Clay, Platte County presiding commissioners push back on Mayor Lucas’ migrant plan
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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Saturday, Clay and Platte County’s presiding commissioners came out with a joint statement calling on Mayor Quinton Lucas to withdraw his plan to bring migrants from other cities to work here.
Tuesday afternoon, Mayor Lucas posted a Bloomberg article on X where he said he’s working with the mayors of Denver and New York City, saying he’s open to bringing migrants here to work.
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“What we’re saying is, if you’ve gone through that work, a work permit, you’ve worked with the Department of Homeland Security, and you are lawfully present here in the United States, then you know what? We want to welcome you, and we want to make sure there’s a way you can find work in our community,” Mayor Lucas said to reporters a day later.
Clay County Presiding Commissioner Jerry Nolte and Platte County Presiding Commissioner Scott Fricker say Mayor Lucas’ plan would violate a state sanctuary city law, possibly resulting in the loss of state funding.
Nolte’s a former Republican State House Rep. Fricker’s a Republican as well. Their statement Sunday did reflect the same concern Republican Lieutenant Governor Mike Kehoe brought up the previous week.
“If you have a city who wants to be a sanctuary city or bring illegal aliens into its inner core and spend resources on it, then that means we don’t need to be providing resources to that community through our state budget,” Kehoe said.
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Kehoe’s running to be the state’s next governor. Nolte and Fricker’s statement says Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey wrote a letter to Mayor Lucas Thursday, saying the city’s top elected leader’s “encouraging businesses to become entangled in a fundamentally unlawful program, exposing them to legal liability in the process.”
Bailey is running to continue being the state’s Attorney General. Both he and Kehoe have opponents in their Republican primaries in August.
Also Thursday, Northland City Councilman Nathan Willet came out with a resolution affirming to the state legislature that the city would not become a sanctuary city for ‘undocumented immigrants.’ It’s supposed to be in front of the city’s Special Committee for Legal Review Tuesday.
