Retired federal prosecutor Leon Patton addresses the Lenexa City Council during an Aug. 19, 2025, meeting. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
LENEXA — Leon Patton, a retired assistant U.S. attorney who once prosecuted immigrants for violent crimes, is tired of feeling shamed for supporting immigration enforcement efforts and referring to people as “aliens.”
The 74-year-old traversed the Kansas City metro, from his home in Prairie Village to the Lenexa City Council chambers, to grouse about the community’s backlash to federal raids at local restaurants. The Lenexa police investigation of council member Melanie Arroyo’s citizenship also had been a flashpoint for controversy, but Patton wasn’t concerned with that.
He told the council at Tuesday’s meeting that he wanted to share his “specialized knowledge,” gleaned from 30 years of experience as a federal prosecutor before retiring in 2020. Mainly, he wanted them to know that some immigrants are criminals.
“Please,” he implored, “don’t be misled by things you might read in the newspaper or hear on the news.”
He referenced a Kansas City Star report on the July 30 raids at El Toro Loco restaurants in Lenexa and Kansas City, Kansas. The agents brandished a search warrant that authorized them to seize documents relating to the exploitation of workers — but arrested workers instead.
The raids were typical of how federal agents nationwide are carrying out President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration agenda — ignoring civil rights and indiscriminatingly targeting people who have committed no crime, have legal standing to be in the country, or are in fact U.S. citizens.
But the way Patton sees it, that’s not a complete narrative.
He talked about prosecuting Jorge Carrillo-Hernandez, an immigrant from Mexico who had been deported multiple times and repeatedly committed violent crimes after returning to the U.S. A federal judge in 2018 sentenced Carrillo-Hernandez to six years in prison. Patton said a criminal conviction in Johnson County was related to Carrillo-Hernandez “selling his bride of 19 days, who was three months pregnant.”
“You wonder why there are people in the middle of the political spectrum who vote for someone like Donald Trump? Well, part of it is there are haters out there who think that people like me, who are simply enforcing the laws, are evil,” Patton said.
He lamented how “people on the left,” in his mind, “want to scold and shame and silence the people who disagree with them. They call you racist.”
For example, he asserted, there is nothing wrong with referring to an immigrant as an “alien,” because federal law uses the term to refer to someone who is not a U.S. citizen.
“If you think that it’s somehow racist to use the word ‘alien,’ then I presume you got your education by sitting in movie theaters and watching movies about extraterrestrials,” Patton said. “Meanwhile, some of us get our education by sitting in courtrooms and by reading federal statutes.”
‘Progress and respect’
Arroyo — the council member who was forced to prove her citizenship to police because a local resident complained about something he misread — said in an interview that it was “absolutely reasonable” to arrest the kind of violent criminals Patton talked about.
But, she said, Patton failed to mention that federal authorities are targeting immigrants who aren’t criminals.
“A lot of them have never even committed crimes in their own countries of origin,” Arroyo said. “I think it’s OK to have a conversation about immigration enforcement when it comes to violent offenders, absolutely, but we also need to be considerate of the fact that it’s not the reality today.”
Arroyo, a clinical counselor and art therapist, said she felt “a little bit conflicted” about Patton’s point on the use of shame.
On one hand, she said, “shaming others is counterproductive.” Ideally, she said, she could gently point out “certain language or ways or belief systems that are unacceptable.”
“At the same time, most people don’t feel the need to change unless there is some level of shame. So that’s why I’m saying I’m a little bit conflicted,” Arroyo said. “Because the thing is, we have tried to tell them nicely. Like, ‘Please don’t call us that.’ And they still won’t listen. So think the shaming is just a response to the fact that we’re frustrated, that we feel like we’re not being heard or just completely being dismissed.”
She said he understood why people would use the word “alien” to refer to immigrants, since the term has been used to describe foreigners since the country’s founding. But the argument that is merely a legal term “is an attempt to intellectualize your way out of change,” she said.
“Given today’s use of the word ‘alien’ in sci-fi, and the discriminatory context in which the word is used to dehumanize immigrants, it has become insensitive and outdated,” Arroyo said. “This is similar to the same way the mental health profession discontinued using offensive language to diagnose people with disabilities. Language changes over time, and it’s OK to abandon certain terms for the sake of progress and respect.”
‘Quit alienating people’
In an interview after the meeting, Patton said he had never heard anyone use the word “alien” with the intent to dehumanize someone. He clarified that he believes it’s wrong to call someone an “illegal alien” or “an illegal.” And, he said, he is “not a Trump person by any means.”
He noted that his copy of a Bible printed in 1984 uses the word “alien” but that a newer edition changed the word to “foreigner.”
“OK, I sort of get it,” he said, but added, “I don’t think it’s fair to say you’re being racist” by using the word “alien” to refer to a person.
During his comments to the council, he said people might want to think about how they could “actually effect change in our society.”
“Putting signs on your car — ‘Trump lies.’ Yes, he does. ‘Abolish ICE.’ Not going to happen,” Patton said. “You need to quit alienating people in the middle of the political spectrum by calling them racist and evil simply for applying the laws that are in effect. We’re tired of being bullied. We’re tired of people trying to shame us.”
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