In at least four Ohio jails and two regional correctional facilities, county officials are holding hundreds of people for indefinite stretches on behalf of the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency as they await deportation.
In southwest Ohio, 142 alleged immigration offenders currently fill the cells of the Butler County Sheriff’s jail, according to ICE data. That count has included a 19-year-old soccer star from the Cincinnati area with no criminal history who was deported to Honduras after he was arrested in front of his mother. And it currently includes a children’s hospital chaplain who is facing deportation to Egypt, a country he fled after he was tortured by the government there after the Arab Spring. Both were apprehended after required visits with immigration officials.
A sign sits outside the Butler County jail, reading “ILLEGAL ALIENS HERE.”
Diagonally across the state, in Mahoning County, Sheriff Jerry Greene told local media the payments from ICE his office receives to hold 39 inmates on the agency’s behalf provide a clear financial benefit for the county. He said the money helps by creating “a bit of a rainy day fund for criminal justice agencies for when times may not be as good.”
President Donald Trump’s administration is waging a campaign of mass deportation across the U.S. ICE is currently holding 61,000 people, according to its most recent detention reporting. Masked ICE agents have rounded them up at construction sites, immigration courts, Home Depot parking lots and other places.
While Trump and his allies have insisted they’re focusing on violent criminals, more than 70% of those held by ICE nationally have no criminal convictions, according to federal data analyzed by researchers at Syracuse University.
ICE lacks the physical space to house all those people as they await deportation. For that reason, it has entered 957 contracts with sheriffs and county jails in 35 states, lending them authority to detain, hold and transfer immigrants on its behalf. Some also provide officers to join ICE during roundups.
In Ohio, at least 431 people are being held at four sheriffs offices and two regional jails on behalf of the federal agency, according to ICE data. That includes four people in solitary confinement (ICE uses the term “segregation”). It’s an unusual mission for an office that’s typically responsible for state law enforcement, courthouse security, and concealed-carry permitting.
However, other data indicate far higher counts. The Hamilton Journal-News reported the Butler County jail alone holds 450 on any given day on ICE’s behalf, based on jail census reports. And another local paper reported the ICE population in Mahoning’s jail at closer to 100, based on Greene’s comments.
Detainees stay on average 17 to 45 days depending on the facility, per ICE data.
At least Butler, Mahoning, Portage and Seneca county sheriffs have signed such 287(g) contracts with ICE, according to copies of the contacts on the agency’s website.
The agency lists Fayette County, but no copy of a contract is available, and Fayette County Commission President Tony Anderson said in an interview that he hasn’t heard about any contract. ICE also lists the Geauga County Safety Center as a detention facility, though no copy of the contract is available.
The opacity has prompted lawsuits from the ACLU against both Geauga and Seneca counties, which have declined to provide copies of their federal contracts.
And both the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center, a private prison in Youngstown, and the Correctional Center of Northwest Ohio in Williams County (jointly funded by five Ohio counties) have also signed similar agreements with the federal government.
Why the sheriffs make deals with ICE
Federal legislation passed by Congress in July provided $45 billion for building new immigration detention centers and nearly $30 billion for ICE’s enforcement and deportation operations, a three-fold increase, according to the American Immigration Council.
The federal contracts allow sheriffs offices to tap in. Housing and transporting those inmates can provide a steady revenue stream and fill jail beds that would otherwise sit empty.
In Mahoning, the $125 per-inmate per-day for about 100 people comes out to about $4.5 million, according to figures provided by Sheriff Jerry Greene to the Vindicator.
“They’re going to need to be housed somewhere, and I have the room, and there’s no additional cost to the taxpayers,” he said to the outlet.
The math in Butler County comes out to $68 per ICE detainee per day plus $36 per hour for transportation provided by a corrections officer or deputy.
Neither Jones nor Greene returned calls or emails.
Freda Levenson, legal director for the ACLU, in an interview accused the sheriffs of taking people’s freedoms away out of a “profit motive” instead of a threat to public safety.
Incarceration is not just emotionally taxing but expensive, according to Lynn Tramonte of the Ohio Immigration Alliance. Most people there haven’t been convicted or accused of criminal charges, yet they’re paying out of pocket for legal fees, visitors’ transportation costs, phone calls and more.
“Instead of consolidating all these jails, because we don’t need so many jails in Ohio, they’re finding new reasons to use the space,” she said. “They think it’s a great idea to put immigrants in cages.”
However, Robert Cornwell, a former sheriff’s deputy in Ohio and current director of the Buckeye State Sheriffs’ Association, said there’s no moneymaking motive in play. The federal dollars cover inmates’ costs, he said, and sheriffs that sign contracts with ICE are upholding their mandate to enforce state and federal laws.
“These places just happen to have extra jail space that they’re willing to contract with the federal government,” he said.
Lightning rods
Some of the sheriffs with ICE contracts have been accused of mistreating immigrants or making inflammatory comments about them.
Two men – Bayong Brown Bayong, of Cameroon, and Ahmed Adem, of Somalia – filed a lawsuit against county officials. They say they were physically beaten by guards in the Butler County jail in 2020. Adem says one called him a “f—–g terrorist.” Bayong says one guard punched a tooth out of its socket, and he included a picture of a gap in his teeth with the lawsuit.
Jail officials have denied the charges, and the case is still pending.
Jones has also proudly discussed in the media his practice of feeding inmates what he calls “the warden burger” (ground turkey, potatoes, carrots, celery, flour and other ingredients served in a paddy) for three meals a day when they’re in isolation.
In Portage County, the office of Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski signed two contracts with ICE in March, just a few months after he made news by calling illegal immigrants “human locusts” in a Facebook post.
He didn’t respond to an email. In a recent interview, he said he has his deputies sworn in with dual commissions to make arrests both on behalf of ICE and the county.
“I’m a little surprised some of my fellow sheriffs haven’t jumped on board yet with this,” he said.
Legal battles over ICE contracts
The ACLU, a legal advocacy group that fights for civil liberties, is waging two different fights against the feds deputizing sheriff’s offices.
They’ve filed lawsuits against the Seneca and Geauga county sheriffs for refusing to respond to public records requests seeking copies of their contracts with ICE.
“We see many, many people removed from their families and their communities and being detained,” Levenson said, referring to media reports about ICE operations. “We heard reports of intolerable conditions at some of these places. And we, the public, have a right to know what’s going on in there.”
Its lawyers are also seeking to capitalize on a recent advisory opinion issued by a perhaps unlikely ally, Republican Attorney General Dave Yost. That opinion gave a green light to counties to hold inmates on ICE’s behalf beyond the traditional 48-hour limit on federal detainers.
However, the opinion said that only county commissions, not sheriff’s offices, can enter such agreements.
ICE signed all its contracts with sheriff’s offices. The ACLU has alleged in a letter that this renders the contracts invalid and all the detentions that stem from them as illegal. Levenson said that’s true even if, as in some cases like Butler County, the commission ratified the contract via vote after the fact.
The Fayette County Commission, however, hasn’t ratified its contract, according to Cheryl Subler of the County Commissioners Association of Ohio. Seneca, she said, has a “contract that goes back into the ’90s.” And Portage has not, according to the county administrator in an email.
But both Cornwell, of the Buckeye State Sheriffs’ Association, and Michael Gmoser, Butler County’s prosecuting attorney, disagreed with the ACLU’s claim that the lack of ratification means the contracts are invalid. This is all setting the stage for a possible court battle.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Tremonte, who has advocated for the release of Butler County ICE detainees, said. “The system has become so chaotic and nonsensical under Trump.”
