photo by: Contributed and AP File Photos

Douglas County Commission Chair Karen Willey, left, and Trump administration adviser Stephen Miller, right.

If you ask America First Legal, a group founded by a prominent Trump adviser, Douglas County is making “a mockery of American democracy” when it comes to federal immigration law and is setting itself up for “serious consequences.”

The conservative group sent a letter in December to Douglas County Commission Chair Karen Willey accusing the county of acting as a “sanctuary jurisdiction” for undocumented immigrants and warning her that “Such lawlessness subjects you and your subordinates to significant risk of criminal and civil liability.”

If you ask Willey? She doesn’t believe any laws have been broken.

“The letter doesn’t include any specific information outlining how they feel Douglas County is violating the law,” Willey told the Journal-World via email. “To our knowledge, Douglas County is not violating any federal immigration laws.”

In part because there’s no consistent definition of a “sanctuary jurisdiction,” it’s not clear which side is right. Douglas County is in a state where sanctuary cities are illegal — but it’s also a place where the largest city tried at one point to become a sanctuary city, and the sheriff’s office no longer accepts a certain kind of order from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But while the letter may not be detailed in its allegations, it could be an ominous sign as a second Trump administration promising mass deportations is preparing to take office.

The founder of America First Legal is Stephen Miller, who served as a senior policy adviser to Donald Trump during his first term and was named in November to be Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser. And the letter — one of nearly 250 sent to elected officials across the country — warns that “you and the other officials who support or enforce sanctuary laws, policies, and regulations have a very personal stake in the matter.”

“[Y]ou each could face criminal prosecution and civil liability for your illegal acts,” it reads. “We urge you to do the right thing, protect your citizens, and comply with federal law.”

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Of the 249 elected officials the America First Legal letters were sent to, the one to Willey appears unique — it’s the only one listed on the conservative group’s website that’s directed at a local government official in Kansas. The only other Kansas letter listed was to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.

The letter, which is listed on the site as a “Letter to the Douglas County Chairman, Board of Commissioners,” claims that Douglas County, for its alleged sanctuary policies, could be exposing its employees to a variety of legal risks.

Specifically, it says that “Concealing, harboring, or shielding aliens is a federal crime,” and that “you and your subordinates” could be prosecuted “for conspiracy to commit a federal offense and conspiracy to impede a federal officer” if they attempt to hinder the enforcement of federal immigration law. It also says that any government employee involved in implementing sanctuary policies could face up to five years in prison.

Parts of the letter, rather than making threats, castigate the county for its alleged policy stance.

“Your jurisdiction’s sanctuary laws or policies therefore make a mockery of American democracy and demonstrate a shocking disrespect for the rule of law,” the letter states in its conclusion. “For these reasons alone, you should abandon them.”

Although Willey said she didn’t believe the county had broken the law, the Journal-World specifically asked Willey whether she believed the county counted as a sanctuary jurisdiction. Willey’s response did not say one way or the other whether she thought the label applied.

The Journal-World also asked the other two sitting members of the County Commission, Patrick Kelly and Shannon Reid, about whether they considered Douglas County to be a sanctuary jurisdiction and whether they had any concerns regarding the letter sent by America First Legal. Kelly said he personally did not receive the letter in question and directed the Journal-World to Willey, as the letter was addressed to her. Reid did not respond.

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Immigration protections and the debate about sanctuary cities can be a complicated topic to follow in Lawrence and Douglas County — especially since not everyone agrees on what a “sanctuary” is.

The American Immigration Council, a nonprofit immigration advocacy group, says in a fact sheet on its website that “There is no universal definition of a sanctuary policy.” Instead, it says that the term can refer to a broad range of protections for immigrants, including restricting police from detaining people on civil immigration warrants; refusing to allow ICE into jails without a judicial warrant; and restricting local government workers from asking people about their immigration status.

The common theme is that “Sanctuary policies are based on the idea that the federal government cannot compel jurisdictions to take part in immigration enforcement,” the American Immigration Council’s site said.

In Douglas County, the largest city — Lawrence — attempted to adopt a set of immigrant protections a few years ago, only to walk it back out of concern that it might conflict with a state law on sanctuary cities.

In 2020, the city passed an ordinance that required public notification in two immigration-related situations: if the police department was aware of certain federal immigration activities in Lawrence, or the department made changes to its policy that generally limits police cooperation with federal immigration agents for noncriminal matters. That ordinance was developed with the help of the local immigrant advocacy group Sanctuary Alliance.

However, in 2022, state legislators passed a law that banned sanctuary cities in Kansas. The City Commission then voted to strike several provisions from the city’s ordinance. The commissioners indicated that they opposed the state law — and so did Sanctuary Alliance, which blasted it as racist and xenophobic. But, in the end, the majority of the commission said it was necessary to make the changes and ensure that the city was in compliance with the state law.

“This makes me really sad — we worked on this for two years,” then-Vice Mayor Lisa Larsen said at the time. “… There was a lot of compromise, a lot of discussion, very heartfelt, and I thought we really came up with a good ordinance. The state can come in and in one swoop it’s gone.”

In a response to questions from the Journal-World about the recent letter from America First Legal, the City Attorney’s Office asserted that Lawrence was not a sanctuary city. The Journal-World also asked for comments about the letter from the four current city commissioners who were on the commission for the 2022 vote: Larsen, Amber Sellers, Bart Littlejohn and Brad Finkeldei. Larsen declined to comment, and the other three did not respond to the Journal-World’s inquiry.

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In Douglas County’s government, the sheriff’s office under Sheriff Jay Armbrister has taken some steps to reduce tension between law enforcement and immigrants — including refusing to hold people on a certain kind of form that’s signed by an ICE agent instead of a judge.

The catalyst for this decision was a case in 2023 involving a woman named Anabel Alonso-Martinez. Her attorney discovered that she would be held on an immigration detainer after she bonded out of jail for a misdemeanor domestic battery charge, and he filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Judge Carl A. Folsom III then ordered Armbrister to either release the woman or to explain in writing why she was being held, and Armbrister released the woman at the end of a 72-hour period.

At the time, Armbrister said that the woman’s defense attorney, Samuel Allison-Natale, brought it to his attention that the form may not be legally binding on the sheriff’s office, because it was a form signed by an ICE agent, not a warrant signed by a judge.

The sheriff’s office then began reviewing the issue in more detail, Armbrister told the Journal-World last week, and following the review, the department stopped accepting what’s known as ICE Form I-274a, a request sent by ICE to a local law enforcement agency to hold a person suspected to be in the country illegally for a limited time.

Armbrister said that when an agency requests an arrest warrant for a person, it only becomes valid after a judge signs it — not just in the sheriff’s office’s eyes, but in the eyes of the law. He said that kind of ICE form is indeed signed by an agent and not a judge.

However, there is a type of ICE form that Armbrister said it would be appropriate for the sheriff’s office to accept. It’s called ICE Form I-200, and it authorizes the arrest of an individual for immigration violations, essentially serving as a warrant for taking someone into custody for deportation proceedings.

If the department were to receive one of these, Armbrister said, the department would detain the individual for 48 hours while ICE arranged transportation for the person. But Armbrister also said that the department had not encountered many of these cases. Zero individuals were held on this kind of detainer in 2024, he said.

Armbrister said he wanted to make it clear that his office doesn’t seek out people who are in the U.S. illegally. Instead, it’s more common for undocumented immigrants to be discovered after being arrested for some other reason and listed in a database.

“We do not contact ICE to say, ‘We’ve got somebody that we think you guys need to look at,'” Armbrister said. “What happens is, when you’re arrested, fingerprints and information goes into not only local and state databases, but it goes into a national database.”

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While the question of whether Douglas County is or is not a sanctuary jurisdiction may not be settled, it’s likely that protections for immigrants across the country will be tested by the incoming Trump administration — and that Miller, the founder of America First Legal, will be a key player in that fight.

In November, Miller was named to join the new Trump administration as deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, and NPR reported that he was expected to play a major role in shaping and implementing Trump’s immigration policies, including plans for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

Miller caused some controversy in the first Trump term after the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch project reported on leaked emails from Miller to the far-right news outlet Breitbart. The emails, according to the SPLC, “promoted white nationalist literature, pushed racist immigration stories and obsessed over the loss of Confederate symbols.” Following the revelation of the emails, as NPR reported, civil rights activists and more than 100 members of Congress, all Democrats, called for his resignation as White House adviser, but at the time the White House stood behind him.

The Associated Press has reported that Trump, ahead of his second term, has called for using the National Guard and domestic police forces to conduct mass deportation operations, and that some Democratic-led states are trying to boost legal protections for immigrants facing deportation as a preemptive measure.

Armbrister, for his part, expressed concerns about the strained relationships between police and the community that could result from stronger immigration enforcement efforts. He worried that the perception that it’s not safe to go to the police would create more tension between police and the community and undermine public safety.

“I don’t want anybody ever to feel like they can’t contact law enforcement for protection and for justice, just because they are afraid that we will deport them or detain them to be deported,” Armbrister said.