WICHITA, Kansas — The former mayor of Coldwater, Kansas, walked into a nondescript office building in Wichita on Wednesday morning and turned himself in to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, as ordered by the agency this week.
Joe Ceballos’ surrender to federal immigration detention comes less than a month after he pleaded guilty to voting illegally as a noncitizen. Ceballos is a legal permanent resident — or green card holder — but not a citizen.
“I’m obviously nervous,” Ceballos said from the parking lot of the detention building. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know where they’re going to take me and what I can and can’t do inside there.”
Ceballos walked into the building with his immigration attorney, Sarah Balderas. He went through a security check, handed over his phone and keys to officers but was allowed to keep his hearing aids, Balderas said.
Balderas said that for the next day or so, Ceballos will be held in the building before he’s transferred to a larger detention facility like the Chase County Detention center or the Midwest Regional Reception Center in Leavenworth. From there, his attorney will request a bond hearing with an immigration judge.
None of this is the way Ceballos, his community or his attorneys expected things to go.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach announced charges against Ceballos in November, the day after Coldwater residents reelected him as the town’s mayor. He was charged with six felonies, three counts of voting without being qualified and three counts of election perjury.
Ceballos was born in Mexico and immigrated to the United States in 1975, when he was 4 years old. He’s lived in Coldwater since 1986 and was granted a green card in 1990.
Ceballos has said he registered to vote during a high school field trip and called it “an honest mistake” on his part. He said he believed his permanent residency status allowed him to vote.
The charges filed against him stem from votes he cast in 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Kobach said in November that “voting by noncitizens, including both legal and illegal aliens, is a very real problem.”
Ceballos hired criminal defense attorney Jess Hoeme following his arrest. Hoeme worked on Ceballos’ case over the last six months and eventually helped Ceballos plead to a set of lower charges in April.
Speaking to KMUW on Wednesday, Hoeme said he gives Kobach credit for “looking at the totality of the case and measuring the man that Joe Ceballos is and enabling the disposition that we did.”
Hoeme described the three counts of misdemeanor disorderly election conduct that Ceballos pleaded to as “basically causing a breach of the peace at an election polling place.”
A Comanche County judge sentenced Ceballos to one year of probation with a six-month jail sentence that is suspended. Ceballos also agreed to pay a $2,000 fine plus court fees.
Hoeme said that moment, delivered a career first for him.
“There was extraordinary applause,” Hoeme said. “First time in my career I’ve ever seen that. The entire courtroom was packed with people that believe in Joe and supported him and they erupted in joy because the disposition of the case should not have caused this.”
Hoeme and Balderas said they didn’t hear anything from immigration officials during the course of Ceballos’ criminal case. Balderas was contacted on Monday by immigration agents who said that Ceballos needed to report to Wichita for detention on Wednesday.
Ceballos said he and his friends and neighbors feel misled.
“They thought it was all over,” Ceballos said.
“They can’t believe it’s happening to a guy like myself,” he added. “A guy who is trying to live the American Dream, and it can be taken away from me.”
Ceballos applied for naturalization in February 2025. As part of that process Ceballos was interviewed by immigration agents. He was asked if he’d ever claimed to be a U.S. citizen or voted. Ceballos said he hadn’t identified as a citizen, but told the agent honestly that he’d voted.
Balderas said she was surprised by the detention order. Typically her clients receive a notice to appear before a judge in the mail and are allowed to appear in court on that day without detention before that point.
Even though Ceballos wasn’t convicted of the felony voting offenses, he did admit to voting.
“The Department of Homeland Security is going off admission of guilt,” ,” Balderas said. “Things like saying you’re a U.S. citizen or voting when you’re not supposed to, those types of things are considered removable offenses.”
She said that Ceballos’ arrest on Wednesday was conducted on an administrative warrant that is based only on the naturalization case.”
“They’re essentially saying he’s removable from the United States for past conduct,” Balderas said. “It was an ultimatum. If he didn’t show up today, they were going to arrest him on the warrant regardless.”
Before surrendering to immigration agents, Ceballos said he’s still hoping for “a happy ending.”
“We’ll go through this process,” Ceballos said. “We’ll do what they want us to do and take one day at a time.”
