Mayor, Board of Alderpersons, and how to show up.

UPDATE — October 16, 2026

After this article was prepared, the Noel City Council voted unanimously to suspend Marshal Daniel Vaughn and to rescind the city's participation in ICE's 287(g) program. A hearing on the suspension is set for October 27.

The Record publishes Vaughn's case record below as historical evidence: what the public record showed while he held the office. That record does not change because the council acted. The council's reasons for its vote have not been publicly disclosed. The historical record stays on the record.

The council's vote is a great step forward for the city of Noel. It is not the last step. Who signed the 287(g) agreement, under what authority, and what the Marshal's Office's own records show are still open questions. The Record will keep asking them, and will keep publishing what it finds, for the people of Noel.

The Marshal's Office is still invited to comment for the record by Monday, October 19, at 5:00 p.m. CT: [email protected]. Reader comments are welcome at the same address and are moderated before publication.

The Marshal's Record, In Full

For months the fight over Noel's Marshal's Office has run on rumor. This week it went on the record, in a council meeting that demanded an independent legal review and in court files anyone can read. The Noel Record read them.

By The Noel Record · Published October 17, 2026 (reporting locked October 14, 2026)

NOEL — On Tuesday night, Oct. 13, Noel's Board of Aldermen sat through a long public-comment period. According to the meeting's recording and transcript, much of the session centered on the city's 287(g) immigration-enforcement agreement and on interim City Marshal Daniel Vaughn. Residents raised concerns about transparency and the Marshal's authority. They presented what they described as evidence of discrepancies in official documents. They formally requested an independent legal review of the Marshal and his suspension pending investigation.

It was the second time in five weeks the Marshal's Office dominated a public meeting. On Sept. 8, Vaughn himself addressed the council with an update on the 287(g) program; the meeting was filmed by OnScene Nation https://www.facebook.com/reel/2109316346411265/. On Wednesday night, Oct. 14, residents took the argument to a town hall. No public recording of that meeting had surfaced when this article was published, and the Record is collecting residents' recordings and photos for its meetings index.

The Record's position is simple: this town has been arguing from screenshots and memory. Below is what the public record shows: the Marshal's court history, pulled case by case from the courts' own systems; the federal agreement the city has not produced; and the questions that remain open because the documents that would answer them have not been made public.

The man. Daniel Arlen Vaughn, of Southwest City, a McDonald County town a few miles from Noel, is Noel's interim City Marshal. The City of Noel's own website lists him in the job (Marshal's Office, 306 Main St., (417) 475-6237). He took over from Randy Wilson, who resigned before the board's Aug. 11, 2026 meeting. The board approved Vaughn as interim marshal in August 2026. A Missouri Department of Public Safety document still names Wilson. The dates matter, for a reason explained below.

The court record. A community post published Oct. 4 by Noel resident Yutsil Márquez Osorio attributed 13 court cases in Missouri and Oklahoma to Vaughn. The Record pulled the court systems directly. Court records under Vaughn's full name, anchored to a 2017 McDonald County case file, show the following. "Guilty plea" and "conviction" mean the case ended against him; "dismissed" means it did not; civil judgments are debts, not crimes, and are labeled as such.

MISSOURI (McDonald County and the state Fine Collection Center, via Case.net):

• Failure to stop for a stop sign (RSMo 304.351, Fine Collection Center), offense Apr. 3, 2004; guilty plea, $30.50 fine. (Case 021461406)
• Supplying liquor to a minor or intoxicated person (RSMo 311.310), offense Feb. 4, 2006; guilty plea, $100 fine. (Case 06MC-CR00315)
• Harassment (RSMo 565.090), offense May 12, 2007; guilty plea, $200 fine. (Case 07MC-CR00450)
• DWI – alcohol (Southwest City municipal court), filed July 10, 2009; guilty plea, $400 fine. (Case 090011368)
• Driving while license revoked/suspended (Southwest City municipal court), offense May 7, 2010; guilty plea, $250 fine. (Case 090011986)
• Exceeding the posted speed limit by 11–15 mph (RSMo 304.010, Fine Collection Center), offense Dec. 22, 2012; guilty plea, $55.50 fine. (Case 700691373)
• Seat-belt violation (RSMo 307.178, Fine Collection Center), offense Dec. 22, 2012; guilty plea, $10 fine. (Case 700691374)
• Two 2006 civil judgments for Capital One (breach of contract / transcript judgment): civil debt matters, not criminal. (Cases 06MC-CV00611, 06MC-CV00611-01)
• In January 2017, Vaughn petitioned to expunge records under RSMo 610.140, naming as respondents the McDonald County Sheriff, the Southwest City Police Department, the Southwest City Municipal Division, the McDonald County Prosecutor, the Missouri Highway Patrol, and the Missouri Department of Revenue, the agencies behind the cases above. All three petitions were dismissed by the parties on Feb. 21, 2017. The records remain public. (Cases 17MC-CV00013, -14, -15)

OKLAHOMA (via OSCN, records under the name Daniel Arlin Vaughn in Delaware County, which borders McDonald County, and elsewhere in the state):

• Obtaining merchandise by bogus check (Delaware Co. misdemeanor), filed Mar. 9, 2010; a bench warrant issued the same day and was recalled Mar. 22, 2010; the case was dismissed/settled that day. A dismissed charge is not a conviction. (Case CM-2010-00134)
• Driving on an expired license (Delaware Co.), filed Apr. 21, 2010; a failure-to-appear bench warrant issued June 11, 2010 with a license-suspension notice; guilty plea Oct. 18, 2010, $50 fine plus costs; the suspension was withdrawn in 2012. (Case TR-2010-00498)
• Unsafe lane change (Tulsa Co.), filed Nov. 26, 2008; failure-to-appear bench warrant issued Feb. 2, 2009, recalled May 19, 2009; no-contest plea and conviction that day, $291.50 paid. (Case TR-2008-20940)
• Two Delaware County small-claims cases ended in default judgments against him after he failed to appear: an entry-and-detainer (eviction) case in 2010, and a Noble Finance money judgment in 2012. In the latter case, a 2014 garnishment filing notes the defendant "is a volunteer firefighter." Civil matters, labeled as such. (Cases SC-2010-00508, SC-2012-00042)
• Two seat-belt violations (Delaware Co. 2005, guilty plea, $20; Osage Co. 2021, no-contest plea, $20). (Cases TRC-2005-01378, TR-2021-01075)

Counted the way the community post counted them, the substantive cases total 16, not 13: nine in Missouri, seven in Oklahoma. The Missouri count is the seven criminal, municipal, and Fine Collection Center cases plus the two Capital One judgments. The three expungement petitions are not counted, because Vaughn filed them himself, to try to clear the earlier cases. The two remaining items on the circulating list, speeding and failure to stop, were both located in a fuller pull of the state records, in cases handled by Missouri's Fine Collection Center: a failure-to-stop case from 2004 and a speeding case from 2013, each ending in a guilty plea, which is a conviction, and each listed in the Missouri section above. CORRECTION: as first prepared, this article said no speeding case and no failure-to-stop case appeared under his name in Case.net or OSCN. That was wrong. The first search was limited to McDonald County, and these cases sat outside it. Where this paper could not verify, it says so, in both directions. Where it got a fact wrong, it corrects it here, in the open.

The agreement nobody can produce. Residents allege Vaughn enrolled Noel in ICE's 287(g) program, under which local officers are trained to perform federal immigration-enforcement functions, without a council vote, and committed city money the council never approved. The paper trail does not agree with itself:

• A public tracker built from ICE agreement data lists a "Noel Police Dept" entry: Task Force Model, signed July 30, 2026. Unlike many agencies on the same list, Noel's entry links to no copy of the signed agreement.
• A copy of ICE's own participating-agencies list contains no Noel entry. That copy appears to be a snapshot from around January 2026, before the tracker's July date, which would explain the absence. But a read of ICE's list current to Sept. 30, 2026 also shows no Noel, while listing three other McDonald County agencies: Pineville PD, Southwest City PD, and Goodman PD. If Noel signed on July 30, a Sept. 30 federal list should show it.
• The money figure circulating in town, roughly $107,500, matches the standard federal incentive package reported by the Springfield News-Leader on Oct. 2: $100,000 toward vehicles plus $7,500 in equipment, per an ICE brochure. Vaughn is reported to have described, in the OnScene Nation recording of the Sept. 8 meeting, submitting for the money through grants.gov for equipment, with further quarterly funding once he and a second officer are certified. The Record has not been able to review that recording itself. This account of it is reported as circulating and is labeled unverified, and so is any link between the figure and Vaughn. If the account is accurate, it explains where the number came from. It does not show what the council authorized.
• A citizen recording of the Oct. 13 meeting (Citizen MC Podcast) reports that Vaughn acknowledged at the Sept. 8 meeting that he had entered the 287(g) agreement without proper approval. The Record has not independently verified that acknowledgment from the Sept. 8 footage, which sits behind Facebook's login wall; it is reported here as what is circulating, labeled unverified. The Record put the question to the Marshal's Office directly; the attempts are documented below.
• In Nixa, the city council voted 5–1 in public session on Aug. 11, 2026 to enter its 287(g) agreement, after public comment (KSMU). A public vote is what this process looks like when it is done in the open.

If a signed Noel agreement exists, its signature page answers who signed for this city and when. Wilson resigned before Aug. 11, 2026, on a date the public record does not establish, and Vaughn became interim marshal in August 2026, so the signer could have been either man. The tracker's July 30, 2026 date and the Aug. 11, 2026 reference point fall in the same window, and the public record reviewed for this article does not establish which came first, Wilson's resignation or the signing. If no signed agreement exists, the tracker entry is false and ICE's data needs correcting. Either way, the document settles it, and the city has not produced it. The Record is requesting it, along with the council minutes for Sept. 8, Oct. 13, and Oct. 14, 2026, from the City Clerk under the Missouri Sunshine Law, and will publish whatever comes back, in full.

What happens next. At the Oct. 13 meeting, residents asked for an independent legal review and the Marshal's suspension pending investigation; the meeting summary records the requests, and no public statement from the city since then has said whether they were granted. Per the Citizen MC Podcast recording of that meeting, which it says drew more than 200 attendees, the council moved into closed session after public comment and an update was promised within 72 hours of Oct. 13. The Record will publish that update when it appears, and note it here if it does not. If a complaint reaches Missouri's POST Commission, the state body that licenses peace officers, the process is set by the Department of Public Safety: review by the DPS Director, then, for substantiated cases, a filing by the Attorney General with the Administrative Hearing Commission, which can sanction up to revoking an officer's license. No public record found by this paper shows whether any complaint against Vaughn or Wilson is in that pipeline. Readers who were told at the town hall that an investigation exists should know: as of publication, no public source names the investigating body. When one does, the Record will print it.

Comment was sought. The Record sought comment from the Marshal's Office on the factual claims in this article. The Record called the Marshal's Office at (417) 475-6237 three times on Oct. 16, 2026, at 10:54, 11:00, and 11:10 a.m. CT. No one answered, and no voicemail was available. Any comment received by Monday, Oct. 19, 2026, at 5:00 p.m. CT at [email protected] will be published in full and appended to this article as an update.

The records, yourself. The city's website posts no meeting recordings and no public records. Until it does, this page will: see The Noel Record Records & Sources Appendix below for meeting recordings and transcripts, the court-record table with case numbers, the ICE lists, and this paper's Sunshine requests and whatever they return. Every case number above can be checked free on Missouri Case.net and Oklahoma OSCN; the appendix below explains how.

Disclosure: The Noel Record's publisher is a Noel resident who intends to file as a candidate for Mayor of Noel in the December filing period. The paper's standards (public records for factual claims, allegations attributed and labeled, a genuine request for comment to every subject, and corrections published openly) apply to every article, including articles about the publisher's own opponents and allies. The publisher's personal account is not used as a source in this paper's reporting.

Sources and reporting notes: Records & Sources Appendix. A Spanish edition is not included in this version.