Data from a federal ICE arrest dataset covering Kansas shows a significant enforcement surge in northeast Kansas — while experts and local reporting confirm that detainer holds at county jails represent a separate, and largely uncounted, layer of immigration enforcement.
In the first ten weeks of 2026, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents made 184 direct arrests in the Topeka metropolitan area and surrounding northeast Kansas communities, according to a publicly available ICE arrest dataset covering Kansas apprehensions from December 31, 2025 through March 10, 2026.
Statewide, ICE recorded 458 arrests across Kansas during that same period — meaning the Topeka region accounted for roughly 40% of all ICE arrests in the state.
But advocates, attorneys, and local journalists say those numbers tell only part of the story.
What the Data Shows
The dataset — drawn from ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) records — captures arrests made directly by ICE agents. It does not include ICE detainer requests, commonly called “holds,” placed on individuals already in local custody on unrelated charges.
Of the 184 regional arrests documented:
- 162 were targeted operations — meaning ICE identified and pursued a specific individual — while 22 were collateral arrests, where an additional person was taken into custody during an operation targeting someone else.
- 94 fell under the ERO Criminal Alien Program, which focuses on individuals with criminal histories or pending charges. Another 58 were carried out by Fugitive Operations units, and 26 involved Detention and Deportation processing.
- 54 individuals had prior criminal convictions at the time of arrest. Another 87 had pending criminal charges, and 43 were classified as other immigration violators with no criminal case attached.
- Nearly half — 92 of 184 — had no final order of removal on record at the time of apprehension, meaning their cases were still working through immigration court proceedings.
The largest share of those arrested held citizenship from Mexico (104), Honduras (24), and Guatemala (20). Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia, and Ecuador were also represented. The overwhelming majority — 166 of 184 — were male. The median birth year among those arrested was 1992, placing most individuals in their early-to-mid 30s at the time of apprehension.
A Surge Through February
The monthly breakdown reveals a sharp escalation in enforcement activity. In January 2026, 49 arrests were recorded in the Topeka area. That figure more than doubled in February, when 112 arrests took place — the single busiest month in the dataset. The data covers only the first ten days of March, during which 23 arrests were recorded.
Statewide, the pattern was similar: 161 arrests in January, 235 in February, and 60 in the first ten days of March.
Specific Communities in the Data
While 156 of the 184 regional arrests were logged under a broad “KAN General Area, Non-Specific” designation — reflecting cases assigned to the Topeka ICE field office without a pinpointed location — an additional 28 arrests were tied to specific named counties and facilities:
- Johnson County — 16 arrests (including 8 non-custodial arrests and 7 through the county sheriff’s office)
- Wabaunsee County — 3 arrests
- Riley County — 2 arrests
- Lyon County — 2 arrests
- Anderson County — 2 arrests
- Shawnee County — 1 arrest
- Miami County — 1 arrest
- Geary County — 1 arrest
The single Shawnee County arrest on record was made at the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office. That figure is almost certainly lower than the actual number of immigration enforcement encounters originating in Shawnee County — for reasons explained below.
What the Data Does Not Capture
This dataset records only arrests initiated by ICE agents. It does not include ICE detainers — formal requests from federal immigration authorities asking local jails to hold an individual beyond their scheduled release date so ICE can assume custody.
Detainers are a distinct mechanism. In a detainer scenario, local law enforcement makes an arrest on a separate charge — a DUI, a domestic dispute, a traffic violation — and ICE subsequently places a hold on the individual. ICE does not make the arrest; local officers do. That interaction does not appear in this dataset.
Reporting by This Is Topeka has documented multiple ICE holds at the Shawnee County Adult Detention Center since early 2025, including individuals arrested by the Kansas Highway Patrol on traffic offenses and held under federal immigration detainers. In July 2025, the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office formally entered into a 287(g) Task Force Model agreement with ICE — a program that authorizes local deputies to perform certain immigration enforcement functions under federal oversight. That partnership formalized a layer of local-federal cooperation that does not generate entries in ICE’s direct arrest records.
In short: the 184 figure represents ICE’s own enforcement footprint in this region. The full scope of immigration enforcement — including every individual held in a county jail on an ICE detainer — is broader, and is not fully captured in any single public dataset.
Context
The data covers a period when ICE enforcement activity was intensifying nationally. All 458 Kansas arrests in the dataset were made by ICE, with virtually all falling under the Chicago Area of Responsibility — the federal enforcement region that covers Kansas. The dataset was filtered from a national total of 713,464 arrests, suggesting Kansas represents a small but active slice of a much larger federal enforcement operation.
For Topeka-area residents seeking to understand the scale of immigration enforcement in their communities, the ICE arrest data provides a factual baseline — while making clear that detainer holds, 287(g) cooperation, and non-custodial enforcement activity represent additional dimensions that require separate tracking to fully understand.
Data source: ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations arrest records, filtered for Kansas, December 31, 2025 – March 10, 2026. Analysis based on 458 statewide records and 184 records attributed to the Topeka metro and surrounding northeast Kansas region.
