Toward the end of an Olathe City Council meeting on Feb. 17, Councilmember Matthew Schoonover took a moment to address the community following two recent high-profile incidents involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the city.
“I think everybody here in Olathe deserves to feel at home and respected,” he said.
He applauded Olathe Police in particular. While some other local law enforcement agencies in Kansas had entered formal agreements with the federal government to assist ICE in deportation operations, Olathe Chief of Police Mike Butaud was on record as stating Olathe Police had no role in enforcing federal immigration laws.
“I certainly appreciate, Chief, your assurance that our police department was not involved in any of those activities,” Schoonover said. “And I think our residents appreciate that confirmation.”
But just the day before that city council meeting, an Olathe Police officer was involved in an immigration enforcement operation when he pulled over a 21-year-old man from Guatemala and his sister, shared their location with ICE and detained the pair for more than 30 minutes until federal agents arrived.
The agents ultimately took the man into custody. Weeks later, he was deported back to Guatemala.
In an interview in April, Butaud confirmed the officer’s actions violated Olathe Police’s policy for interacting with ICE and that the officer subsequently faced undisclosed disciplinary action.
Records, dispatch logs and internal emails obtained by the Post shed light on how a routine traffic stop became an immigration detention and ultimately a deportation. The incident raises questions about how the Olathe department’s publicly stated policies for working with ICE are carried out in practice and the consequences when those protocols are broken.
'I never imagined that they would call ICE'
On the morning of Feb. 16, Carlos received a video call from his little sister, Ana, which he recorded.
It shows a young woman sitting in a car, wailing, unable to catch her breath.
On the call, Carlos can be heard saying, “No llores. No llores, mi hermana.”
Don’t cry. Don’t cry, my sister.
Juan, Carlos and Ana’s brother, had just been detained by ICE agents.
(The Post is using pseudonyms for Juan and his siblings to protect their privacy. Interviews with the family were conducted through an interpreter.)
Juan said that while he always knew there was a chance he would have a run-in with ICE, it never crossed his mind it would begin with a traffic stop by the Olathe Police Department.
“Normally, when a police officer stops you for something, they simply give you a ticket or a warning, but I never imagined that they would call ICE,” Juan told the Post through text this week.
The three siblings immigrated from Guatemala in 2022 to find work and send money home to their grandmother, leaving their parents behind. They all shared an apartment in Olathe — a city Juan said they chose because of its safety. He told the Post at the time of his deportation he was going through the process of obtaining asylum.
Carlos, who is still in the U.S., said his brother is hardworking and serious.
“He had no vices, he didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke at all,” he told the Post in an in-person interview in April. “He’d go to work, come home and stay home.”
That’s where Juan and Ana, their 20-year-old sister, were going on Feb. 16 — to their farming jobs — when Olathe Police Officer Todd Boyer pulled them over.
According to Computer Aided Dispatch logs (the electronic records that track officer activity in real-time), Juan’s retelling and secondhand accounts from Carlos and Chief Butaud, this is what happened:
At 7:20 a.m., Boyer pulled Juan and Ana over. He approached their car and asked for Juan’s identification. Butaud said he didn’t have a valid driver’s license, which is a Class B misdemeanor in Kansas.
According to Carlos, Boyer told the siblings he’d return shortly and went back to his patrol car.
“The police officer told him — he didn’t even say why he stopped him,” Carlos, the oldest sibling, said. “He just said, ‘Wait here for 5 minutes,’ and then immigration arrived and took him away.”
Boyer later told Butaud he pulled Juan over for speeding.
The traffic stop took a little over an hour. During that time, the dispatch log, archived by the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, shows Boyer followed Olathe Police Department protocol for the first eight minutes.
After speaking with Juan, Boyer ran a background check, which, according to Butaud, flagged Juan as having an immigration warrant. The call logs confirm this was at 7:28 a.m.
A second Olathe police officer, who is unnamed in the records, was also called for backup and arrived minutes after Boyer contacted ICE.
Immigration warrants typically fall into two categories: administrative and judicial. Judicial warrants are signed by a judge and are tied to alleged criminal violations. Administrative warrants are issued by the federal Department of Homeland Security and pertain to civil immigration matters, like being in the country without legal permission or with deportation proceedings in place.
Boyer called the ICE hotline to determine if the warrant was administrative or judicial, Butaud told the Post.
Juan’s was administrative.
“Upon confirmation that the warrant was administrative in nature, the officer’s actions did not align with the standards of the Olathe Police Department,” Butaud said in a statement.
But it wasn’t calling ICE that broke Olathe PD policy, Butaud said — it was what happened next.
At that point, Boyer should have cited Juan’s infractions for speeding and driving without a license, according to department policy, and allowed him to drive away.
But, police records obtained by the Post show Juan and Ana waited in their car on the shoulder of Interstate 35 for at least 30 minutes.
Olathe PD’s official policy regarding how to deal with immigration-related matters reads:
“An officer should not detain any individual, for any length of time, for a civil violation of federal immigration laws or a related civil warrant.”
It goes on to say that an officer is only permitted to continue a detention if there is probable cause that the person committed a criminal immigration offense, like entering the U.S. after deportation.
Butaud told the Post it wasn’t Boyer’s intention for ICE to come to where he had stopped Juan and Ana — that he only called the ICE hotline to determine the type of warrant Juan had, which essentially triggered agents to arrive.
But, local immigration attorneys say the officer had to have played a more active role during the stop.
Michael Sharma-Crawford, from Sharma-Crawford Attorneys At Law in Kansas City, Missouri, told the Post ICE had no way of knowing exactly where on I-35 Juan had been pulled over without being given exact coordinates.
Butaud confirmed Boyer gave ICE the stop’s location.
“They’re supposed to protect and serve, but with me and my sister, they did the opposite,” Juan said. When they arrived, Ana refused to provide ICE agents with her identification.
Juan was never charged with speeding or driving without a license, which is reflected in the official offense report Boyer filed after the stop. He describes the event as “INVEST- ASST OUTSIDE AGENCY,” or assisting an outside agency.
The Olathe Police Department denied the Post’s request to speak with Boyer directly.
'This offer will only be used in highly extraordinary situations'
By the time Juan was pulled over, the Olathe Police Department had been aware of ICE’s presence in the city for over a year.
In January 2025, a special agent with Kansas City’s Homeland Security Investigations Office sent an email to an Olathe police officer.
The email, which came two days after President Trump’s inauguration, alerted the officer that Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, which is the division of ICE that looks into criminal operations, would be proactively conducting immigration investigations in the city.
It said HSI agents were willing and available to respond to “undocumented immigrants encountered during roadside enforcement,” but Olathe PD officials seemed reluctant to take HSI up on the offer.
Three days after HSI sent its email, Chief Butaud sent his own email to his sergeants.
It began:
Sergeants–
With the signing of some recent Presidential Executive Orders, the Olathe Community may see an increased presence of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). This change should have very little impact on how the Olathe Police Department continues to serve and protect our community while enforcing the law.
It goes on to explain HSI’s offer to respond to “undocumented immigrants encountered roadside.”
“In an effort to continue to provide the most safe and efficient service to the entire Olathe Community, this offer will only be used in highly extraordinary situations,” Butaud wrote.
Whether an incident is a “highly extraordinary situation” is up to the discretion of the department’s leadership.
Butaud’s email continues: “Do not share the contact information for HSI as all contact should be handled by on-duty Sergeants.”
Boyer, who’s been a police officer with Olathe for 11 years, isn’t a sergeant.
“In other words,” Butaud’s email ends, “keep doing what you’re doing.”
The police chief’s guidance to sergeants exists alongside Olathe PD’s formal immigration policy, which allows officers to have some communication with federal immigration enforcement agents:
“Nothing in this policy is intended to prohibit any authorized exchange of information regarding citizenship or immigration status with any other federal, state or local government entity,” the policy states.
Additionally, after the other ICE-related incidents in February, Butaud released a public statement that read, in part:
“The Olathe Police Department does not engage in immigration enforcement activities unless the circumstances involve a criminal offense within our authority to enforce.”
According to Butaud, Boyer obtained the ICE hotline number from a sheriff’s deputy, who was working as the traffic stop’s dispatcher. The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office provides dispatching services for Olathe PD and several other cities.
Together, the policies, emails and statements indicate officers were navigating without clear orders around when and how ICE contact was appropriate.
Still, Butaud told the Post that Boyer’s actions only officially fell outside department policy once the warrant was confirmed to be administrative and Juan and Ana continued to be detained.
Because Olathe PD did not make Boyer available for comment, it’s unclear whether he believed he was violating policy during the traffic stop.
Olathe PD’s official immigration policy doesn’t state the consequences for an officer who breaks protocol.
Butaud declined to tell the Post what, if any, disciplinary actions were taken against Boyer for breaking policy, saying it was a personnel matter. He said that he reiterated the department’s protocol to officers after the incident.
Butaud told the Post that this was the only time an Olathe Police Department officer has broken the department’s ICE policies.
Boyer is still employed by the Olathe Police Department.
Growing coordination between ICE and local law enforcement
Valerie Sprout, an Overland Park immigration attorney, said traffic infractions leading to ICE detentions are “nothing new.”
It happens so frequently, Sprout warns her clients about it.
“Make sure you are obeying all traffic laws, your car’s in good working order, you don’t speed,” she said.
Sprout said it’s common for a call to ICE by law enforcement to escalate rapidly because ICE agents have quotas. Last year, the Washington Post reported that each field office — which generally covers a metro area — was instructed to detain 75 people a day.
“Contact with law enforcement is almost like low-hanging fruit for ICE,” she said.
At a national level, the Trump administration has pressed law enforcement agencies to collaborate with ICE.
In 1996, the U.S. government started the 287(g) program, which gives local law enforcement agencies the power to perform some immigration-related enforcement activities, like questioning someone’s status while in custody.
Participating agencies can receive training and monetary compensation.
In February of 2025, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach announced the Kansas Bureau of Investigation had entered a 287(g) partnership with the federal government.
Later that year, the KBI located 10 immigrants in Kansas with criminal offenses and placed them into ICE custody.
“Had my office not obtained 287(g) authority and investigated these cases, these dangerous illegal aliens would have continued to live in Kansas communities hiding in plain sight,” Kobach said at that time.
No Johnson County city, including Olathe, has a 287(g) agreement. But local law enforcement agencies can still contact ICE without a partnership, if its policy allows.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, the number of local agencies around the U.S. that joined the 287(g) program increased by 641% in the first nine months of Trump’s second term.
While the Trump administration began amping up immigration enforcement at the start of his second term, things escalated in January when ICE agents killed two protesters in Minneapolis.
At a rally, Vice President J.D. Vance attributed the violence between protesters and ICE agents to a lack of assistance from the Minneapolis Police Department.
“If we had a little cooperation from state and local law enforcement officers, I think the chaos would go way down,” he said.
Traffic stop came at time of ICE tension in Olathe
Soon after the explosion of unrest in Minneapolis and around the time of the Feb. 16 traffic stop, ICE was also making headlines in Olathe.
On Feb. 13, an employee at the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Kansas City in Olathe reported seeing ICE agents peering through the building’s windows shortly after drop-off. An estimated 50 children were inside at the time.
Volunteers monitored the site throughout the day, and dozens assembled during the club’s afternoon pick-up time to deter ICE agents from returning.
While ICE made no detentions at the Boys & Girls Club, videos circulated of agents in tactical gear detaining people at nearby apartment complexes that day.
The next day, Feb. 14, another video circulated widely on social media of ICE agents detaining a teenager in an Olathe Walmart parking lot — just two miles from the Boys & Girls Club.
The video shows an agent handcuffing and pinning the teen to the pavement. The teen’s girlfriend said he was a U.S. citizen. He was taken to municipal court, questioned and later released, he told KMBC.
Butaud released a statement after that incident saying they were aware of what happened, but that Olathe PD was not involved in either of those immigration operations.
Still, immigration attorney Sprout said many people don’t trust that local law enforcement is completely divorced from federal immigration activities.
And while there hasn’t been another confirmed incident in which an Olathe police officer’s actions have led to someone’s deportation, Sprout said she doesn’t believe Olathe PD is “going out of their way to not accommodate ICE.”
While Juan was detained, his sister was not
During the February traffic stop, things escalated when ICE agents arrived on the scene. And until then, Juan and Ana had no idea Boyer had called them.
At some point, an ICE agent began filming a video on Juan’s phone, apparently accidentally.
Most of the two-minute video shows the agent’s hand or pants, or the sky. Over the sound of speeding cars, someone can be heard laughing. Later, the man filming says, “Get them leg irons on this fool.”
And, for a split second, Juan can be seen with his hands behind his back next to an ICE agent.
While detaining Juan, the ICE agents also wanted to look into Ana’s status.
At the start of the video, the agent says, “I want to see if I can’t get an ID on her.”
In an interview with the Post, Carlos said his sister refused to give them her information, and an attempt to physically remove her from the car was unsuccessful.
It was at this point, Carlos said, that Boyer, the Olathe police officer whose call to ICE precipitated the federal agents’ arrival, stepped in.
“The immigration officer grabbed my sister, pulling her arm, when the police officer intervened and wouldn’t let him take her,” Carlos said. “I mean, the police officer called immigration, but when he saw the situation, he wouldn’t let them take my sister.”
Ultimately, the agents left with only Juan in custody. Carlos didn’t want to answer questions to the Post about his or his siblings’ immigration status.
Carlos said Ana remains traumatized by the incident.
“My sister sometimes wakes up at 10 at night or screams because she remembers that moment,” he said.
Once detained, ICE took Juan to a detention center in Grandview, Missouri, where he called Carlos.
From there, Juan was moved to different facilities across the country: in Kansas, Florida, back to Missouri, and Louisiana.
His brother said Juan’s time in Louisiana was the hardest.
“They put chains on their ankles and on their hands and around their waists,” he said. “And if you want to eat, they don’t take the chains off.”
After a few weeks, he returned to Guatemala and is now with his parents.
“It feels strange,” Juan told the Post. “I miss my siblings.”
Juan said he’d like to return to the United States, but it’s hard. Not just the process of gaining citizenship, but the actual trek to the border.
“The road is long, and there are difficulties along the way. You have to endure hunger, sleep, and cold,” he said via text.
Juan still has a lot of unanswered questions. He doesn’t understand why he was never issued a speeding ticket. He doesn’t understand why he wasn’t given an immigration trial. But one question in particular has stuck with him.
“Why did [Boyer] do that if he wasn’t allowed to?”
This story was originally published by the Johnson County Post.
