaboration looks like on the ground, and the observer named it plainly:
The police are in lockstep with them.
The Halo Act Also Expands ICE Detainers and 287(g) Contracts Across Kansas
The 25-foot zone drew the cameras, but House Bill 2372 does far more than criminalize proximity. Buried in the same law, the far-right legislature authorized Kansas sheriffs to detain people on ICE detainer requests and to sign contracts with the deportation force without approval from their own county commissioners. Twenty-eight Kansas sheriff’s offices and police departments already hold 287(g) agreements with ICE. This law removes one of the last local checks on how many more will follow.
Rep. Heather Meyer of Overland Park warned during debate that the law strips away the previous 48-hour limit on detainer holds. “Now that protection is lost,” she said. People can now be held on ICE’s word without a judicial warrant, indefinitely, in Kansas jails.
The law also reclassifies ICE vehicles as “authorized emergency vehicles,” granting federal deportation agents the legal privileges of ambulances. Lawmakers copied it from Florida’s Halo Law, importing Ron DeSantis legislation onto the Kansas prairie and wrapping it in the language of officer safety.
Emily Bradbury, executive director of the Kansas Press Association, called the buffer government overreach and said the law is likely unconstitutional, noting that Kansas has no recent record of journalists interfering with police, though it does have a recent record of police interfering with the press. The ACLU of Kansas opposed it. The governor vetoed it. The supermajority did not care.
Attorney General Kris Kobach, the state’s most prolific anti-immigrant bigot, a man who built his career engineering deportation machinery long before this administration made it federal doctrine, rushed to reassure Kansans the law is modest. He explained it lets local officers run people through ICE databases and “transfer that individual immediately to ICE custody for deportation.” His reassurance is the confession.
Criminalizing the Witness: From Ida B. Wells to Darnella Frazier
They named it the Halo Act, but this law belongs to an old American lineage. Ida B. Wells was run out of Memphis for documenting what the state and the mob did in the dark. Darnella Frazier stood on a Minneapolis sidewalk with a phone, and her footage did what no official report would have done. Every era of state violence in this country has produced a law, a custom, or a threat designed to punish the ones who watch.
The fascist logic of the Halo Act is that witnessing is the crime. Not obstruction, which was already illegal. Also not assault, which was already illegal. But presence. Proximity. Eyes.
And the people enforcing it understand exactly what they have been handed. A roving criminalization zone, 25 feet in every direction, attached to every masked agent working a parking lot, a school pickup line, a church lot on the Kansas side.
“We have never been kept safe by the state. We keep each other safe.”
The Kansas City Defender
How to Stay Safe Around ICE in Kansas City: Exit Plans, Rights, Rapid Response
The observer who escaped Olathe ended her account with instructions for survival.
“Always have an exit plan. Keep aware of your surroundings,” she said. “I was not careful today, and I’m very lucky.”
She continued her warning saying: “ICE agents are getting even more bold and even more aggressive, and we gotta save ourselves because the police are in lockstep with them.”
Some tips include knowing that agents are using vehicles to trap observers and using local police to finish the arrest. Park facing out. Identify your exits before you begin recording. Do not observe alone if you can help it. Find a community defense training near you.
Get Plugged In
Report ICE activity in real time: Rapid Response hotline (913) 999-2398, or log sightings at ICEOUT.org.
Get trained in rapid response and community defense: ICERR.com.
Know Your Rights: You do not have to open the door without a warrant signed by a judge. Say “I invoke my Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.” Do not sign anything. Ask for a lawyer.
Follow the trackers: AIRR (@airr_kc) and Boots on the Ground Midwest.
Filming remains your First Amendment right. Record from beyond 25 feet, announce that you are complying, and keep your exit clear.
Additional Information on the Halo Act
The Kansas Halo Act (House Bill 2372) took effect in 2026 after Republican legislators overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto. It makes it a misdemeanor, punishable by up to $1,000 and six months in jail, to come within 25 feet of a law enforcement officer or first responder while they work, after being warned to back away. The same law lets Kansas sheriffs detain people on ICE detainer requests, sign ICE contracts without county commissioner approval, and classifies ICE vehicles as authorized emergency vehicles.
Filming ICE and police in public remains protected by the First Amendment. However, under the Kansas Halo Act, remaining within 25 feet of an agent after a warning is a misdemeanor. Because the 25-foot zone moves with the agent, observers in Olathe report that ICE agents are closing the distance themselves and using the law to have witnesses arrested. Record from beyond 25 feet and keep an exit route clear.
Violating the Halo Act is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and up to six months in jail.
Report the sighting to the Rapid response hotline at (913) 999-2398 or log it at ICEOUT.org. Note the number of agents, clothing, vehicles, location, direction, and time. Film safely from beyond 25 feet, park facing out, identify your exits before recording, and avoid observing alone.
You do not have to open the door unless agents show a warrant signed by a judge. You have the right to remain silent: say “I invoke my Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.” Do not sign anything. Ask for a lawyer. For immigration legal help in the Kansas City region, contact AIRR.
