New Kansas law limits efforts to document ICE activity. Video shows how officers utilize the law.
An ICE officer orders Shana Leacox to move back, after officers blocked her with their cars on July 11 in Olathe. (Kansas Reflector screen capture from Shana Leacox video)
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers surrounded a Lenexa woman recording video from her car as an officer shouted “25 feet, 25 feet” and ordered her to move back July 11 in Olathe.
She couldn’t move because they had trapped her.
The officer’s command referenced a Kansas law called the Halo Act. Effective July 1, it criminalized “unlawfully approaching” law enforcement officers or first responders within 25 feet under certain circumstances. The law changed how people like Shana Leacox document ICE activity.
An ICE officer shouts “25 feet” to Shana Leacox. “I’m stuck,” she says. “I can’t move.” She said she rolled up her windows and turned off her air conditioning because she saw an ICE officer holding what looked like pepper spray. (Video by Shana Leacox)
Leacox, a 36-year-old Lenexa resident, said while she watched ICE activity from her car that day, she thought of Renee Good, the 37-year-old Minneapolis woman who was shot and killed in her car by an ICE officer in January.
“The main thought was, ‘I should call my husband,’ ” Leacox said, “but I really felt the instinct that I should keep recording.”
Leacox wasn’t arrested, but her experience reminded her of how quickly encounters with ICE can escalate.
Since Good’s death, immigration officers have shot at several others. After immigration officers recently shot and killed two men in their cars, the Department of Homeland Security ordered ICE to stop conducting traffic stops. President Donald Trump reversed the order the next day.
ICE watchers
As ICE presence escalated in Kansas, a secretive network of ICE watchers formed.
Leacox and hundreds of others in the Kansas City metro area are part of encrypted group messaging channels. As Leacox did July 11, members of their area’s respective channels can receive alerts of ICE activity, go to the scenes and record videos on their phones.
Mordecai Krehemker, a 28-year-old medical technician from Kansas City, Kansas, started recording ICE a few months ago and has filmed immigration officers three or four times.
“We’re not harassing or protesting or shouting, getting in people’s ways,” Krehemker said. “We’re purely there to ensure the safety of our neighborhood, and to make sure that these agents are abiding by the law.”
Activist organizations operating the network gatekeep the message channels by requiring training sessions and vetting the people who sign up. Training covers safety, deescalation, constitutional rights and keeping a 25-foot distance from officers whenever possible.
They work under the threat of prosecution, and one member of the network declined to participate in this story for fear of her safety.
Ryan Kriegshauser, the U.S. attorney for Kansas, issued a statement in February warning ICE watchers in the Kansas City area not to “aggressively chase or interfere” with federal agents.
“The District of Kansas strongly supports and seeks to protect freedom of speech and the right to peacefully protest,” Kriegshauser said. “We also believe it is imperative that protests be carried out in a responsible and legal manner to reduce the chance of injury to either law enforcement or to the public.”
Shana Leacox records ICE officers July 11 in a parking lot near the corner of Harrison Street and Dennis Avenue in Olathe. “I am trapped in here,” she says while recording. “I know that there’s the 25-foot Halo Law, but you’ll see there’s a cop here. I’m blocked in by these two vehicles, three, and there’s nowhere to go on this side. This is a trap.” (Video by Shana Leacox)
Recording videos
Immigration attorney Michael Sharma-Crawford has worked on detainment cases in Kansas and Missouri for 20 years. He said videos can prove the facts of an ICE arrest.
“You can demonstrate that that person was arrested before they ever gave them a piece of paper,” he said. “And so it defeats their argument that they used a warrant to arrest them when, in fact, that person was never free to leave.”
ICE became involved in litigation over warrantless arrests in multiple states in recent years, according to reports from States Newsroom affiliates.
Sharma-Crawford used interior camera footage of a 2025 ICE raid at the El Potro restaurant in Lawrence to challenge detainments. He said the use of the footage in some litigation was successful.
“So much so that the next time ICE was doing restaurant enforcement work, the first thing they did was disable the interior cameras,” he said.
He passed the footage to an attorney handling a 2025 detainment case in a Chicago district court, Castañon Nava v. Department of Homeland Security. The attorney was successful, and the district court found ICE arrested 13 individuals without warrants and ordered their release in 2025. A Chicago court of appeals affirmed the decision in May.
“With that video,” Sharma-Crawford said, “he was able to demonstrate that later-created documents by the Department of Homeland Security didn’t match with what had actually occurred in the restaurant.”
He said audio recordings can prove how well an immigration officer communicated with the person they arrested, especially because officers frequently detain people who speak languages other than English, such as Spanish or Portuguese.
“We’d want to know,” he said, “how good are your language skills when you say, ‘I conversed with this person in Spanish?’ ”
Krehemker said it is impossible to record audio from 25 feet away with a cellphone.
“When it comes to recording from a distance, you aren’t able to pick up any audio of what’s happening or communicate with the person being abducted,” they said. “So that really makes it challenging to ensure what is happening is constitutional.”
Freedom of speech
Max Kautsch, a First Amendment rights lawyer, called the Halo Act unconstitutional.
“It directly limits the ability to record officers performing their official duties in public,” he said.
He also said the 25-foot buffer zone is unconstitutional because it is vague.
When lawmakers address speech, they must write a law narrowly tailored to a specific issue that imposes as few restrictions on free speech as possible, based on how the First Amendment has been applied in court rulings.
“It is inadequately narrowly tailored because it gives law enforcement officers complete discretion to determine the circumstances for a violation,” he said.
Krehemker said members of the ICE watchers network try but don’t know how to follow the Halo Act while recording videos.
“How do you measure you’re 25 feet away from people?” Krehemker said. “Do I need a tape measure to reach out and see how far I am? What happens if they move and approach me in a direction? Do I have to maintain that distance?’ ”
The legislation says a person violates the law when they approach or remain within 25 feet of an in-action, clearly identifiable first responder after receiving a visual or verbal signal to stay back. The bystander must also distract the responder or increase their concern for potential harm to unlawfully approach.
The penalty for violation includes fines up to $1,000 and as much as six months in jail.
Emily Bradbury, the Kansas Press Association executive director, testified against the Halo Act bill in March. She said the bill violated free speech and could cost taxpayers money for litigation.
“Officers arresting such onlookers in violation of those rights would not be entitled to qualified immunity,” she said in her written testimony. “As a result, this bill could lead to a wave of costly civil rights lawsuits.”
Republicans in the House and Senate overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto to turn House Bill 2372 into law.
Shana Leacox records an ICE officer backing up toward someone’s truck. A report of an ICE officer’s phone call to the police noted accusations that the red truck tried to hit officers. Leacox accused the ICE officer driving the blue vehicle of trying to hit the truck. (Video by Shana Leacox)
Law enforcement
According to the Lawrence, Wichita and Kansas City, Kansas, police departments and the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, the agencies haven’t arrested someone for violating the Halo Act.
While police officers arrived at the July 11 scene, Leacox said they didn’t interact with her.
According to Olathe police records, ICE officer Jack Ravencamp called the police while trying to make an arrest. Ravencamp is facing a Maine lawsuit in federal court, where he is accused of arresting an immigrant with a valid visa, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The police report of the call documented the phone operator’s remarks while talking to Ravencamp.
“People have been coming up to them running their mouths,” the report said.
The operator also noted “two people detained” and accusations of a red truck trying to ram the ICE officers. Leacox said she did not witness a vehicle try to hit an ICE officer or officer’s vehicle.
“No matter what, we should all just keep recording,” Leacox said. “They’ll try and get away with lying about these interactions, and we want to make sure that we’re holding them accountable.”