Kansas Democrat Senate nominee Adam Hamilton said in January that he would want to be among people protesting if what he was discussing about Minneapolis were happening in Kansas City.

Hamilton, who is challenging incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) in Kansas’s U.S. Senate race, made the comments during a January 22 episode of his Making Sense of Faith with Adam Hamilton podcast.

“I think about on the flip side now — so people who are protesting,” Hamilton said. “And I would just say if there were — I posted on my Facebook page this week something I’d seen from someone else who lives in Minneapolis. Of course that got a lot of comments. But he was kind of just describing what was happening in his community.”

“And I thought if that was happening in Kansas City, I would want to be out there with people,” Hamilton continued.

“You know, I would want to be out there trying to protect — not insulting — with great kindness and compassion and appreciation for ICE agents who are trying to do the right thing,” Hamilton said.

“But if this is being done in a way that’s wrong or, you know, if they’re targeting people because of the color of their skin, or they’re racially profiling people. I think of the two young men in my 7:30 service,” he said.

“I’m going to be standing in front of their house, and I’m hoping there are a whole bunch of other people from our church who are going to stand in front of their house if something like this happened to them,” Hamilton continued. “I don’t believe it would happen to them. But there would be a whole lot of other people, just like in Minneapolis where this is happening.”

Hamilton’s January comments also fit with positions he has taken on immigration over the course of his public career.

“In Scott City, farmers discussed the loss of grain markets to other countries due to the chaos in our markets, and the need for a path to citizenship for hard-working, law-abiding immigrants which help feed the nation by working in ag industries,” Hamilton wrote in a March 10 post about his travels across Kansas.

Hamilton also served on President Barack Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, which addressed immigration in a January 2016 report.

“The failure to provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants has denied countless hardworking people opportunities to earn a living, support their families, and advance their education in this country,” the report stated.

The report also said immigration enforcement could separate parents from their children and create economic hardships for mixed-status families.

Hamilton, the founding and senior pastor of the Church of the Resurrection, also addressed immigration during a 2018 sermon.

“When you see news stories where children are crying, and they’re being taken away from their parents, you should look at those stories in the light of what Jesus said about what happens when you harm children,” Hamilton said after recounting Jesus’s warning that it would be better for someone who harms a child to have “a millstone tied around your neck” and be thrown into the sea than face God’s wrath. 

Breitbart News reported October 14 that Hamilton, who has campaigned as a “different kind of Democrat,” voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 and donated $500 to her campaign on July 23, two days after President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid. Hamilton said he was drawn to Harris by his concern for “the weak, the vulnerable,” called President Donald Trump a “disrupter,” and said January 6 was a “disqualifier” for Trump from his perspective, though he added that he would pray for and try to support Trump after Trump was elected.