Roger Marshall Immigration Cost of Living Kansas

Roger Marshall Voted to Give ICE Nearly $70 Billion and Said 'Nothing Has Changed in How ICE Operates.' Now ICE Is in Dodge City and He's in a Close Race.

For a year, Roger Marshall cheered ICE and voted to fund it. Now that immigration raids have hit Dodge City, Garden City and Liberal, shut down meatpacking lines and caught local police by surprise, and a new poll shows him narrowly trailing, he wants ICE to 'coordinate with our local law enforcement.'

MAGA Report Cards · Sep 26, 2026

Roger Marshall Voted to Give ICE Nearly $70 Billion and Said 'Nothing Has Changed in How ICE Operates.' Now ICE Is in Dodge City and He's in a Close Race.

This week, federal immigration agents swept through southwest Kansas. They hit Dodge City, Garden City and Liberal, three meatpacking towns. And Roger Marshall, who has spent the past year cheering ICE on, suddenly found a complaint.

"When ICE operates in Kansas, it needs to coordinate with our local law enforcement," Marshall wrote on social media Wednesday, the Kansas City Star reported. "Our sheriffs and police know these communities better than anyone, and working together keeps officers and residents safe."

That's a reasonable thing to say. It's also the opposite of everything Marshall said and did about ICE before his job was on the line.

What Marshall said before

In March, lawmakers were fighting over ICE funding after two American citizens, Renee Good and ICU nurse Alex Pretti, were killed in Minneapolis. Marshall's response, according to the Star: "Nothing has changed in how ICE operates — they will continue to detain and deport violent illegal aliens. Your family is safer today than 4 years ago."

The summer before, Democrats raised alarms about ICE raids in Johnson and Wyandotte counties. Marshall praised the agency's "targeted enforcement operations," saying: "President Trump promised to make America safe again, and he is delivering on that promise."

What Marshall did before

Marshall didn't just talk. On June 5, 2026, he voted yes when the Senate passed S. 2, 52 to 47. That bill handed ICE and the Border Patrol nearly $70 billion more. We covered that vote when it happened: 52 Republican senators voted to give ICE nearly $70 billion, on top of the deportation money Congress had already approved the year before. Marshall was one of them.

When you give an agency that much money and cheer its every move, you don't get to act surprised by how it spends it.

What happened in southwest Kansas

The three cities said in a joint statement that nobody warned them. Their governments and police "were not notified in advance," and only learned about the raids "as the presence of federal agents became apparent to the public."

Ranchers are feeling it too. The Kansas Livestock Association, the Texas Cattle Feeders Association and the Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association put out a joint statement saying the raids are shutting down or slowing meat-processing plants. Workers are staying home, cattle are backing up, and ranchers are paying extra to truck animals back to feed yards. "These ICE operations are having a massive chilling effect on the legal, documented, skilled workers that put beef on the table," the groups said. "These types of disruptions will lead to higher beef prices for consumers."

That lands on top of ground beef that already hit a record of about $7 a pound this summer.

In another statement, Marshall said law enforcement "were not given advance notice or the level of cooperation we would expect" from ICE, and that "there have been mass disruptions to local communities and businesses."

Why now?

Marshall is running for reelection against the Rev. Adam Hamilton. An Emerson College poll last week had Hamilton at 44.8% and Marshall at 43.3%, in a state that hasn't elected a Democratic senator since 1932.

Park University political scientist Matt Harris told the Star that Hamilton's campaign has pushed Marshall to "come towards the middle" to win over moderates and independents.

Marshall's campaign has had other problems too. We've reported on the 700 patients his medical practice sued, some of whom were arrested over debts, and on his Florida paper trail.

A new tone on social media doesn't return a vote. The $70 billion is already law.

The bottom line

Roger Marshall voted in June to give ICE and the Border Patrol nearly $70 billion. In March he insisted "nothing has changed in how ICE operates." Now ICE has swept through three Kansas meatpacking towns without warning local police, and the state's own ranchers say it is slowing beef processing and will raise prices. Trailing in a new poll, Marshall is asking ICE to coordinate with local police.