Lee's Summit has received a preliminary development plan application for a massive new USCIS National Records Center, a proposed campus topping 315,000 square feet that would replace the city's current underground records operation. City officials say the facility would process, store and manage more than $26 million in immigration files, but it is not a detention center and would not include detainee housing or enforcement activity.
The City of Lee's Summit confirmed it received the application on Oct. 9, according to KSHB 41 Kansas City. Per the application, the new facility would serve as a secure records management campus for the U.S. General Services Administration and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, replacing the city's existing underground records campus.
The application states the facility would be USCIS's primary national repository for immigration records, supporting operations around the clock. As the project documents put it, the facility would serve as the agency's primary national repository for immigration records while supporting 24/7 mission-critical operations, the station's report notes.
Why the City Is Drawing a Hard Line on What This Isn't
City officials moved quickly to clarify what the project is not. Lee's Summit stated the proposal is not a detention center, and the plans do not include detainee housing or enforcement operations, per the same account. Officials also emphasized the project has no association with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
That distinction matters because USCIS itself is not an enforcement agency — it provides services related to lawful immigration to the United States, according to the report. The application must still work through several planning, review and public-hearing processes before any approval vote, meaning the proposal remains far from finalized.
A Records Vault With Decades of History Beneath Lee's Summit
The facility the new center would replace isn't just any records room. Lee's Summit's existing National Records Center sits underground at the Space Center Inc. location in northern Lee's Summit, according to a report from kansascity.com. That underground facility spans nearly 330,000 square feet — an area the outlet described as nearly six football fields — and stores roughly 20 million inactive records transferred from USCIS field offices nationwide.
The Department of Homeland Security had been procuring additional space because the existing records center was nearly full, kansascity.com reported. The center's footprint has grown dramatically since it first opened: it launched in 1999 with about 50 employees and now has roughly 500 workers combining federal staff and contractors, per the outlet's account.
The scale of what's being archived underground is staggering. Immigration services had about 55 million A-files on hand and were creating approximately 1.2 million more each year, according to the same kansascity.com report. The U.S. General Services Administration has separately described the National Records Center's holdings as equivalent to roughly 3,900 football-field lengths of records, per GSA.
What Happens Next
Many specifics remain unresolved, including the project's exact site details, cost, developer and timeline, none of which were included in the materials the city has released so far. Whether the existing underground campus would close, be repurposed or continue operating if a new facility is built has also not been addressed in the current application.
For now, the proposal sits at the start of a lengthy municipal review process. KSHB 41 says it will continue following the review process as the application moves through planning and public hearings toward a possible vote.
