Tonight, NBC Nightly News aired a story about the Butler County Commissioners’ reckless decision to allow Sheriff Richard Jones to re-start detaining immigrants facing civil immigration charges for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This decision is reckless because the county is already in court, battling a 2020 lawsuit filed after Butler guards physically assaulted two men detained for ICE. It’s only a matter of time before another person’s rights are violated, and lawyers can expand the civil rights case.
The jail is getting $68 a day, per person, to lock up Ohioans while they try to fix their immigration papers. But Jones says it’s not about the money. “If you look at the crimes that these people have committed since they’ve been here, what’s it worth for somebody who’s been murdered or somebody who’s been raped?” This is a classic bait-and-switch tactic from Jones, to try to build support for locking up immigrants. People in ICE detention are not being accused of crimes; they are facing civil immigration charges.
Saidu Sow, one of the bravest people we have ever met, was offered the only slot in opposition to Sheriff Jones’ lies on NBC. After living in the United States for twenty years, Saidu was deported to Mauritania in 2021, and has since relocated to the Ivory Coast. He has a wife and children in the United States, all of whom are U.S. citizens.
“I’m still going through some trauma from Butler County,” Saidu said. When asked what he’s worried could happen to other immigrants detained there, he said matter of factly, “Somebody’s gonna put hands on them. They will be beat up.”
Saidu knows. He spent more than three years in this and other Ohio county jails, navigating the immigration appeals process until his road came to an end. Read our tribute to Saidu, which we published after his deportation. His bravery in exposing abuses at the Morrow and Butler County Jails are a key reason why their contracts ended in 2020 and 2021.
Over a four year period, the ground laid by Saidu and other incarcerated immigrants — many of whom were Black, Muslim men living in the U.S. for decades — spared hundreds of Ohioans from detention and deportation. Saidu, and others, continue to speak out. We are grateful to them and hope that one day, they will be able to return home.