TOPEKA — U.S. Rep. Tracey Mann is adamant about deporting illegal immigrants who have broken the law, but he avoids getting too excited about a federal crackdown that would hurt the state’s farm economy more than it needs to.
Mann is a Republican who easily won reelection to a third term in Congress in November. He said that the porous national border was a problem that needed strong action to stop the flow of millions of illegal immigrants. He said that the fight to strengthen the U.S. border was one of the main issues in the 2024 election and that the results showed that voters were eager to deal with long-standing problems of illegal immigration.
He said that one of President-elect Donald Trump’s top priorities should be to get rid of people who are in the U.S. illegally and are involved in crimes like drug and people trafficking.
Mann also said that Congress needed to keep working on policies that would protect the U.S. farm economy and other businesses that depend on legally hired immigrant workers.
According to Mann, we need a clear immigration policy instead of the chaos we have now. He said this in an interview with the Kansas Reflector. “We can name and check out the people we want to come into the country, and then by law let them.”
He said that companies in Kansas’s huge 1st District wanted less red tape and more clarity in the federal laws and rules about giving work permits to temporary immigrants. He said it would be silly to ignore the problems that companies face when they hire extra workers.
“It’s an insult to the men and women who have been through the strung-out process.” Mann said, “They do it the right way.”
Mann was happy that a majority of both parties in the U.S. House passed the Laken Riley Act, which was named after a college student who was killed by a South American immigrant who had been arrested for stealing in the U.S.
The bill that was sent to the U.S. Senate would require the federal government to hold undocumented aliens accused of theft and other low-level crimes until their cases are over. Concerns about due process were made about the law because it put in jail more people who were accused of a crime but not actually found guilty.
The lawmaker said that immigrants who broke the law in the United States but did not have the right paperwork should be sent back to their home countries.
Mann said that he voted for a bill that was passed by the U.S. House that would stop people who were born male from playing sports that are meant for girls or women. He said that the bill would use “genetics and biology” instead of “identity” to describe gender under Title IX, the federal civil rights law.
“The vast majority of people in Kansas’s 1st District would agree that women should be able to play sports.” Boys should play games for boys. “Boys shouldn’t play sports for girls,” Mann said.
In the past, Kansas officials said that a few transgender kids had joined cheerleading squads. In 2023, the Republican-led Legislature overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto to make it a law that transgender athletes from school through college can’t play sports for girls or women.
Kelly said that the bans would hurt the mental health of her voters and were more about partisan politics than the well-being of Kansans.
Mann, on the other hand, said that Democrats in Washington, D.C., had “caved to radical activists under the false guises of ‘equity’ and ‘inclusion’ over fairness” while women were “robbed of scholarships and accolades” that they could achieve through sports.
In the interview, Mann praised the introduction of a House plan that would make it legal for people with a state license to carry a concealed weapon across state lines. That way, people with a Kansas permit could go to other states without worrying about breaking laws about carrying a gun that are different from Kansas’ rule.
This is being talked about by a lot of people in my area, Mann said. “There are a lot of angry people.”
Mann, who used to be deputy governor, is in charge of the Big First district, which goes from the border with Colorado to Douglas County in the eastern part of Kansas.
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