Nomin Ujiyediin / Kansas News Service
Originally published on December 21, 2020 8:58 am
Leoti Masterson hasn’t seen her son, Jeff, since March. She used to visit him at the Winfield Correctional Facility once a week to play cards, reminisce and pray together, sometimes for hours at a time.
But when the pandemic started, Kansas prisons stopped allowing visitors as a coronavirus precaution. Now, Masterson makes do with daily phone calls no longer than 20 minutes.
“He’s my closest family member,” Masterson said. “So, yeah, this is hard.”
Yet suspending visits hasn’t kept the coronavirus from Kansas prisons. It was first detected at the Lansing Correctional Facility in early April. Cases have been found in staff and inmates at nearly every facility since.
Noah Taborda, Kansas Reflector
photo by: Getty Images
A new ACLU of Kansas data tool shows ICE removed 43,069 immigrants across the state in 2019, down from 77,858 in 2018.
TOPEKA Thousands of people who are arrested or removed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have no criminal conviction or just a minor traffic offense, according to records compiled into a new statewide data tool made available by the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas.
Information sourced from the Syracuse TRAC system details the number of ICE arrests and removals in Kansas and the highest level of crime committed, if any. In 2019, 43,069 people were removed by ICE in Kansas, down from 77,858 in 2018.