Kansas City went 17 years without a municipal jail. But with 650,000 tourists arriving this summer for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the city rushed to build one in seven months.
The facility is set to open June 1, against a national backdrop of the largest federal deportation campaign in modern American history and an unprecedented expansion of federal policing power.
In a political moment where ICE is operating with impunity and city police departments across the country their conspirators, community organizations in Kansas City have been sounding the alarm that the World Cup Jail is a local face of this national project…